IN AN EFFORT TO KEEP THINGS HONEST AND UNPRETENTIOUS, want to share some of the less savory aspects of summers in the hinterlands of Wyoming. People sometimes think I live some sort of glamorous life when I'm here, but the truth is, while it's beautiful, wild and certainly my cup of tea for part of the year, it also has its miserable downsides. Life here can be arduous if you live, work or play in this great outdoors. Take for instance the photo above of the fabulous Green River I snapped above Fontenelle yesterday. Looking out over the riparian willows is bucolic and beautiful, but I swear there are at least a billion, maybe trillions of mosquitoes in the confines of that one little picture. Wearing long sleeve shirts and insect repellent is mandatory. Even then, you're a walking, breathing piece of red meat to all gazillion of those little blood suckers---and they're hungry 24/7 in the short summer season. If that's not enough, walking through the willows when the cottonwoods are blooming, blowing everywhere is almost worse than getting bug bit. Benadryl is a girl's best friend when her eyes rebel from what's flying through the air.I've learned two things over the years:
1) Mosquitoes (and tics) much prefer to swarm and feast on people in darker clothing, so wear light khakis, pastels and best of all whites to keep their blood-sucking, love-interest to a minimum. Today lots of quick-dry shirts and pants come with insect repellent woven into them---good through dozens of washing. Still there's lots of other places bugs can attach.
2)Rinse, rinse, rinse! As to allergies to things flying through the air getting in your nose and eyes, causing major misery, I've learned hats and sunglasses help keep pollen out of your hair and eyes. Still taking a shower when you get home and getting every last speck of pollen off your face, hair and hands is of paramount importance. Never go to bed with a hint of pollen on you if possible. It really helps keep allergic reactions at night to a minimum. Cottonwood and pine pollens are two of the truly great miseries of my life here and can incapacitate and lay me lower than low every now and then.
Need I say more about road construction? It's a short season and every possible project is thrown into overdrive to get finished before the snowy season sets back in. There are often long waits in these zones, like yesterday. And rocks that fly through the air and ding and crack your nice windshield before you've even gotten to town happen routinely.
Back when the earth was still cooling I went west with a group of art students doing the KOA thing. I swear there was numerous squadrons of heavy bombers, black or horse flies, and lighter fighters, gnats and mosquitoes, strafing us the entire way. If I can find my old notes I could probably find the tail numbers that I recorded for the larger ones. Being that I was unschooled, it was bloody and stinging defeat across numerous states. Never in my life did I think four to a bed and four on the floor in a Motel 8 would be a thing of beauty.
ReplyDeleteWV: Wow, it's bedly
Everyone needs to take a trip like that sometimes...makes one appreciate the simplest of amenities, as you point out.
ReplyDeleteI've done a few pack trips so arduou, exhausting and dusty into wildernesses that I thought I'd never get my fingernails clean again or the smell of a smoky campfire outta my clothes. Looking back, they were surely some of the best times of life my as I'm sure your KOA trip was.... but let me add...in retrospect!
Absolutely! After that first trip I started climbing and hiking with others especially in and around Estes Park, the Grand Canyon and the Sierra Nevada range. Loved it, got exhausted by it and vowed to use the money in hotels to get there and then do some wonderful camping up high or down real low. Less now, but some hiking in Colorado soon with my son!
ReplyDeleteWow! What fun ahead with your son! Want to hear about it! Don't think there's anything more real to do with our grown children than being outdoors away from the rat race and maddening crowd.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought the quickest way to truly know a person is in more natural settings away from all accoutrements of worldly success and posturing. Of course I find I have to let go of that too. The realness is often stunning and life-changing
grizzlies in the willows
ReplyDeleteRight there, you've just named one of your future posts. :-)
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Thanks for the honest depiction of summer in Wyoming. I experience the pollen and other incoveniences, but grizzlies in the willows...that's a post I am waiting to read!
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