I first wrote about Wyoming in
this space in
2001.
I gave my childhood vision of the place:
"In Wyoming, people live on ranches or
in towns
with wooden sidewalks. There are no big supermarkets or Wal-Marts, just
individual shops of different sizes and designs attached in rows. One
of
them is a saloon with swinging half doors that go from neck to knee. In
Wyoming the sky is blue and the fields are gold and green and everyone
owns a horse. The vista stretches unbroken along amber waves of grain,
and you can ride your horse on out into forever in search of adventure."
Seven
months later I mentioned the place again. I'd read an anthologized
short story by Wyoming writer Annie Proulx. Eventually I read the whole
collection from which it had come. Even though each piece in
Close Range treated some universal
theme of what it means to be human, each had a distinct local color,
something that made it a Wyoming story rather than a generic story. I
expressed the fear that a trip to Wyoming might be wasted on me.
"Wyoming is in Annie Proulx's blood," I wrote, "in her DNA, the way
central Pennsylvania
is in mine. Were I to go to Wyoming, I would be a stranger in a strange
land, having to learn what the hills have to teach before I could write
about them or in them. And it might be too late for me to do that."
I realized that I seemed to be inventing excuses for not going to
Wyoming. I was too old, too out of shape. I couldn't learn enough about
Wyoming to justify visiting. What was I thinking? The theme of the
stranger in a strange land is one that runs through nearly everything I
write. Annie Proulx didn't start to write fiction until she was past
50. Blind people climb Mount Everest! If you can dream it, you can do
it!
I spent the rest of 2002 still thinking about Wyoming. I went to
Massachusetts and Vermont, both familiar terrain. I went to Vermont
again in 2003 and 2004. And like my first return trip to Vermont in
2002, which had been sparked by
a friend's
casual remark, the decision to go to Wyoming, really go, not just
think about it anymore, was sparked by
a line in It's a Wonderful Life, a movie
I didn't even really like.
So I have spent six months reading and learning about Wyoming. One of
the books I read was Gretel Ehrlich's
The
Solace of Open Spaces, a collection of short essays about her
life there after a career as a filmmaker. I was delighted to note that
I recognized the place names in one of the pieces from my research.
I set the date and bought my plane tickets in February. Last week I set
up all my lodging. I'll be gone June 15-29. I'm flying to Denver and
renting a car. I'll have two days in Cheyenne and Laramie before I head
for
Wind River Country.
Then I have two nights in Riverton, three in Lander, two in Pinedale,
two in Rock Springs, and two in Rawlins before heading back to Denver
and then home.
A lot of people ask me why I'm going to Wyoming, especially after they
learn I am going alone and not as part of some Club Med-type packaged
resort vacation. I give the same answer George Mallory gave when asked
why he wanted to climb Mount Everest.
Because it's there.
May 2, 2005