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There are many places in America almost no one ever goes to. Certainly on that list are Bangor, Maine, and Bizmark, North Dakota. The entire state of Wyoming is also high on that list.
As I sit here in this state way north and west of seemingly everything, I notice there are a few people around but, as usual, not many. I wonder what it would be like to live here all the time. In the morning the big topics are whether it will snow or not, what wild animals are likely to be roaming around today, and an uneasy eagerness for the tourist season to start so the money pressures will lessen because long frigid winters without tourist money cause lean times and more of a survival mindset sets in.
This is the least populated state in the country. No matter which way you walk or drive you can be sure you won’t see many people and probably a few or none. Land here is abundant; humans are scarce.
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I am now, looks like an upscale artificial cowboy town more about buying expensive non-necessities than a setting for cowboy gunfights in the dirt road outside the saloon.
Billionaires rule Jackson Hole. Actor Harrison Ford was one of the earliest rich people to buy property here. Others in his class followed and the main reason was to tell their rich friends they owned property in Jackson Hole — not to live here much. A tour guide told me most of these wealthy people spend little more than a few weeks a year here and fly their private jets into the town’s private airport.
They hardly use their mansions decorated by America’s most beautiful mountains. Seems odd, kind of wasteful, and unnecessary, but the billionaires don’t ask for my opinions.
So this place is unusual. It sits at the base of huge mountains that surround it. There’s a Lululemon store, gift shops, and art galleries. There’s a restaurant called The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar where you can step up to the bar and sit in a cowboy saddle that replaces all bar stools. There you can play pool and drink beverages and feel like a cowboy or cowgirl and that’s always a fun thing to pretend to be.
There’s a restaurant below the bar where you can order any of a wide assortment of steaks. You get the feeling they were hauled into the kitchen from a nearby farm full of deceased and cared-up cattle. It’s raw and base. You eat off the land.
City life this is not.
It’s all about the land and animals and mountains and snow and sky and tourism. Out here in the West, far from Chicago and Los Angeles and suburbs and downtown traffic jams. A world away from national politics, on its own, tranquil, and hard to fathom, almost an idea more than a place.
Yesterday I walked through an art museum filled with paintings by artists who had traveled long distances over the past few hundred years to see Wyoming and its wondrous mountains that make you believe there’s a Heaven and afterlife.
The artists came here, took out their paint brushes, and let loose on canvas what they saw and felt. Paintings of hunting scenes where wolves attacked horses, distressing yet honest. Paintings of elk on the edge of a mountain cliff staring at what appears to be something that concerns them: people.
The artists got caught up in their surroundings and couldn’t stop pouring their feelings onto the art creations, an outpouring of pure excitement and wonder about something they had never seen before.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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