Keesler Nye, nearly twenty-seven years old, stands in an alpine meadow, one arm draped over his horse’s neck, the other holding up his dog, Newt, an Australian Shepherd named after a character in Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning western saga, Lonesome Dove. Keesler wears a scruff of beard, brown hair that curls at the collar of his worn denim shirt, and weathered jeans. His dark eyes are shielded by an ivory-colored cowboy hat. Only one cloud shows in the blue sky above him.
Keesler looks born to the saddle, the quintessential cowboy. It’s a plus in his job as lodge manager—formerly director of operations—at Brooks Lake Lodge, a lauded resort and spa in Dubois, Wyoming, less than two hours from Yellowstone.
Not that long ago, Keesler was a student at UAFS, in Arkansas, majoring in finance and business, playing on the baseball team, and consistently making the Dean’s List. He’d played high school baseball in Alma, and, as his family lived just steps away from a golf course, he also became a golfer.
All his life, he’d been the outdoors type. As children, he and his younger brother, Keegan, splashed away in a creek behind their house, with their schoolteacher mother, Kimberly, always on the alert. Their father, Ryan, who’s from Cameron, Oklahoma, had played professional baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies until injuries sidelined him, and is an avid outdoorsman. Keesler remembers sitting in a deer blind on a hunting trip with his dad when he was four or five years old. “I only had a toy gun,” he says, with a shrug in his voice, as if that statement encapsulates how very careful his father was.
Keesler learned to fly fish on the White River. He hunted turkey and duck. As a teen, he stepped up to help his grandpa, who was a ranch foreman in Cecil, and was dealing with the effects of arthritis. Keesler, who’d learned to ride horses on the ranch, helped catch and tag the calves.
In 2017, his senior year at Alma High, Keesler was awarded the Craig Strickland Foundation Scholarship. The scholarship was an honor, made even more so by Keesler’s memories of Craig. Craig, the Backroad Anthem singer and rising star, tragically died in 2015, along with his friend, Chase Morland, while on a duck hunting trip in Oklahoma. Their flat-bottomed boat capsized after it was caught in a deadly storm.
Keesler, who’d also duck hunted with Craig, says the thing he remembers is Craig’s joy. “He didn’t get frustrated when things didn’t go right. He was always in good spirits. I try to be that way.”
While at UAFS, Keesler followed his father’s path. Ryan had played baseball when UAFS was Westark Community College. He’d once worked in the financial field, and Keesler was studying finance and business administration.
Keesler could imagine his future. He’d be sitting in an office most weekdays, while weekends would be devoted to adventure. As graduation approached, Keesler readied his resume, targeting financial institutions in the area. Then, a baseball buddy had an idea. Why didn’t Keesler apply for a summer job at Brooks Lake Lodge in Dubois, Wyoming?
Before that, no one had ever said to him, “Go west, young man.”
It was June when Keesler reached the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. At 9,000 feet, there was still snow in the shady spots and high on the mountains. The mountains were beautiful, those rock faces. Totally different than the smaller mountains back home. Yellowstone to the north. The Grand Teton National Park to the west.
“The lodge was five miles from the highway, and the highway was in the middle of nowhere. Then you go five more miles on a gravel road, and there’s this one hundred-three-year-old lodge, all this green grass and trees, then snow in places, and the lake,” Keesler recalls.
Brooks Lake Lodge, on the edge of the Shoshone National Forest, is a National Historic Site. It was first named TwoGwoTee (a Shoshone word for spear) Inn, and was built with enormous rocks and logs, both from the area and other states. The ratio of employees to guests is one-to-one at the all-inclusive destination, and there’s fine dining on-site, as well as a spa. National Geographic calls it the “best lake resort in the world.”
“I planned to be there for three months and then come home,” Keesler says. “That was more than three years ago.”
Keesler spent that first summer at the lodge working as a trail and hiking guide, and teaching fly fishing and archery. When the job ended, he was asked to stay for the three-month winter season as the concierge. “I thought snowmobiles, big snow. Why not?” He now owns a set of skis, and he hunts elk, the bulls weighing somewhere between 700 and 1,100 pounds.
Today, as lodge manager, Keesler’s business and finance degree come in handy. He is one of four staff members (there can be as many as thirty-five employees in the summer) who stay during the off-season in spring and fall. He has witnessed the majesty of the Northern Lights, their luminous colors spilling across the big sky. He’s sat in the glow of the fireplace with his dog, the world as quiet as a prayer, thinking about all of creation, and the creator of it all. When he does, he feels closest to God.
Keesler was named after Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, where his father was born—a name that carries a thread of family history stretching 1,800 miles from his current home in the Rockies. Surrounded by the staggering beauty of the West, it might seem like he has everything he needs. But there are times when Keesler misses his family and friends so much the pain feels physical. He misses swimming in a lake where the water isn’t freezing, and watching Arkansas sunsets, which he says are beyond compare.
But then the wildflowers bloom during Wyoming’s summers, forming a kaleidoscopic carpet in the emerald meadow. Or shimmering snow falls heavily in the spring, and the hush that follows, the peace that descends, feels holy. Keesler is torn between two places, between two kinds of beauty.
So, Keesler finds comfort in the constants: the earth beneath his feet, Waylon Jennings or Merle Haggard on the radio—the old stuff, the right stuff, the songs of cowboys. And always, there’s Newt by his side. Newt is a good boy.
What are the odds that Keesler’s life would turn out this way? He could probably tell you, since he has a minor in statistics. For the math-challenged among us, let’s just say this: two things he loves best—nature and numbers—merged into a life so good he has to remind himself it’s real. Not a bad outcome for a kid from Arkansas. Not bad at all, Keesler Nye.
Next month, Do South brings you an insider look at Brooks Lake Lodge in Dubois, Wyoming.
