Rock Springs Wyoming sunset
giant boot in Cheyenne
Wyoming license plate
Day seven began at the Super 8 in Ogallala Nebraska. I had breakfast at a truck stop, and upon chatting with the truckers and mentioning I was going to CA , they said "where, Berkeley?". I'm not sure if it was ME or the leopard print shoes that gave it away.
I was tired of the "hauling my life around in a cooler" dietary regime that I've followed all week, so I gave up on it today. Not again. Breakfast was--reconstituted eggs at a truck stop. Lunch was the weakest imitation of Asian food ever in Cheyenne Wyoming.
Dinner was excellent food out in Rock Springs Wyoming. The cooler is making a comeback.
This morning saw me driving from Ogallala Nebraska to Cheyenne Wyoming- approx 200 miles, done in two and a half hours. The speed limit out here is incredible....stopped at the Sierra Trading Post outlet- nothing of interest. Walked around downtown Cheyenne- the giant boot photo is from town center, and finished with a late lunch. If Nebraska was the "gateway to the west" this is an entirely different universe than the east coast: and I love it.
On the drive from Cheyenne to Rock Springs (about another 200 miles), I had plenty of time to think. I thought about how the East and east coast symbolize structure. Concrete-ness. Rules and laws. And how this part of the country seems to be about spaciousness. Freedom. Not lawlessness, exactly, but a certain looseness-- a higher speed limit, a looser way of speaking, and walking, even. The pioneers headed west to create something new, and different, and , for some, to create their fortune in California. Lots of my process was around how traveling this direction is symbolic of hope, freedom, expansion, and a loosening of convention or other binds.
Last night I didn't sleep well, partly from travel and partly because a lot of my own "stuff" was up. Suffice to say the "stuff" coming up had EXACTLY to do with creating more freedom for myself, and loosening of binds. In more than one sense, the issues coming up last night mirrored that which the pioneers dealt with: claiming life on their own terms, for themselves, and not being bound to what they may have been force fed by Puritanical society. Westward was a challenge and a dare, and also a dream towards reclaiming themselves, spirit, adventure, freedom, and possibility.
There were a lot of emotions moving through me today, some of them rage, and reclamation. I drove through part of Wyoming howling like the wind, howling the word "mine". Mine. This lifetime, this body, this spirit is mine .
Wild, wild, wild West.
Rock Creek, btw, is fabulous and beautiful and scenic with intense sunsets.
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