A Blizzard Trapped Me in a Line Cabin With the Neighbor I’d Been Suing for Twelve Years

What followed was the longest, most expensive argument in Sublette County history.

There were depositions. Expert witnesses. Engineers measuring flows. A state water court hearing. An appeal. Another appeal. Ingrid’s husband died in the middle of it, and she kept fighting. So did I.

By last year, I had spent more than two hundred thousand dollars in attorney fees. I took out a second mortgage on the ranch to pay them. I’m told she did something similar.

We had not said a single word to each other in person in over ten years. Everything went through the lawyers.

Then came April.

In Wyoming, April is calving season, and it’s also when the worst blizzards like to show up, just when you think winter is over.

The forecast said four inches. We got thirty, with wind gusts over fifty miles an hour.

I was out in the high pasture looking for two heifers that had wandered off to calve. By the time I realized how bad it was, I couldn’t see my horse’s ears.

There’s an old line cabin up on the ridge where Silver Creek starts, built by my grandfather back when cowboys spent whole seasons up there. Ten by twelve, a wood stove, two bunks and a shelf of canned food nobody had touched since the Reagan administration.

I made it there by following the fence line with one glove on the wire.

I got the stove going, got my horse into the lean-to and was just starting to thaw out when I heard someone shouting outside.

I grabbed the lantern and opened the door.

Coming up out of the snow, leading a limping horse, was Ingrid Sorensen.