Open Season

 

Open Season by C.J. Box

Joe Pickett #1

Mystery

2001

Finished on January 11, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he's had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the "outfitter murders," as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.

As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backyard: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.

A solid entry in C.J. Box's popular mystery series! I was drawn in quickly, and found myself marveling at the fact that this was the author's debut work; the writing is polished and the plotting skillfully delivered. I guessed the bad guys' identities early on, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment. I've only read Open Season, but Joe Pickett brings to mind Craig Johnson's character, Walt Longmire. 

I bought Open Season while my husband and I were exploring Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons last fall (hoping to buy something by a local author) and I liked the book so well, I plan to read as much of the series as I can throughout the year. Box's detailed descriptions of the land and of the wildlife that inhabit Wyoming were fun to read now that I've been to that area of the country. There is some subject matter that is difficult to read (a young child and her mother find themselves in a dangerous situation with one of the villains), but none of those scenarios felt gratuitous. I did take issue, however, with two of the male characters and their commentary on women and their bodies. All in all, a quick read and a good story! Recommend.

Heading West - Day Three

Day Three:

Rock Springs, Wyoming to Twin Falls, Idaho
364 miles
6.75 hours
Mostly sunny

Had we not had beautiful weather and the gorgeous scenery to admire as we drove, this would have been a pretty boring day. As it was, the leg from Ogden to Twin Falls was not my favorite part.

Click on photos for larger view.

Gorgeous red rocks!

The Wasatch Mountains took my breath away with their beauty!

Roosters Brewing Company
Ogden, Utah

Excellent fish tacos and a Junction City Chocolate Stout.

Ogden, Utah

Somewhere in Idaho. It reminded me of Nebraska.

The Snake River
Twin Falls, Idaho

Heading West - Day Two

Day Two:

Sidney, Nebraska to Rock Springs, Wyoming
370 miles
7 hours (driving time)
Cold departure, but sunny from Laramie to Rock Springs

We were concerned about a possible delay between Cheyenne and Laramie, due to a late spring snow storm, which left Cheyenne with 8 1/2 inches of snow. However, the road, which had been closed for a couple of days, had reopened and was perfectly clear by the time we were ready to leave Sidney. We had a great lunch (clam chowder and a BLT) at Jeffrey's Bistro in Laramie and an excellent coffee just down the street at Night Heron Bookstore. Cute town!

The drive to Rock Springs was beautiful. We saw lots of wind-turbines, which looked pretty against the snowy hillsides. After settling in at our hotel and checking out recommendations on TripAdvisor, we headed out for dinner. We wound up at Bitter Creek Brewing, which had great beer and decent food. 

Click on photos for larger view.

The view from Sierra Trading Post
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Lots of snow!

Heading to Laramie. Love the red rocks!

Delicious clam chowder
Jeffrey's Bistro
Laramie, Wyoming

Excellent coffee! Wish we could've spent more time relaxing here.

Reminded me of The Mill in Lincoln. I would definitely hang out here!

Roadkill and Sweetwater Wheat
Bitter Creek Brewing
Rock Springs, Wyoming

Our goofy waiter!

Looking Back - Riding the White Horse Home

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album by Teresa Jordan
Memoir
1993 Vintage Departures
Finished on March 4, 1997
Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

"A haunting and elegant memoir, evoking the ghosts of... family and those spirits inherent in the landscape.... Riding the White Horse Home becomes the story of us all. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

In 1887 Teresa Jordan's great-grandfather bought a ranch in the Iron Mountain country of southeast Wyoming. Four generations later her father sold it, under the economic pressures that have made ranching a dying way of life. This superbly evocative book is at once Teresa Jordan's family chronicle and a eulogy for the West her people helped shape.

Riding the White Horse Home is about generations of women who coped with physical hardship and killing loneliness in a landscape at once beautiful and inhospitable. It is a book of practical information--how to keep a cold from shying; how to tell when a cow is about to calf--conveyed with such precision that reading it is like a fast gallop across the prairie. Teresa Jordan has made a gift of her heritage--and has taught us something about our own.    

My Original Notes (1997):

Marvelous! I love this book. Makes me want to write my own memoirs. I identified with so much of the author's views and feelings. Very sad in places - brought tears to my eyes, yet also humorous. Great look at life on a cattle ranch in contemporary time. Insightful. Touching. Spellbinding.

My Current Thoughts:

Yes, I still own a copy of this wonderful memoir and plan to read it again. I read it for my Great Plains Lit class, many years ago, but still remember how much I enjoyed it. Flipping through my copy, I see a lot of underlined passages and notes jotted down on the pages... far too many to share here, but this particular passage caught my eye and I think it speaks to the author's love of the land she grew up on:

When my family tells the story of the ranch, we say we left because we had to--we could not afford to pay the estate taxes after my grandfather's death. This is true, but it is only part of the story. My family left the land because for four generations we had yearned to leave. We had lived in a culture that taught us that a professional life is more respectable than one tied to the land. This attitude shaped the decisions my family made, and it continues to shape the larger political and economic decisions, made by educators and policymakers far removed from the land, that affect the few who still hold on.

My sadness over the loss of the homeplace is my dark side, my grief, but it is also the source of my deepest knowledge. Perhaps it is only through this experience of loss that I can value a sense of place, that I can question how thoughtlessly--even how contemptuously--we are taught to cast it aside.

I'm willing to bet that none of you have heard of Teresa Jordan or this book. If you enjoy memoirs or novels such as A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean), Dancing at the Rascal Farm (Ivan Doig) or All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy), this is sure to be one you will love. I'm so happy to see that it's still available for purchase.