DAYTON -- The sky overhead is ashen and the temperature is 33 degrees. Green and brown leaves hang suspended from the branches of grand old trees -- the early frost has robbed them of the traditional colors of autumn.

Snow covers the ground and dusts the distant foothills.

It is eerily tranquil. No clamor of radios or television, traffic or telephones -- no evidence of the hectic, stressful lives so many live today.

Gazing about, it's easy to imagine what the grounds must look like awash in fall color or summer splendor against the backdrop of the Big Horn Mountains.

It is on this land where Sisters Hope, Sarah and Josetta make their home at the San Benito monastery. They are Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, nuns who live a contemplative life. San Benito is the only monastery in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne.

The sisters explained that a contemplative service is a lifelong journey to God in prayer and worship. Less concerned with themselves and more with God, their lifestyles center around prayer.

Residing temporarily in Casper, then Big Horn, the community settled in Dayton, about 15 miles west of Sheridan, on 38 acres of meadow and wooded land in 1989. The Little Tongue River flows nearby.

Although up to five sisters can stay in the home at the community, there are only three.

Sister Hope has been with San Benito for 23 years. Sister Josetta arrived in 2002 from the Sand Springs monastery in Oklahoma. Sister Sarah, the most recent arrival, came to the monastery in 2008 when Sand Springs permanently closed its doors.

The three come from diverse backgrounds, their calling and paths to the monastery quite different.

Sister Hope tells stories punctuated with hearty laughter. One of six children she was the last child her mother expected would become a nun. Her sibling was a novice nun at the mother monastery in Clyde, Mo., the Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration.

"Our family went to visit her and my thoughts were 'no way,"' Sister Hope said.

Then came a turning point when she entered the chapel at Clyde. It was a moment of revelation.

"It was home," she said.

Sister Hope said her mother kept saying Hope would not stay and would eventually return home.

"But God works in strange ways," she said. "I've had opportunities to go other directions, but I chose to remain here. Life is about many choices, choosing again and again."

Sister Sarah of New York City originally set out to do social work, at one point teaching on a reservation in North Dakota.

"I was a product of the '60s," she said, "out to reform the world."

She said she was guided to Clyde several times by a priest who offered vocational counseling before making her final decision to "seek the strong community and life of prayer offered there."

Sister Josetta, a native of Kansas, attended services at the Benedictine Sisters' chapel in Clyde with her family as a young child. Fond memories stretch back before she even understood what it meant to be called to religious life.

"The beautiful liturgies. The wondrous chapel. Sisters dressed in traditional choir robes raising their voices in song," she said. "I had never witnessed anything so beautiful until attending their services -- I knew I wanted to be a part of it."

Sister Hope said that when the first nuns moved to Dayton, the surrounding community was not quite sure what to think of them. She said they left invitations around town for an open house, but only seven people showed up.

"Perhaps they thought we were a cult," she joked.

The small monastic community of three gives itself entirely to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist through devoted work and prayer. Each day is spent in periods of prayer and worship in solitude and together. The three share communal meals and chores.

They receive assistance keeping up the vast grounds with community volunteers and groups such as Knights of Columbus that help maintain the walking paths, have worked on the various buildings on the property and recently built a new walking bridge over the Little Tongue River.

To support themselves, they manage a gift shop where they sell their own creations as well as those from other monasteries.

The sisters also raise funds by offering private, guided or directed retreats for individuals and small groups for a donation of choice.

Numerous walking paths and a labyrinth on the property provide avenues for meditation. Another means of supplementing their income is through prayer requests received from correspondence.

"People may want us to pray for someone who is sick or dying," said Sister Sarah. "We will answer anyone who writes."

"People believe the church supports us, but we work hard to support ourselves," said Sister Josetta.

"Everything we make we put in the pot," said Sister Hope. "Even our Social Security."

The three said that living together requires give and take, just as in any close relationship, and that there is sometimes misunderstanding about "a group of women who are willing to live their lives offering themselves to the service of God and all people."

"This is a wonderful life, challenging and not always easy, but our life of prayer and adoration is a wonderful ministry to the church," said Sister Josetta. "It is easy to find God in the beauty surrounding us."