Freedom, Wyoming

In a town called Freedom, it only feels like summer will last forever.

FREEDOM, Wyo. — Two weeks before the first day of school in Star Valley, summer feels like it could last forever. But in a place where the rivers begin as snow, the season of swimming is short. Even in August, the creeks run cold. Too soon, they will freeze. Six-year-old Soren Johnson stands on a pebbled beach where Jackknife Creek pours into the Salt River. This creek, this river, and two dirt roads mark the boundaries of his kingdom: Jackknife Creek Ranch, 20 acres of pasture, willows, and aspen groves once part of a working dairy farm. The ranch kisses the western edge of Wyoming. Across the street is Idaho. Jackknife Creek begins around 20 miles west, on Idaho’s Caribou Mountain, and meanders into Wyoming’s Star Valley, a mile-high rural basin roughly an hour’s drive south of Jackson. Soren and his brothers, 8-year-old Killian and 16-year-old Hatton, have no access to a swimming pool. They have a creek blessed with oxbows, beavers, wild trout, and swimming holes sacred to free-range kids. It thaws in late spring and swells until May, too fast and high and filled with sticks to be safe for swimming before late June or July.