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Published: December 13th 2020
No tourist attractions exist along the eastern flanks of Laramie. Everything you’d want to see as a tourist ends once you get to Wal-Mart on Grand Avenue on your way out of town. The interstate is only about a mile past Wal-Mart, but as I pass by, trepidation fills my chest. Am I really doing this? Am I actually going to see the site where Matthew Shepard was murdered on a cold night in October 1998?
That seems like it happened so long ago now, but somehow it never gets old to me. Some things just can’t get old, no matter how often the subject comes up or how much time passes. It was a moment of clarity in my own young life, and in the lives of many others, from what I hear. The murder received national attention and inspired a congressional act against hate crimes in 2009.
Some good did come out of it, thankfully.
I can’t explain why, but it feels personal. Even now. My breathing becomes quicker as resolve enters my mind. My blood pressure probably rises, too. I’ve known I had to do this, to make a somber pilgrimage, since I began planning
this trip to Laramie; I just never consciously decided when the pilgrimage would be, hoping it would happen spontaneously. And so the time is now: 11:10 AM on Sunday, December 13, 2020.
I turn onto Pilot Peak Road from Grand Avenue. The only signs here are street signs. No indicators that you’re getting close to any place that’s worth visiting at all. The neighborhood probably wants to keep it that way. (In fact, the residents petitioned to change all the street names in the area after the national coverage.) About half a mile onto this curved, snow-covered road, I see one of those street signs and can’t help but consider the irony in this place: “No Outlet.” For Matthew, there was no way out once he was taken here.
Less than half a mile further down Pilot Peak Road, I turn left onto Snowy View Road. These names belie the horrible event that they’re trying to erase, but this particular name is not a misnomer: all I can see are fields of white. They look calm on this sunny—but very chilly—morning.
Less than ten seconds along Snowy View Road, I’m met with a disgraceful sign: “Private Road
/ No Trespassing.” I can see the place around the bend in this private road where Google Maps says these thugs tied Matthew to a fence post and beat him into unconsciousness before stealing his wallet and leaving him for dead. The people who found him the next morning said that his face was covered in blood, except where the tears had rolled down his cheeks and cleared the blood away. That detail always devastates me.
That fence is now gone, but I don’t want to become the victim of another type of crime here, so I abide by the wishes of this unexpected sign. I park the car in front of it before turning off the engine and taking a moment to breathe. Why is this so hard?
Outside the car, all I see is whiteness. At least a foot of snow covers everything. But small animal tracks have left divots in an otherwise uniform level of powder. Signs of life on this site of death. I wonder whether this place has a memory.
Some tall weeds grow up through the snowbank, and I see the remnants of small bushes, lifeless with frostbite, harboring small tufts
of snow in their dead branches. I try to get closer, and I wonder whether any of these plants have been around since 1998. Do they remember?
I approach the sign that bars my legal presence here. I look to my left and to my right. I wonder whether this was the last thing he ever saw. I think it might be. So I do the documentary thing and take a panoramic picture (above the title of this blog post) of the area. And then the rational part of me fades into the background just as my knees fail me.
There are no words left to make sense of this, either what happened to him or my reaction to it all. My reaction to being on this sacred spot. Through blurry eyes, I see a rock on the ground in front of me. Were you here when they did this to him? The rock refuses to answer my interrogations. Just in case it was a witness, I clean it off and grip it inside the palm of my hand. It will find a place of honor back home with me.
Mindful of spirits that remain in places
of unspeakable tragedy, I close my eyes and offer a few silent words to them. Then I wipe my face and rise to my feet before giving this bleak and beautiful place one last look around. I hear a young girl cheering in delight with her mother at a nearby house as they head to their car. I wonder if they can see me. Would they wonder what a stranger is doing, parked at an intersection and staring into the distance? Are they familiar with what happened here, and why people might show up here, out of the blue? Are they accustomed to random people doing this same thing, so it’s not all that unusual anymore? I have no idea. I don’t bother to ask.
One thing is clear, however, about the people who erected this sign: they don’t want me here, any more than they want people to associate them with Matthew Shepard. They can change the street names and put up legal-sounding signs all they want, but I won’t ever forget how the murder that happened here changed me. And now that I’ve been here myself, I hope that one day, someone will create a worthy memorial
here.
Matthew Shepard deserves that.
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Sara
non-member comment
Matthew's Memory
Thank you for sharing your experience. I work in tourism here and it would be incredible to someday make a better tribute for Matthew. If you're back in Athens, my friend Patrick (Paddy) now lives there and was an angel blocking the Phelps protest of Matthew's funeral. You might find some good stories talking to him about your trip to Laramie and your experience. He works at The World Famous.