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Wishin for Wyoming
With my wife recovering, we probably will not get to WY this year
although I might convince her to go before she starts radiation a month from now. When we started living there in 1981, we did not like it but needed jobs after living our honeymoon in a tent for 60 days and my wife getting hurt in a rock climbing accident. After being there for 6 months we loved it. You do not get any idea of the place by driving thru it because the roads all go thru flat areas and all you see is immense open plains. However, it has mountain ranges that are huge by eastern standards that do not even show up on most maps of the USA. Even the Bighorns, a major range is almost unknown to easterners. Try to find the Seminoe Range with 10,000' peaks or the Rattlesnake Range with 9500' peaks or the Shirley Range or the Laramie range with 10,500' peaks. Whenever I am there, the immensity strikes me so hard I have to get out of the truck and look off into the distance at mountain ranges so far away that I feel concious of the curvature of the earth. Because you can get up high easily and see so far, the immensity is so much more striking than when I am on the ocean. Every morning, I stand on the porch of the cabin and look toward Muddy Mt with the Laramie Range in the distance to the south knowing that the nearest human civilization to the south is 100 miles away at Medicine Bow and my mouth gapes in awe. The green I see on Muddy MT 10 miles away is not some grass or Lichen, it is 100' Tall Lodgepole pines, real forests so far away as to resemble mere moss on rocks from this distance. HK would not like WY culture as natives are serious about self reliance and independence and although I can understand his view, I also admire the self reliance of the natives. The largest city in WY, Casper with roughly 75,000 people has few cultural amenities although it does have a Starbucks with no wifi. WY is a serious blue collar place where most people work for oil, gas, coal or ranching and consequently, they mostly drive trucks from necessity. This is not the pseudo-blue collar redneck wannabe culture of southern urban areas but the real thing. These guys USE their trucks Winters are long and the wind is fierce. When you think of WY, you ought to think it is an abbreviation for WindY with sustained winds so strong they would be classified as storms here in FL but they come from a clear deep blue sky. Gusts are so strong that "high profile vehicles" are often blown off roads. My wife was once lifted off her feet and carried about 10' by one. It snows there but the snow does not stay long on the plains, it simply blows away. Snow does stay in the mountains with depths of dry powder normally reaching 6-8' at the location of my cabin. Snow in early June is not very uncommon. It gets cold and I have worked in temps as low as 35 below but it does not seem nearly as cold as a Chicago winter because it is so dry. Even at zero degrees, you want to go outside and go skiing because ti does not seem so bad. I would not want to live there full time again for more than a year because I am so attached to FL but I sure do like to visit. |
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