My grandfather was a Wyoming cowboy through and through. People in town knew him as a talker, a teller of tall tales, the kind of man who could work a whole room with just his voice. I remember the rasp of it, textured and warm, wrapped in that Wyoming drawl. He could make a crowd laugh, wink at the right moment, and carry everyone along in his stories as if they had lived them too. He drove an old orange Chevy box truck, and some of my favorite memories are of him telling me stories as we rattled down the road together. More often than not, his stories circled back to Butch Cassidy.

He told them with such conviction that I was never sure what was true and what was stitched together out of legend. Maybe he knew Cassidy, maybe he didn’t. But that was part of the magic, not knowing for sure. What mattered wasn’t the exact truth, but the moral. Cowboys in his stories did not bend to society’s rules. They did what was right for themselves, their families, their survival. And even as a girl, I absorbed that lesson. That maybe the truest way to live is to follow your own compass.

So when life got heavy and I found myself on the road back toward Utah, those stories sat quietly in me. My family’s roots are in the borderlands of Wyoming and Utah, and going back there always feels complicated. Once, I held a position higher than a bishop in the Mormon Church, rare for a woman, and when I left, it shook my family and community. Returning to that soil meant returning to the eyes of people still waiting to see me stumble. The weight of that judgment presses in every time.

The drive itself was long. Mile after mile of dark highway stretched out, nothing around for what felt like forever. We were exhausted when we finally pulled into Green River for the night. And then, a surprise. Behind the hotel, lit faintly against the blackness, I could see the rock formations. They rose like a kind of light against the storm of my life, glowing softly in the night. Perfectly nestled, tucked away, magnificent. After so much driving through emptiness, it felt like stumbling upon a hidden jewel.

It was such a simple thing, but it lifted me. Even through the exhaustion, I stopped to appreciate it, the sweetness of beauty appearing when I least expected it.

The next morning, I saw them in daylight. Ancient stone, layered by fire and time, standing tall and unshaken. My spirits lifted just enough to carry me into the day, even knowing what lay ahead with family. I showed up with encouragement, but I am not the same person I once was. I no longer stretch myself thin to keep everything together. I protect my boundaries. I love myself enough to choose what keeps me safe and steady.

On the way back, I could not resist. Something about those rocks called to me again. So we stopped. My husband and I walked out among them, the air crisp and the world quiet, almost untouched. For the first time in days, I felt my whole chest loosen. The crunch of gravel underfoot, the cool air filling my lungs, his hand steady in mine. The light stretched across the stone like an embrace. We even pulled out the phone to capture it, but what mattered wasn’t the picture, it was how it felt to stand there, steady and free.

And in that stillness, I realized what I was hearing wasn’t only silence. Sometimes the land carries echoes, of the people who came before us, of the ones who shaped us, of the ones who remind us not to forget who we are. In those rocks, I could almost hear my grandfather’s rasp, the way he laughed through his cowboy drawl. I could feel Cassidy’s defiance, his refusal to bend to rules that weren’t his own.

And then I felt something else, myself. Because I am a rebellion of my own. I have lived through systems that tried to define me, through changes and losses and adjustments that remade me. I have learned to live by my own rules, to choose what is best for me, even when others don’t understand. Standing there, I knew my grandfather’s spirit still liked me for who I am now, not the old version, but the woman who chose authenticity over approval.

Pulling away that day, I knew the gift wasn’t just the beauty of Wyoming stone. It was the confirmation that the new me belongs here too. That the voices of my roots, family, legend, and land, aren’t disappointed I changed. They rise up to remind me: be yourself, live true, we like you exactly as you are.

Life gets heavy. But sometimes, if you are willing to stop, to breathe, to listen, the land itself will hand you a gift. And in that gift, you will remember who you are.

Because sometimes it isn’t just the land speaking. Sometimes it is the outlaw in your blood reminding you to keep riding your own trail.