Redneckedness

Wyoming seems to be getting to me. After somewhat more than a year here, I'm getting slowly but surely sucked into the local customs. When I see an over-sized truck, I no longer think "Good Lord, what possible use could that thing be?" but rather "I gotta get me one of these":



Listening to country music, yep, that too. It started fairly innocently with some classic Johnny Cash, then slid on through Willie Nelson and clownish Trace Adkins, finally stopping (I hope) with hicker-than-thou Rodney Atkins. I'm not sure how it could get much worse... or, well, I guess it could.

Another rednecky thing to do is to shoot guns just for the hell of it. You can claim you're doing some target practice, or whatever, but it's mostly about the "BANG!" and the satisfying sight of the target being blown to bits. After many years with Nintendo and bb guns, graduating to Colt .45 and assault shotgun felt suprisingly natural. True, it's hard to miss anything at 20 feet with a shotgun, but a semi-auto handgun is a bit trickier. As for stub-nosed revolvers, it's a mystery why anyone would carry such a contraption: at the distance you can hit things with it, it'll do more damage being thrown or used as a club. Nevertheless, it has a funny Western movie feel to it. And Wyoming is nothing if not Western. As Pete so eloquently put it: "I love coming up to Wyoming. I can take a shit wherever I want, shoot my guns and drink cheap beer, without 50,000 people crawling up my ass."

So, am I turning into a total hillbilly? You be the judge:



By the way, I gotta plug Pete's book "An Eye at the Top of the World". Part Himalayan travelogue, part spy novel, part just plain awesome, it's being adapted for the silver screen as I type this. Why not get the book now, so you can go "Oh, but the book was so much better!" when you leave the cinema?

I've also been doing some hiking and camping. Going up to the Snowy Range, just an hour west of town, always reminds me of the forested emptiness of Norrland:



And if you look real close, you can find tiny beautiful things:



A couple of weekends ago I spent some time out in the High Desert proper:



There's lots of sand:



And the odd ghost town - the "ghost" part happens when the oil runs out:



Water supplies don't last real long out there - although the barrels themselves do, what with the low humidity:



The term "county road" has a slightly different meaning:



But the best thing to happen lately was having Dad visit. He happened to be in Kansas, of all places, on business and dropped by Laramie on the way home. I don't see my family much these days, separated as we are by the Atlantic Ocean, so it's always great to see my folks and my sister. This was Dad's first visit to the Mountain West, and I did my best to show him the cool things about it. Just the vast open plains are pretty exotic if you're from Sweden, since the Old Country is like 85% evergreen forest. The mountains here blow anything in Northern Europe out of the water, with Laramie Valley sitting higher than any point in Sweden. When we hiked up toward Medicine Bow Peak, Dad got to experience first hand what high altitude (about 11,000 feet) does to your ability to breathe. Sucking wind from a slight uphill walk, and a resting pulse of 140 or so, no doubt convinced him that the High Country is just that. To recover and rehydrate, we hit the local bars with a vengence, sampling both microbrews and the comparatively awful atmosphere of the Buckhorn Saloon. We also took one of our all-to-infrequent fishing trips, this time for brown trout in the North Platte River. The scenery on the drive into the mountains alone was worth the trip, and the narrow valley carved by the Platte is a spectacular setting as well. Among sagebrush, fiery aspen and sparse pine we had a blast trying to coax the fish out of the water. And I swear, I caught a fish thiiis big!

Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of Dad's visit, since we were so busy having a good time that we kept forgetting to bring the camera. No matter - I'll remember it for years to come anyway. Anyone else want to come visit? I got a spare bed and any amount of wilderness to show you...