Interlude I

The Wyoming chapter has closed, for now.
A brief interlude now in the southwestern Sierra Nevadas, and then on to the Arizona borderlands, to experience desert wildflowers.

Wyoming Fall was magnificent but I left being romanced by the beginning of winter.

Good-bye to the snow-covered buttes, duotone shading of wintering sagebrush and sepia grasses, farewell to frozen ponds, frozen time, and sub-zero temperatures. Imprinted in my memory are the golden eagles swooping low by the roadsides, competing with flocks of ravens and outnumbered by myriads of magpie as they dive in for their share of the pronghorn roadkill on its back on the road's shoulder. When I close my eyes I can see the sunrise: a bright, huge ball, magnified in intensity and size by the frozen cold of the atmosphere, light consuming half of the sky, the rest of it clouds glowing pink and blue and green and everything in between, while the soft cotton sides of the buttes end in of slivers of rose or gold.

Lo extrañará (I will miss) the openness, the ability to see for miles and miles: long dirt roads now hidden in snow, two-tracks serve as snowshoe or ski paths for hours of solitary contemplation as I stare into shades of whiteness. Venturing off-path, even in a snowstorm, is possible with caution because everything is so visible: here, landmarks have taken on different relevancies.

The roads are a constant grey or white. A new element is added to driving. Years of being told what to do when a car slides becomes reality and you learn to guide your vehicle to dance with differing substrates underneath its wheels. My little 2wd Tercel is getting a workout. I begin to realize its limitations when it briefly gets stuck in a snowdrift. I further realize its near its capacity when it cannot take on the hill to a friends house, and begins to slips backwards and into a curb.

I walk in the snow: each day it changes, and becomes its own snow: slushy or fluffy, powdery or crunchy, dry or moist. When it falls it arrives differently; I am becoming acquainted with snow here like I began to know rain in western Washington, or the fog in California's Central Valley. Even the cold temperatures can be appreciated: on particularly cold mornings a person can feel their nosehairs freezing as they breathe in.

Southwest Wyoming will always hold a place in my heart.
It embodies the wild that I love.
It is free and independent and true to itself.
It has not fallen victim to the modernities that have so completely consumed much of our country.

People say that some have come to Kemmerer, for a job, and just turned their car around and left, calling in to say that there is no way in hell they can live there. I say, thank god they do. Because a place like this wouldn't exist if they'd stayed.