Wagon Wheel Snow Drift
Any old ranch has a “boneyard” where utilitarian things you just don’t want to throw away lay. Some since the beginning of the place. I’d bet this buck wagon saw use from the start of this ranch in 1906. It was probably retired upon the first model T truck. No matter how many decades, here it lays with nothing but the cows for company in the summer. Not many wildlife bother it but for the mice that might live under or in the boards. 80 or maybe 90 generations of cattle calves and adults have rubbed against this wagon’s side and wheels. I see them do it every summer in that pasture.
Between Ice expanding between the grain of the wood. The drying contractions of hot summer droughts wear. But occasional soaking from our meager 14 inches of precipitation is insufficient for fast wood decay. This climate (ALL climate is local), is semi-arid with that low annual average of moisture. Wood might last 100 years, some woods like cedar, longer. I’ve seen posts here put in early with little damage. We even find leather shoes and Horse Harness materials in some of the old over the gully bank junk yards from the old homesteads up here. You never know what your going to dig up in those. The settlers here didn’t throw away much that worked or could be repurposed. We are the same way. You have to be.
Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands *Wyotana”
Title: Wagon Wheel Snow Drift