Wyyoooooming

In some ways Wyoming reminds me of the Bolivian altiplano: it is desolate and open. Though the inhabitants are not poverty-stricken peasants, they are a rural crowd with a different way of living than those in the big cities. The people who live here are rugged and strong and love their land. Hardly anything grows here due to the short growing season, and it brings me back to when we went to the Tuni Condoriri glacier, and saw the campesinos struggling to nurture even the hardiest crops, and relying instead on sheep, llamas and alpacas. Here, though I have seen a handful of llamas and alpacas, there are mainly sheep and cattle. There are mines in both places, albeit for different materials. The clouds are remniscent of both places: high elevation, puffy and white against a vibrant blue sky; and the sun is strong against my face even when the temperature is cool. The temperature varies 50 degrees in a day, with beautiful warm sunny afternoons and frigid, almost-frosty nights.

When I chose the name 'Diversidad de Vida' for our travels, it was because I knew it was a new beginning into exploring the diversity life has to offer: culturally, biologically, spiritually; experiencing this on a new continent with another language, getting to know the unknown.

Now that we are back, we have opportunities to continue exploring on our tierra nativa (native land). With the lack of attachment to place after such a dramatic uprooting, we find ourselves migrating to different parts of the North American continent. Jameson just accepted a job working as a research assistant in wetlands in southern Georgia, and I am working in the high desert in Wyoming, watching the thunderstorms roll through while drinking in the scent of sagebrush.

Wyoming is the land of the cowboy, and this tradition still lives on quite evidently. There are oil men and cowboy hats and cowboy boots, big trucks and western accents. Every day I see antelope; since being here I've tried antelope jerky and elk meat, both of which were offered to me by the people who hunted and killed the animal. I saw a moose in a town park, there are cottontails outside my window on lazy Sundays, and the magpies are a delightful replacement to the niche a crow fills in a city. The people here are incredibly kind and I am settling into being in a small town quite nicely. I could do away with the conservative talk radio, but see it as a chance to bite my lip and listen to the other side after I've lived in liberal Seattle and Olympia for 10 years.

It is possible to find true solitude here: one of my first days I headed up a lonely dirt road, guitar and camera in tow, found a place to park that overlooked a basin and some colorful sagebrush-dotted mesas in the distance, and made music as passionately as one can only do when entertaining a crowd of the wind, swaying golden grasses, and magnificent open sky. It is a place for soul-searching, to learn how to be lonely and then how to package that aloneness into something that makes one stronger; it is a place for self-reflection and growth; it is Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire in the 21st century.