Thunder Basin

Wyoming's Powder River Basin

WY450 in Wyoming's Powder River Basin

the closed open-range

A dead horse near the highway alludes to the powerful storm the night before.

Driving southwest out of Sundance, we entered the Powder River Basin, an immense open area in northeastern Wyoming where the grasslands began to turn to sagebrush. It is hard to cross this great steppe without goosebumps. The freedom of the open range sweeps through the imagination like an unobstructed wind. -That is, until you try to walk out into it. Huge tracts of this land are publicly owned, and leased by the government to ranchers or corporations specializing in extracting natural recourses. These leases aren't always open to the public, and a vast network of barbed wire holds the land down like a net.

Still, with a map of the Thunder Basin National Grassland, you could wander out into the great mysterious space and let the sun, the wind, or the storms of the high plains take you into another world...