Laura Bell Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Laura Bell talks about her memoir, Claiming Ground, and how her childhood dreams - and her parents - inspired her to herd sheep in the harsh high deserts of Wyoming.

You grew up in the American South.  What first drew you, when you were in your early twenties, to the high desert basin of northwest Wyoming? Was it the landscape or the people or the wildlife?  Has that changed over your many years living in the West?
It was the land, all the space and the ability to live my childhood dream, a life horseback.  In the thirty-plus years I’ve lived in Wyoming, I’ve come to love that it’s a state where cattle and people and wildlife can migrate hundreds of miles, irrespective of roads.  It’s a grand sweep of life and landscape.  And my work now with the Nature Conservancy helps to protect that.

What was the most frightening or surprising thing you encountered as a young sheepherder in the Big Horn Basin?  
That I had actually gotten what I said I wanted, which was to be alone.  It was very frightening to realize that I had that power, that as a grown up, no one was going to come and take me back home.  It was both thrilling and terrifying.

Over the course of learning to be a mother, you reference your own parents, their enduring marriage, your father’s theological training and your mother’s work with Alzheimer’s ...