By Phil Roberts
It is almost unnoticeable in this photo of Barol Lodge at the AMK ranch (inside the borders of Grand Teton National Park), but one of the humble logs, next to the car, had great significance early in this century. I had the opportunity of being the sole occupant of the lodge for a couple of weeks one summer many years ago, a place where I was able to get away from the distractions of academe and finish my book manuscript. There were dozens of students staying in other units of the ranch—from UW and several other universities, mostly doing research on wildlife, the local flora or geology of the Tetons.
Early on, the acting summer managers of the ranch, my friends Bill and Ann Gribb, let me in on a little secret. It was early in the “telecommunications revolution” and cellphones like mine were still scarce. Remote places like the AMK were mostly inaccessible to distant cell towers. But someone had discovered that reception was possible from one place on the ranch—a short stretch of the log in front of the lodge, but only during certain hours of early evenings. Initially, it had been easy to keep the secret because cellphones were so rare. Nonetheless, I promised Bill and Ann that I would keep the nugget of information confidential.
I called home one night, standing on the log, to learn that Laramie had been struck by a huge hailstorm, making confetti of the tomatoes and corn in our garden and damaging many roofs in a broad swath across town. A few days passed and I was making good progress on my manuscript.
One day, I noticed that a whole new contingent of students arrived, replacing a group that had concluded its stay. I worked until suppertime in the lodge library on my manuscript. I looked at the clock. Maybe, I ought to call home. Once I located my cellphone (nobody carried one around with them in those days), I went out to the “cellphone log.” I was shocked to see three people talking on their cellphones while bunched close together standing and balancing on the log. But even more surprising, there were a couple of dozen students waiting in line to get their chance to make a call and “talk from the cellphone log”!