By Jack Smith
“The desert is a lot like beer; it’s an acquired taste.” That’s what a friend of mine told me some years ago. I think he may have been onto something. However, these northern cold desert areas of Wyoming are neither a smooth lager nor an easy-drinking American pilsner. Rather, I seem to be continually thinking of a bitter pale ale as I sit on the cracked gray clay sipping warm water from my water bottle. It is a hot day in early June and I am in the middle of the Honeycombs wildlands in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin. Although I am only 20 miles from the city of Worland, I feel I could be a thousand miles or a hundred and fifty years away from any western population center.
The Honeycombs have been an area of mystery since humans first ventured into their maze of mudstone badlands and gullies thousands of years ago. These rugged badlands have long represented one of the last vestiges of a vanishing Wyoming Basins wildness. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recognized that wildness when it established the 21,000-acre Honeycombs Wilderness Study Area in 1991.
These wildlands are certainly an area of extremes. Temperatures can vary from 105 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer to minus 50 degrees in the winter. Although precipitation bounces around a typical eight inches per year, intense summer thunderstorms carry sagebrush corpses, pronghorn antelope bones, and tons of fine sediment down to the Big Horn River. These dramatic precipitation events also create new hoodoos, destroy old hoodoos, and bring ancient mammalian fossils to the light of day.
The Honeycombs are truly a wilderness with a small “w.” And this wilderness encompasses much more than the current wilderness study area. Subsequent assessments identified four contiguous areas with an additional 38,700 acres of wilderness-quality lands. A Honeycombs wildland unit of almost 60,000 acres is a sizeable chunk of possible northern cold desert badlands and basin wilderness.
Unfortunately, the Honeycombs are probably one of the most endangered wildlands in the nation. I won’t try to kid myself or anyone else; there is little chance their wilderness characteristics will survive in today’s motorized, fossil-fuel-hungry world. Even today, there is pending federal “wilderness” legislation, the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative Act, that would eliminate the Honeycombs Wilderness Study Area and declare these badlands no longer suitable for possible future wilderness consideration. The irony is, these lands are not on the chopping block because they lack wilderness qualities or possess other resources more valuable than wilderness. It is simply because it is so easy to write off something someone knows so little about, something not fully appreciated or understood.
It is getting late and the sun is dropping toward the horizon. I adjust my pack and begin the trip back to the front country. Earlier in the day, I drove past portions of an active oil field on my way to these wildlands. I think of all the bladed roads, well pads, storage tanks, and pump jacks spread across that development. Will this sensitive cold desert badlands environment be sacrificed in the search for more oil and gas? Will this be the Honeycombs’ ultimate destiny? Geological reports suggest no economic reserves would be found. However, the footprint and newly-gained access from exploration efforts would forever change this landscape.
But what if public input overwhelmingly rejects the current legislation and requests Congress go back to the drawing board when it comes to BLM-administered wilderness study areas in Wyoming? What if, in the give and take of negotiation, the Honeycombs are not sacrificed in hopes of cementing the inclusion of other, better-known desert wildlands? Isn’t there room in the great state of Wyoming to preserve all BLM-administered wildlands as wilderness? Preserve all 3.1% of the state’s BLM-administered lands? I take a deep breath with hopeful answers to those questions floating through my head.
On this trip I have once again uncovered a few more of the secrets held by this threatened wildland. But there is still so much more needing to be passed on to me and other adventurers. The wild heart of these badlands does not need to be silenced. All I ask is you take a sip and savor the Honeycombs as the unique, cold desert wilderness it has always been. Then, take another sip. This desert is, after all, an acquired taste.
Jack is a retired environmental scientist who has roamed through many of Wyoming’s Wilderness areas and wildlands for over 60 years. He lives in Lander, Wyoming and is currently on the governing board of the Wyoming Wilderness Association. Each time he enters the Honeycombs wildlands, he learns something new. Jack hopes that education will be available for future generations.
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