Photo by Wayne Thom.

Photo by Wayne Thom.

Travel Directions:
From I-80 take WY Exit 235, “WY-130E / US-287S / US-30E and Walcott / Medicine Bow National Forest / Saratoga”
Go South on WY-130 for 20.5 miles to Saratoga.
Turn Right (west) onto West Bridge Avenue / Jack Creek Road; go 2.8 miles.
Turn Right onto Bolten Road; go 3.0 miles to the gate.

Remarks:
Built largely from The Shipping News profits, Proulx designed her current summertime home to be in harmony with its incomparable 640 acre (!) natural setting. Of the house, she has said it is “a library with a kitchen and some bedrooms attached.” A contemporary “green” structure, it is dominated by earth tones, lies low to the land, and fully exploits an unrivaled view of the North Platte River and Sheep Rock.

Bird Cloud, Proulx’s fascinating tribute to her home, replete with detours into her family’s history, the life and times of the region, and the challenges she faced in designing and constructing a very “special” home, is well worth reading. Seeing the site before reading Bird Cloud made us appreciate the book all the more.

The view from the huge windows of her home is not static. Thousands of birds find shelter in Sheep Rock’s natural depressions, making it a natural avian sanctuary. It is a setting which reminded one writer of this passage from The Shipping News: “Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.” [1]

See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/books/05book.html

Important:
Always obtain appropriate permission before entering private property.

Quotation:
“The property was beautiful and unique, remote and powerful, and I fell for it, hard.” [2]

[1] The Guardian, December 11, 2004, “Home on the Range,” Aida Edemariam,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/dec/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview13
[2] Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx (Scribner) ISBN-9780743288804, page 47.