As is the pattern every year, Winter 2021 blew even more violently into 2022 and nastily eroded the two-track road from the main gate to the house. Determined friends’ pickups had dislodged rocks as the motors were gunned, tires spinning, to plow through ice-packed drifts. Fearing that the cars her friends drove would be too low to navigate the ever-deepening ruts, Ellie insisted that intrepid, determined visitors turn off Harriman Road at the Bjores’ gate, just south of hers, follow Bjores’ gravel road up the steep hill, and turn north just past a gate onto a newly scratched two-track path that would descend to Ellie’s house. It is true; Wyomingites drive across prairies when the roads aren’t good enough.

  On this new trail, the visitor traveled past the holding pen on the left, where Ellie’s many school horses had once milled about, anticipating the approach of their student riders. Not much further, on the visitor’s right, the outdoor riding ring sat adjacent to the large indoor riding arena, where UW classes continued each season. On this late spring day, though, the visitor, giddy in the hint of warmth, ready to make that right hand turn downward, braked for a moment to savor the scene at the bottom of the hill, a scene packed full of years and memories of both hardship and accomplishment for those who had dwelled at Sodergreen Ranch. The house was, by modern standards, small. Dotted about were corrals and barns, old equipment and shelters, all set in a remote width of Wyoming prairie, cottonwoods, huge rock outcroppings, and a vast blue sky. A soft wash of green touched the trees’ high branches, and short stubs of grass were visible. Nothing fancy, but it was home to Eleanor Prince, and it gave off a freedom feeling.

  Over the years, the ranch had been home to five Princes, 35 horses, twenty-some live-in students, a handful of counselors and assistant instructors, another twenty-some UW and individual student riders per semester, a herd of Polled Herefords, some chickens, grown dogs and pup litters, and a goodly number of cats. In the late spring of 2022, it was just Ellie and Awssie and, at the west barn, Flag. Stubby, the last cat, had died years earlier.

  Flag was the last horse of Sodergreen. His importance was no less diminished by this standing. In Ellie’s eyes, he, like Awssie, was one of her reasons for being, for waking up each day. Early every morning and early every evening, in below-zero wind chills, heavy snows, and the brief season of summer, Ellie donned the requisite layers of wind-resistant, sensible, and sturdy clothes. She served Awssie breakfast and then made her way outside to one of her two ranch vehicles. Her four-wheeler was best for summer weather. The six-wheeler, which she rode side-saddle and which had to remain running while outside and until the end of Ellie’s chores, included a bed for transporting items and the means to drag a plastic sled. The vehicle was also heavy and therefore more reliable in snow and ice. Ellie used the stout rope she had tied to it to pull herself over snowdrifts and to clutch to keep from falling, being blown about, or becoming disoriented, or a cypher, in a snowstorm. It was truly Ellie’s lifeline. The fierce Wyoming winters are merciless.

  At feeding time, Ellie climbed aboard her vehicle, revved its motor, and turned it with the agility and skill of a Harley driver. She drove fast on the rutted, rocky road up to the west barn. Just as she seemed about to crash into the big wooden barn door, she slammed to a halt and climbed off, without capitulating to the fact that a 6-wheeler is large and she was a small woman. Watching her steer and bounce to her destination, one might have easily forgotten that she was born in 1926 and, yes, this was 2022. She always drove too fast and wildly for her friend, Esther McGann. “Ellie was intrepid on that four-wheeler and that 6-wheeler. She invited me to ride up to the west barn with her, but, ‘No thanks,’ I always said, ‘I need the exercise.’”

  As if a metaphor for Ellie’s life, the west barn door sported a home-made door pull that simply and efficiently served its purpose. A rope dangled outward from a drilled hole. On the inside of the door, the rope was tied to a wooden latch that raised and lowered into a trough, which, when the door was pulled sharply with the rope, welcomed the latch securely and tightly. Lisa’s nosy horses, traveling about in search of mischief, and critters of the day or night would be hard-pressed to manipulate the strong rope and its rancher-rigged mechanism.

