Wyoming Treats Em Well On Her Birthday

This is Meg checking into the blog world again after a long absence. We already have so many good stories from living in Wyoming that we've decided to keep this blog going for our friends who would like to hear about it all. I'm even working on getting some photos on this. ;-)

Monday was Emily's birthday. We took the day off from settling in and wor

k and just enjoyed being here. We had a breakfast on the porch in the sun where my Dad and I gave Em her birthday present: new cowboy bo

ots. Our friend Kathryn had the most appropriate reply to this news from Em: "Oh hell, we've lost you for good." They are that good looking!

Then I took Em hiking into the Snowy Range Mountains (the range to the west of us), but down low where the snow has already melted. We hiked in along a mountain creek and then headed up for a view. We wandered around on game trails for 6 hours and never saw another human. We did see many wildflowers, expansive views, antelope, deer, a beaver busily building his home and found a huge mule deer antler.

When we got back to the truck we rinsed off in the fresh, cold creek and changed i

nto our dinner clothes. After 45 min drive we were back in Laramie at the sushi restaurant where we met my dad and two long time family friends who Emily knows and enjoys. (Yes, now with 'flash freeze' capability, sushi is tasty this far from the ocean!) At dinner our friends recounted stories of being in protests of the 60s in Wyoming and D.C. After just being in Vietnam and thinking a lotabout this time in history, it was really amazing to hear first hand accounts about this time. My dad was in the army but was stationed in Germany during the war. But then he and my mom were in grad school in Chicago during the famous trail where Bobby Seale was tied and gagged in a federal courtroom. Dave was in the army and was in Vietnam and then was in grad school in Maryland when the Berrigan priests andco. burned the draft cards. Jenny lived here but was in D.C. for a League of Women Voters meeting and they stayed another day for the first half-million march. She learned at a lunch with congressmen in D.C. "not to worry, that everything was under control at the University of Wyoming protests. The National Guard was on its way." Meanwhile, she knew her husband Mike would be at those protests when he wasn't teaching a class.

This history hits home in ways in never did when we learned about it in school. I assume this has to do with being in Vietnam this year and just being older and seeing how the world works from personal experience instead of out of a book. I have a great deal more appreciation for the protest movements of the 60s and 70s these days. We go through life and forget that everyday people have gotten together and done the most amazing things in this world. Powerto the People. I suppose that is where that saying came from.

So all and all, it was a good Wyoming birthday, or so I am told. We ended the day with a soak in the hot tub on the porch. Life is good. And this was the first day that it really hit me why we moved here. ;-)