This Wyoming

I am not a Wyoming native. I was born in Colorado. A few months after my birth, we moved to Wyoming. My dad worked the oil field so we moved at least once a year. By age 8, we were mostly in Wyoming so I consider Wyoming my home.

UNTIL: After 18 years of marriage, my husband moved his family to Littleton, Colorado. I wasn’t sure I had the sophistication for big city stuff but after a few years, I could handle traffic and annoying drivers with the best of them. I was enjoying big city living.

UNTIL: My husband retired, the kids moved out and hubby was longing for home – Wyoming. He was a native and except for a few years in his childhood and the 9 years we spent in Denver; Wyoming is where he belonged. I begged to stay in Denver Metro, I loved the front range weather and the airport that can take me anywhere I want to go without great expense. Tom found a place in Wyoming where the weather is mild and there was an airport just 40 minutes away. I caved and we moved to Torrington, Wyoming.

It’s been over 6 years now and I have discovered that I do have the character it takes to live in Wyoming. Torrington still has harsh winds and conveniences aren’t just down the street. Yes, I can fly out of Scottsbluff, NE but the times don’t often match with the connecting flights out of Denver and it does cost more.

STILL: There are days in Wyoming that take your breath away. My city friends come to visit us and can’t believe the vastness of the skies and the emptiness of the horizons. I say it is scenery to cleanse your visual palette. After living in the busy-ness of a city, the stillness and emptiness gives your visual acuity a rest. Your auditory acuity gets a rest, too, because you don’t hear a lot of traffic. Instead, you can hear the geese honking overhead, maybe a coyote howling in the distance, and the crickets chirping at night.

The night skies generally twinkle brightly with endless stars, the sunrises (not that I really see many of those) and the sunsets glow with pinks, reds, oranges and purples, each one unique. It is those moments that make up for the times the wind blows endlessly and the blizzards or the dirt storms make traveling hazardous.

We try to take in the wonderful days of Wyoming and appreciate everyone. Recently, we were camped near Glendo Reservoir. This body of water is famous for it’s walleye fishing and often you have to share the space with half of Colorado! During the week, though it is pretty quiet with fewer people. This year, 2010, it is even quieter because Glendo flooded and messed with the walleye. Fishing isn’t so great this year. However, my husband and I gave it a good try. During the morning it was cool but calm. We saw 3 other boats on the water. There was a light breeze, enough to rough up the water just enough. Clouds were dancing across the sky and we could see Laramie Peak playing peek-a-boo with the hills surrounding Glendo. We weren’t catching fish but I was enjoying the quiet, the view, and watching the pelicans doing their aerial acrobats. What a wonderful day in Wyoming!

The next evening, Tom and I went out to check on evening fishing. Maybe we were hitting the wrong time of day. The breeze was a bit stiffer and anybody else in any other part of the world would have called it windy but in Wyoming it was just breezy. We found a spot on the lake that was out of the worst of it. We got our poles rigged and in the water and were quietly trolling along the shoreline enjoying the evening. I was wishing we’d brought a bottle of wine and cheese and crackers to enjoy this evening even more. Yet, even as those thoughts crossed my mind, Tom spotted a couple of buck deer near the water’s edge. We rounded the corner of a cove and saw 3 more. Delightful! Another wonderful day in Wyoming.

I didn’t think I had enough character to live in Wyoming again. I miss many things about my years in the city, but it is rare that a person can experience the wonderfulness of Wyoming as often as we do. And it’s the character building days that drive the riffraff back to the “civilized” states from which they hail. As a Wyomingite, I'm okay with that.