  Critters were no nemesis compared to the Wyoming wind, which adjusts its direction on a whim, often crashing without warning from the southeast when it chooses to haul in a blizzard or two. The main door of the west barn faced east. As Wyoming’s unique law of physics would have it, the barn acted every winter like a snow fence, the blizzard-heavy wind cresting up and over the length of the barn and dumping mounds of snow in front of the east barn door. It never took long for a drift to gain the height and density of a nearly impenetrable wall. The sun’s weak rays, post-blizzard, added to the harrowing situation by causing just enough melting to make any attempts at drift-climbing treacherous. In the cities, a plow might make several attempts to clear such a drift. In the dawn of the winter morning and in the dusk of the evening, a small figure, tied to the rope that was tied to her 6-wheeler, armed with a shovel, climbed the steps she formed in the drift and began to chip away at what was barring the door and preventing her from getting to Flag. Often, her good neighbor Zach Bjore drove his plow to her aid, but when he could not come, Ellie managed. This was the woman who did not believe in missing a feeding for any animal who depended on her. There was no excuse for a breach, even minor, in excellent and thorough care. Breaking through, Ellie bundled herself into the refuge of the old barn.

  What is it about an old barn that comforts its visitor’s heart? The west barn in winter staved off the harshest blasts of the frigid wind. In the longer days of summer, the structure was partially illuminated by shafts of lowering sunlight, its wide planks and posts and beams aged to a soothing darkness, smelling of old wood. The shadows and the luscious green smell of the stacks of hay bales wrapped around whoever walked from the entrance down the quiet aisle toward a large, well-kept stall. One wanted, in respect to the barn’s interior, only to whisper and to welcome the memories linked to such massive, benevolent structures. The scent of horses was still strong.

  At the old Sodergreen, Ellie and Gay Collier spent much of their time discussing topics for their books on horsemanship, caring for the horses, and once, in what Gay referred to as an intimate time, waiting in the beautiful old barn, in the dead-of-night chill, for a mare to bring forth her foal. It is likely that, in the still of Flag’s barn, Ellie would be reminded of that intimacy of two friends who were so very much alike, as revealed in the tributes to Gay at the memorial service celebrating her life, from June 28, 1935 to January 18, 2013. Gay, the writer, bookstore owner, and recipient of the 2004 Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award for Literature, was, in Ellie’s words, a woman “who touched so many lives with love, courage, and humor,” and who was as well “a great friend and a special lady who I miss sorely.” Other close friends and colleagues brought forth Gay’s own words, which could have easily been crafted by Ellie. In her online March 21, 2012 “Story Circle Book Reviews” interview with Gay, soon after Just Beyond Harmony was published, author Susan J. Tweit quoted Gay as intending to write “a story of a not-so-easy life that could still appreciate humor and beauty at least most of the time. … Lose hope? No. Become discouraged? Oh, yes. … But there was humor, as you mention, and beauty—the beauty of the land, the skies, the river, the animals. … Who can lose hope when surrounded by these things? … I tend to see the glass as half full rather than half empty, tend to emphasize the good, no matter what the circumstance, even while in the midst of it.”77 Gay’s life story was indeed Ellie’s.

  Linda M. Hasselstrom—co-editor, with Gay Collier and Nancy Curtis of High Plains Press, of Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West—quoted the words Gay wrote in her contribution to the anthology, words which mirrored Ellie’s life philosophy: “The important thing is to touch the earth and stand in the wind, to know you are part of a whole—not superimposed like asphalt. On the plains, in the mountains, you learn that you are as important as the beaver, the hawk, the dragonfly—but not more so. You are part of the circle.”78

  For Ellie, the memories she savored as she stood just inside the west barn were surely tucked away safely to allow space for more practical matters. There was the matter of nourishment for Sodergreen’s last horse. To the right, in critter-resistant containers, were Flag’s performance minerals, several minerals for weight acceleration, a mixture of minerals for overall health, oats, equine senior feed, timothy pellets, and—of course!—from Ellie’s coat pocket, three baby carrots. Using the ranch-ubiquitous empty metal coffee cans, Ellie blended all but the carrots together. Hearing the rattling of his feed, Flag trotted in from his large paddock and nickered an eager and grateful greeting to his human pal and protector of almost twenty-four years. It was difficult to see Flag through the wooden slats as he munched heartily, blowing air from his nostrils as if to move the food around to his liking. He was not a large horse. Ellie was concerned that he had lost weight, but she was hopeful that the summer months would be restorative and was grateful that some time ago, her veterinarian had floated Flag’s teeth, a procedure that involved humanely rasping an old horse’s teeth to allow for more balanced chewing of hay.

