we ate in a tiny old wild west town where they served our drinks in glasses shaped like cowboy boots. they brought me a side of mashed potatoes in a glob that was bigger than my head. we had some magnificent wild berry pie. and we received complimentary patriotic red white and blue memorial day mints.

they had some wild west curios and trinkets for sale of course and above our table was a shadow box sort of deal with an old torn flag, a faded photograph of a warrior chief and a couple eagle feathers. walking around there were others, some with rusty old guns in them, or tomahawks or arrow quivers. don’t know if they used some genuine historical artifact stuff, but hope not anyway. didn’t seem right to display this fairly recent past in little indivual serving glass cases to buy for a few hundred bucks for tourists to take home and stick up over the fireplace in the den.

riding along the highway in wyoming feels like we should be galloping. running and charging over rolling space hair flying bouncing and free. wyoming makes me want to tip my hat, or at least wear one, and shout yee-hah.

fireworks stands are everywhere just inside the border. fireworks are outlawed in colorado, so they set up right inside wyoming so their customers don’t have to go all the way to cheyenne or laramie or rawlins or rock springs to get their bottle rockets.

inside the colorado border, the state troopers sit waiting with their radar guns. but once inside wyoming, it’s sort of like a wild ride zone. speed limits are posted here and there but not a copper to be seen. it’s like a wide open see for miles let it all out screaming echo chamber flying across the rolling range kind of ride.

wyoming feels like it’s still a little wild around the edges. the west hangs by a thread there.

and it also feels somehow more than half empty. vacant and hollow. most of the indians are gone.

but even though it has a sad emptiness of a not so distant ethnic cleansing feel, there is nevertheless a very strong native american presence there as well. very strong. as if because it is so empty and open there is still some room for the spirits to run and ride their ghost horses across the rolling rocks and sand and grass and sagebrush. maybe it feels so strong because it has changed less. much of the open space remains. even the clouds above often look like herds of buffalo, mirroring the shades of the beasts running and grazing below.

driving and driving for miles between towns there is little sign of civilization except for endless barbed wire fences, occasional power lines, scattered ranches and cattle and a few abandoned cabins and old barns beat with wind and snow, disintegrating into the ground.

managed to take a few pictures but the wind was extreme. could barely stand up and hold my ground in it, much less balance a camera. felt like the whole wild west state of wyoming was blowing right through me in a powerful slam of arrows and horses and stampeding buffalo.

back in the car we listened to memorial day stuff on the radio as we drove. we heard a reading of a poetic photographer's journal in europe during world war II. and we cried for taps.

and so we drove and drove and it felt like we flew through space and time and light and shadow and peace and war and night and day.

and everything was green. and there were bluebells.

and we saw some antelope. and some semi-wild horses running. a coyote. a raccoon. hawks swooping and hunting.

and a deer.