Leave Wyoming alone

Wyoming's not a place where you show up suddenly expecting everything to be ok.

(Google Mary Cheney, Dick's daughter, who announced a run for the US Senate, then just as quickly withdrew to the wilds of Virginia, where she came from in the first place.)

I've learned to enter Wyoming deliberately, keeping my mouth shut for the most part, already being thought of locally as a 'California environmentalist,' a 'San Francisco Democratic,' and no doubt other tags not said to my face. These labels were affixed at a New Years Eve party in the early 2000's (the Bush Era) at the home of one of our neighbors in tiny, remote Wapiti. Hearing the host make the first toast of the evening to the NRA, I didn't exactly raise my glass, nor did I put it down, but found a middle place where I would not offend and still keep my self-respect--silence, which was interpreted as some sort of protest.

I tiptoe into Wyoming now, metaphorically of course, like I tiptoed into the polling place at the Wapiti Schoolhouse in 2008 to vote for Obama, to be greeted heartily by the lady Registrar who announced out loud, 'here's our Democrat.'

The point I'm trying to make is that no matter how unobtrusive you think you are, Wyoming notices and you better be prepared for the consequences of your actions and inactions.

No matter how prepared I am Wyoming always surprises me. The rattlesnake Lea Ann discovered yesterday wrapped around the base of the water-heater she was trying to light; the carpet of flying ants we met when we opened the front door, spread out dead on the cabin floor, like our arrival might bring them resurrection; the electricity down in the studio building where I write, shorting out, the wiring frayed by the winter wind and snow.

The politics here is raw, short-sighted, Republican in the worst, not the best, sense, small-minded, and always performed under the banner of the American flag, which fly in front of so many of the homes, ranches and farms here, and whose bearers resent and revile the American government every chance they get.

So I'm resigned to just being a guest in Wyoming, enjoy the solitude and beauty of my little place in the hills; and to live with the fact that I'll never really triumph over its surprises, instead of being a citizen and getting all fired up about what's wrong with the world, much less the country or the state. Wyoming doesn't need me, it's doing just fine on its own.

What I love about Wyoming, as opposed to what I love about California, is that nobody really knows I'm here, so I'm left alone to take care of myself as best I can, in a state of unending surprise.