  Ellie kept hay in two areas of the barn. Closer to Flag’s stall was her own hay, cut shorter because, she explained, horses preferred shorter lengths of grass. Every morning, Ellie cleaned out the old hay and tossed in new. She sometimes repeated the routine in the evenings. Flag deserved a solid meal and a clean stall. He had been a loyal friend to Ellie.

  “Flag,” according to Bonnie Lindenfeld, “was Ellie’s baby. The stallion was so used to her and so trusting of her that he never minded her bustling about in his stall or paddock. She could even walk right behind that horse. They were best friends.” Karin Schubert described the relationship in simple but touching words: “She loved that last horse so much.”

  Before Paula Bragg intervened to set up the new water system, this part of Flag’s care was incredibly hard for Ellie. Deb Matthew explained that, to her amazement, when the water system was acting up, Ellie “carried large jugs of water out of her kitchen, down the house steps to the six-wheeler, and loaded the jugs up, just to get water to Flag. Nobody was there to help her. She couldn’t afford to be weak, but the heavy lifting was hard on her. She even took the time every day to scrape the surface scum from Flag’s water.”

  Beth Buskirk was concerned that “Ellie had to deal for a long time with freezing water heaters, and just getting the water flowing for Flag. There were lots of people who loved her dearly and were willing to bend over backwards to help her get Flag’s water, but she knew she could do it, so she did it.”

  That Ellie, in her nineties, could still do so much on her own, was no mystery to her. “I exercised every day,” she stated, with the subtext of, “Doesn’t everyone?” The daily plan was a substantive one. At the west barn, after caring for Flag— moving the huge hay bales an exercise in itself—Ellie walked nearly the length of the eighty-foot barn, two laps. “I was limited somewhat by my knee that was injured, but,” she began to explain, delighted for yet another chance in her life to impart knowledge, “our knees are greased by synovial fluid, just like horses. As we get old, our knees dry up and our joints get painful, what with bone on bone. Walking enough but not too much helps to grease the joints.”

  When the weather was nice, and after Flag’s breakfast and her own, Ellie walked from the house to the arena, and on to the east hay meadow, the return from which involved an uphill climb. Using the old farm equipment, such as the swather, she completed standing pushaways. She then ducked her head down, between her arms, then way back, bending her back, a stretch that she said was “great for my back, which I really don’t have any trouble with now.” Then, she executed three sets of leg and torso stretches and got in a walk of the whole of the arena before heading back to the house, where she had a bit more breakfast that on occasion included her favorite indulgence second only to chocolate: a donut. Weather did not rule the exercise regimen. On nasty days, Ellie walked the length of the house, stopping at each designated point to complete a stretching, limbering exercise.

  The blizzard that blew into 2022 was nearly too much for the strength and spirit that Ellie still exhibited on a daily basis. “The storm gathered strength with a vengeance in March, blowing in from the northeast,” Bonnie Walno recalled. “It hit Ellie’s place hard. She had it tougher than the rest of us, her nearby neighbors. No one could get to her, and she couldn’t get to Flag. It was all just a nightmare. Lisa Pontoriero couldn’t get Ellie on the phone. Ellie’s flip phone was dead, as was her home phone.” But Ellie knew how to read the weather and had made adequate preparations for Flag for what she thought was the first and only nasty day of the storm.

  When storms were harsh, Lisa Pontoriero had made it a practice in the past few years to ride her stallion over to Ellie’s to feed Flag. As the March blizzard developed, Lisa knew that Flag would have water and feed, but she was concerned that Ellie had no electricity, phone service, or water service for the house. Ellie, though, always had a stockpile of food, so Lisa decided that all was relatively well on the storm’s first day. Soon, reports came in that Interstate 80 and Harriman Road were closed, and no one could get to the Fire Station. By the second day of the raging blizzard, Lisa knew that Flag would need food and water. She set out to make the trip over the wind- and snow-drifted prairie to care for Flag and check on Ellie. Ellie recalled that Lisa’s daughter, Evelyn, riding Myrtle, may have made the exhausting trip with her mother. To get over the tremendous drifts, the two women rode across the bare spots of prairie and dismounted at each drift. Holding the reins securely, they crawled up a drift, slid down the other side, and then pulled their horses over with the reins. Unable to walk through the deep drifts, the horses took short leaps. The exhausted riders and their horses soon made it to the Sodergreen house.

