Boot Trails: Five Romantic Short Stories of the American West

By KC Brannon

Throughout history the wilderness has been a place full of potential. Potential for discovery, potential for dreams, and a vast potential for loneliness. In nature, people can often discover parts of themselves they haven't seen before.

 

In these five stories a cast of characters are traveling through the American West. Some of them live there, some have come for a short stay. Each leave with a new sense of self, and some with a possibility that they hadn't dared hope for before.

 

Author's Note: "Wishing on the Perseid" is a previously published story under the pen name Kay C. Sulli. The story has been edited for republication.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: KC Brannon
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201323912

Book preview

Introduction

Once upon a time, I dreamed of being Wallace Stegner or Edward Abbey. Maybe a little John Muir or a lot of Enos Mills. I admired the stories they could tell about the outdoors in both fictional and nonfictional ways. As an outdoor person myself, I admired the work they had done to bring wild places to life for people who maybe haven't experienced it themselves. Or some that did, but wanted another perspective.

In my twenties I was fortunate to be a seasonal park ranger at three national parks, as well as a traveler in my off seasons. I drank in the landscapes of the United States and spent time in the quiet of them. I enjoyed listening to the rhythms of landscapes, especially ones loved by people both past and present.

These stories are (hopefully) the start of more dives back into the beauties of the American landscape and the people who visit there. I think there is a lot of honesty to be found in nature, both from wilderness itself and from people within it. This collection is made up of a series of romances - people with each other and people with landscape.

I decided to start with a story about the eclipse from 2017. I experienced this from too far south to get the full eclipse (I was in Yosemite, California at the time), but I did spend a lot of time off the beaten path in the Grand Tetons and have a soft spot for the historic buildings there (shout out to an early twentieth century western writer/dude rancher by the name of Struthers Burt).

From there we travel to the deserts of southern California which I have traveled through many times while visiting my family from that part of the country. I have a deep fascination with the history of that area and the many groups of Californian people that have been both residents and travelers through that same space.

Next up is a story inspired by my love of where I grew up. While I didn’t grow up in Golden, Colorado, I loved to ramble over the hogbacks of the ancient Rockies and there’s always going to be something special about the rolling hills and sagebrush plains.

Sticking in Colorado, Wishing on the Perseid was the first story I ever sold back in 2015 under the pen name Kay C. Sulli. Despite being about Rocky Mountain National Park it was written at a desk in a log cabin in Grand Teton National Park while I was thinking about the previous years I’d spent in the heart of the Rockies.

Finally, we go to my last western homestead before I headed east - the canyonlands of Utah. This is a fascinating place and I highly recommend a visit if you can ever make it there. The landscape itself is both daunting and beautiful, and the people are a mishmash of cultures that sometimes mesh and are sometimes at odds. The people of the Four Corners and the Canyonlands are all deeply connected to their landscape whether they know it or not.

I hope you enjoy this journey across the American West with characters hoping to find something out on the trail.

The Darkening Sky

Elliot leaned back on the creaking roof of the old abandoned ranch house. It was small, only two rooms splitting the interior, the log walls showing their age and their decades long battle with wood beetles. The floor inside was dirt and scuffed with the tracks of more mice than intrepid hikers like himself. The roof was sod. He’d carefully found a patch where grass had grown as opposed to the little shrubs and trees that were trying to reclaim the house for Mother Nature.

Summer was ending.

He could taste it in the ice that floated down from the higher peaks of the Tetons. He could see it in the blooming fireweed whose purple blossoms had climbed all the way up their stalks. It was too early to hear the elk bellowing their love songs across the meadows, but they would probably start any day.

His leather hiking boots dug into the edge of the roof to hold him steady. In protest, the old building dug a stick into the back of his tan hiking pants. Maybe he should have more respect for something so old.

Meh, he thought, the ghosts could make him pay for it later.

He adjusted the strap on his broad-brimmed sun hat that he’d bought in Moab where he’d worked two summers back. It had been deep red back then, now bleached to a chalky mauve from the UV light that hammered down in the places where he spent his time.

He pulled the collar of his blue fleece up around his neck, the sharp tang of bug spray coming into his nose and temporarily blocking the comforting scent of sage from the meadow in front of him. The mosquitos wouldn’t be out