Autobiography Cynthia Galey Peck

In 1945, Cynthia moved with her parents to the isolated family working and dude ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She became friends with the four-legged ranch residents whom she considered her siblings as she had no others. With her horse she explored the forests surrounding the ranch and felt God dwelt in them. She observed and appreciated that they were always true to their character, didn’t hold grudges or have hidden agendas. She wanted to be like them.

She was taught how to work participating in the ranch chores with her dad, learning about the horses and their care, the plumbing and electrical installation, and with her mother booking reservations, billing and paying wages. At age fifteen, she was given the responsibility to teach horseback riding and entertain children, both younger and older than herself.

With her ever-present Spirit Guide, she created strategies to overcome challenges of poor eyesight, a learning disability, bullying, an attempted rape and boarding school starting at sixth grade. In boarding school with a diversity of girls, where she became disappointed and frustrated as she found no friends. She was a ranch girl and the others town girls who had no shared experiences. It was during her boarding school years, that she honed her independence and doubted the ranch, where she lived for only three months each year, was her true home. Her parents traveled during the winter and the ranch was securely locked by six to eight feet of snow.

When married, Cindy and her husband lived in a canvas tent in the woods of northwest Wyoming. As babies arrived, three years apart, she still lived in the tent May into September. Water was in the nearby creek; cooking over an open fire and lighting by white gas lanterns. Winter was at University where her husband studied. As an adult she experienced much of the “human condition” (as many have), marriage, birth, miscarriage, failed marriage, remarried, step children, cancer and much moving. She worked in a deli drove a deli truck, cleaned houses, tied fishing flies, knitted and sold children's sweaters, catered private parties, and still not “making it,” received food stamps to survive. Through feelings of love and hate, joy and despair, courage and fear, challenges and disappointments, she did not succumb to bitterness. She determined she was the only one she could depend upon other than her Spirit Guide who always gave her hope. She knew she must move forward; her Spirit Guide would reveal what would lay ahead in time. She must be patient.

In 1975, Cindy married William Peck MD who moved her to Arizona. To support her doctor husband in the small-town clinic, she trained to became an Emergency Medical Technician. They practiced medicine, serving people and animals, along roadsides, in homes, in fields, through floods and sometimes on horseback, and fought disease in the clinic. She supported her daughter through a crippling accident, fought breast cancer, and suffered the loss of both parents.

Cindy started her twenty-year career with the U.S. Forest Service after her children were on their own and she in her fifties. She volunteered measuring trails over rough territory. She gained respect from her supervisor. When she asked for a paying job to gain security, she was slighted; in aggravation, she applied to the Wilderness jobs in Idaho and Montana.

With her experience with stock on the ranch and volunteer time she was awarded a summer job with the Forest Service in the Scapegoat Wilderness in Montana. Cindy’s theory was if you want a job, you go where the job is. The job included trailering and riding a horse and leading a pack mule to patrol and camping out each tour-of-duty for five days in areas populated with wild animals including grizzly bears and wolves. She was challenged with a few-words supervisor, learning a large area of backcountry, recalcitrant stock which caused an accident, resulting in instructions to keep her leg above her head for a week. She had worked rainy days but in mid-September, her last trip, she rode to the administration site through a blizzard. After taking care of the stock, she four-wheeled the truck safely off the mountainside to town.

With her work ethic and optimistic attitude, she obtained a job with the Forest Service back in Arizona, first in range identifying forbes and grasses on the cattle allotments, with timber-marking crew in Payson, walking the mountainside, marking trees as per a prescription of “all nine-inch ponderosa trees with small-leaf mistletoe infestation.”

The District Ranger offered Cindy a permanent job as Wilderness Ranger, similar to the one in Montana, but hopefully without snow or grizzly bears. She was responsible for all stock care, supervisor of a trail crew, and managed the Wilderness tasks. Tour-of-duty was ten ten-hour-days and camping. Needless to say, outdoors lifestyle with stock and crew was speckled with many challenges leading to fun stories and frightening times.

In retirement and widowed, she subdivided her twelve acres in Young, sold two four-acre lots and saved one for herself. She drew the plans for a smaller cabin, hired a contractor to build the log walls, install windows, doors and roof. She finished it herself. As a finishing touch, using native woods from her property she laminated counter tops and installed them. She achieved security and peace.

Writing her story was exacting for Cindy as she relived difficult and hurtful times but was also filled with joy as she remembered fun and happy events. She was determined to be truthful about each extreme as her experience is just a part of being a human. She hopes story may help others with their difficult times.

She enjoys life, gardening, building laminated charcutier and cutting boards, hiking with her dog, and handwork. She has been involved with the community as member of the Young Library Board for many years, was on the school's Title One Board, served on the Community Council and was an officer of the Pleasant Valley Historic Society.