Western Bunkhouse

I plan to build a bunkhouse at our place on the lake next summer.

We’re up to 13 grandchildren and the cabin isn’t big enough to sleep everybody.

While I’ve taken measurements and have decided on dimensions, the bunkhouse remains more of a concept than a working drawing.

Bunkhouses were a staple of the Westerns I watched as a kid. We didn’t have bunkhouses where I grew up in southern Indiana. They were synonymous with the West, plain wooden structures filled with bunk beds where the hired hands slept and played poker.

I suppose they were, in part, what brought me out here when I was 18. I was looking for something different than what I knew.

And it was all that and more. In 1970 I pulled into Cooke City in my ’58 Ford pickup, got hired by an outfitter there, and began my lifelong love affair with the West.

It was only a day or two after I was hired that I accompanied the outfitter’s son, Dennis, on a trip to Wyoming to pick up some horses. We drove a Dodge cab-over stock truck south through Sunlight Basin and over Dead Indian Pass to a ranch outside Clark, Wyoming, arriving there shortly after dark.

The rancher and his wife insisted we eat and spend the night. I can’t remember what they fed us, but after dinner the rancher showed us to the bunkhouse where we would sleep. It was perfect, a plain wooden building filled with bunk beds that sat next to a pole corral. It smelled of dust and horses.

I doubt I’ll be able to capture the ambience of that place when I build a bunkhouse at the lake, but it’s my blueprint, a place to sleep, and little more.

My bunkhouse is more likely to smell of dogs and children, and I doubt much poker will be played there, but I could be wrong. And while it’s not on a ranch, the view will be very Western, with badlands on the treeless horizon.

All but one of my grandchildren live in Montana so this probably isn’t a fantasy of theirs. All they know are Western horizons and expansive landscapes. They may dream of a flat in Manhattan with a cityscape for a view.

I can only hope that one day they find what they’re looking for.

I did.

A long time ago.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]