🔔 the sky over BUNKUM, WYO. 🔔
a personal chart of the named asterisms visible from the bell tower above WALLY'S SADDLERY (going out of business since 1994) ★ pop. 412 ★ elev. 5,840 ft ★ updated whenever the lights go off
"bunkum," allegedly. 1860. unverified.
okay. okay. so listen. you've heard me talk about Bunkum on the show (ep. 14, ep. 22, the one i had to take down) and i know how this sounds but i need you to look at the sky here. not the daytime sky. the night sky.
the town is named, allegedly, after a horse. a 17-hand bay gelding who walked the mail route from Fort Laramie to Sweetwater Crossing alone for eleven days in october of 1860 after his rider Whittaker Pace died of a burst appendix in a stand of scrub pine. they say. they say.
but here's the thing. i pulled the original land-office plats from the cheyenne records repository (you can do this, anyone can do this, it is a publicly accessible repository, this is not a secret) and the name BUNKUM is already on them. before the horse. before the route. before the rider was born.
so what is the town named after. and why does the sky over it have stars that are not in the Hipparcos catalog. and why do they only come out one by one if you stay on this page long enough. and why does the postmaster keep changing her name.
the chart
hover any star for a designation. click a card below to light up its asterism. the dim ones come in slowly. don't refresh; you'll lose them. i'm not kidding.
— observed from the bell tower, looking due north-northwest, no exposure
the named asterisms
every one of these is in somebody's personal star atlas. i have photocopies. i have a tote bag full. ask me about the tote bag.
★ a partial list of things in BUNKUM that don't add up ★
- the saddlery has been going out of business since 1994 and the inventory does not decrease.
- the town's only stoplight blinks three times at 11:47 PM every night, regardless of traffic, regardless of weather, regardless of season.
- the Bunkum Gazette ran a "where's the horse?" feature every wednesday from september 1981 to march 1989 and then stopped without explanation or final installment. the editor moved to provo.
- five (5) separate residents, unprompted, have told me the horse "was a kind of placeholder." three of them used that exact phrase.
- nobody in town will pronounce the word comet. they will say "the bright one." they will say "the long visitor." they will not say comet. i have tried.
- the post office has three back doors and two of them open into the same hallway.
- the elementary school sky chart was redrawn in 1981. somebody added a star. somebody added a rider. nobody will say who.
the bell tower itself is not technically open to the public. there's a sign. the sign is also from 1994. wally lets me up because i bought a wallet from him in october and i have not returned it. this is the deal we have. i think this is the deal we have.
from the platform you can see the entire valley. you can see the dim outline of the original mail route, which is now county road 17 except for the part that isn't. you can see the post office and the saddlery and the four houses on the east side that were all built in the same week in 1957 by men nobody can name.
and you can see the sky. and the sky is wrong. and the longer you stand there, with the cold biting through your jacket and wally puttering around downstairs whistling something that isn't a song, the more of it you can see.
▸ "...repeat, the comet-that-isn't is at seventeen degrees tonight, repeat, seventeen degrees, please advise on the SEALING..."
▸ "...wally we copy, wally we copy, the saddlery porch light is GREEN, repeat the porch light is GREEN, we are not in the EMPTY SADDLE configuration..."
▸ "...if anyone in the valley still has their atlas from before the redraw please bring it to the bell, repeat, bring it to the bell, we will not ask twice..."
▸ [forty-one seconds of dead air]
▸ "...goodnight bunkum. goodnight horse. goodnight to the thing the horse stands in for."
the recipe for proper observation
i'm not going to put the full method here for reasons. but here's the safe version, the version that won't get this page taken down again.
- find a window. a north-facing window. not your phone. a window.
- turn off the lights behind you. all of them. yes the one in the kitchen too.
- do not look directly at any star you are trying to see. averted vision. look just to the side of where you think it is.
- do not name the stars out loud until after you have seen them. the order matters.
- if a star you've named winks at you, nod once. don't wave. don't smile. nod once and look at the next one.
- do not, under any circumstance, count to forty-seven.
i'll be honest with you. i don't know what i'm doing here. i thought i was making a podcast about a quiet town with a funny name and then i went there and now i can't stop. now i have a tote bag full of photocopies. now i have a wallet i can't return. now i'm seeing the comet-that-isn't from a window in cody and i'm not even in bunkum anymore.
if you stay on this page long enough you'll see it too. it builds up slow. one star at a time. like a thing being remembered. like a name finally getting its referent.
thanks for listening. thanks for looking up. don't tell anyone where you heard about the horse.
— L., recording from the bell tower, signing off, please rate & subscribe 🔔