  Meanwhile, and there is always a “meanwhile” in the drama of Wyoming winter storms, Ellie had, on that second day, sensibly dressed in her many layers of clothing and accoutrements known to defy Wyoming’s weather and set out to care for Flag. Heading home from the west barn, Ellie made it to just below the house, to the long picnic table where so many summer meals had been enjoyed under the warm Wyoming sun. She knew that her safest move was to stay put, and that is where Lisa and Evelyn found her and helped her back to the warmth of the moss-rocked house. Ellie was all right, but in that storm, she realized her limits. As Cheryl Mair said, “Ellie always dipped her toe into feeling vulnerable, but Ellie never thought, as she grew older, that she was in the wrong place. She only thought of how to stay safe. Her fear was that she might not be able to take care of herself, to live alone, to go on with life, to care for her animals.”

  With the help of her friends, Ellie made it through that one more blizzard. Her friends witnessed that the recent long winters had worn on Ellie. Robbie Wenske Wilson noted that “Ellie seemed beaten down by the weather.” As springtime came, and the fields were touched by the hue of green, Ellie alone was convinced that “I was just at a low point.”

  There had been earlier low points, one occurring in 2007, when a similarly ferocious blizzard raged. Val Scott, who was used to the milder winters in Great Britain, was immediately on the alert when she received a phone call from Ellie, “who was quite distressed that her stallion, Flag, was snowed into a corner of his run. Ellie could not dig him out alone and asked if we could help.” Glad that Ellie called, Val treasured this rare occasion which would allow her “to give back to Ellie when she had given me so much.” Val and her husband contacted a neighbor named Dale, who owned a small Bobcat digger, and the trio, with the Bobcat, headed to Sodergreen Ranch. “Dale and Bob made short work of the snowdrifts,” said Val, “but the poignant memory that will stick in my mind was of Ellie finally being able to get to Flag and the two of them standing head to head in the door of his stall, reunited at last.”

  Flag’s nearby acquaintance, in an adjacent paddock, was a horse belonging to Carolyn Rowe. Flag’s real buddy, however, was the elderly woman who cared for him. She was the friend who was not stopped by the relentless winds of sometimes 60 miles per hour and was not deterred by the uphill drive to the barn and the climb over snowdrifts. She was the friend who never missed a feeding, even if the meal was blizzard-early or blizzard-late. She was the one who loved him.

  Sensing Ellie’s love and commitment was probably one reason Flag was a calm and trusting horse. That trust could be seen in his big eyes, placid but not dull. Flag’s sire was Kamars Sharif; his dam was Dhar Aziza. Kamars Sharif passed on to Flag the famous Al Khamsa “willing ability and gentle disposition.” Flag carried himself with pride and sensibility. It was as if he remembered, even in his autumn years, that his sire was the Kamars Sharif of Sodergreen Ranch who had posed for an advertisement for the movie, The Black Stallion. Flag seemed to sense that he was important, not for any potential breeding legacy, but for his purpose in providing Ellie with a purpose: a reason for rising from her bed every dawn and making her way into life and into the west barn.

  This last horse, SG Sharifs Flag, was born on June 14, 1997, Flag Day. He was listed as a bay, although Ellie explained that according to his markings, he was a black bay. Deb Matthew insisted that “he looked just like the Black Stallion.” He may have looked like the flashy Black Stallion, but he was a docile, sensible fellow. With pride in her voice, Ellie insisted that “it was his breeding, his lineage.” And yet there was something more. “I did a really thorough and good job of ground training him,” Ellie said, “and that makes so much difference in a horse. He never offered to buck or kick, and I often didn’t put a halter on him.” Ellie was alone when training Flag, “so I had to be especially careful. I had to be alert for anything. Safety was everything,” she said, “but so was trust, and we trusted each other.”