Fall thoughts in Wyoming

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

By Bill Sniffin

Slow for construction.  Enjoy the Scenery. - Highway sign next to construction area in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

It is hard not to like fall in Wyoming. The trees offer up brilliant colors – just look at the bright gold Aspens.

It is easy to appreciate the early frosts. For one, they stop my nose from running. I suffer fall allergies that kick in around the first of September, so that first snowfall or heavy frost looks pretty good.

Yes, there are a lot of things to appreciate this fall:  
• Second lady and Casper native Lynne Cheney has a new book coming out. It is about growing up in Wyoming and has the wonderful title Blue Skies, No Fences. She is a wonderful writer. I am anxious to get my hands on it.
• Although the fall weather beckons, it is hard to go outside when you can watch the Ken Burns epic The War on Wyoming Public Television right now.

The War brings back memories of some of the old TV shows my brothers and I watched on our black and white TV with our dad decades ago. He was a vet who served in Iran, in charge of getting thousands of trucks full of supplies delivered to the Allies. Those old TV shows were called The World at War and Victory at Sea.

We would be fixated, watching those shows in the presence of a man who had been involved in it and who had lost some good friends there.

Mr. Burns said he made The War because we are losing World War II vets at a rate of 1,000 per day now.
• One of the fall’s important events is the One Shot Antelope Hunt in Lander. This year it featured three governors.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal kept his streak intact – he made his kill with one shot for the fourth time in five hunts. The other time he never got a shot.
• Our family got together in Denver for my niece’s wedding.  Most of my siblings are from other parts of the country and are adamantly Democrat.

Most think Hillary Clinton has a good chance of being our next president and they are pretty critical of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

They always ask me about the Vice President, who I once knew pretty well. They read the media and seem to think he has lost his mind.

I always say that he probably is basically the same man, but if 9/11 happened on your watch, you would never be the same either. I told them that to me, the Bush-Cheney team is so paranoid of another terrorist attack that this fear has guided every single move they have made since it happened. Not sure that answer satisfied them but they quit complaining for a moment or two, anyway.
• We attended meetings in two of the most posh places in Wyoming in late September. First was an Airport Operators meeting at The Old Baldy Club in Saratoga – nice digs and a wonderful golf course.

Second was a regional tourism meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jackson Hole.  Pretty spiffy. I wondered: Am I really in Wyoming?

After the Saratoga meeting, I drove the mountain highway over to Laramie by Lake Marie and Ryan Park and Centennial.  Not sure I had ever made that trip before. It was wonderful and scenic. The winds are so fierce up there that the trees bunch up like they are huddling against the wind.  It’s a remarkable sight.

My friend Ken Wolf of Shelby, Mont., was also at the Jackson meeting. He complimented Wyoming on how well it gets energy out of the ground and to market. “In our state, the liberal enviros have us totally bottled up. We end up importing our energy from Alberta.  It is nuts,” he said.
• On the national scene the flurry of news was about Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his speech at Columbia and to the UN.

Funniest line, though, was when it was reported how CBS News Anchor Katie Couric helps herself remember how to pronounce the man’s name. She calls him President “Mahmoud I’m a dinner jacket.”

Note: Bill Sniffin is a long-time Wyoming journalist from Lander. His books, High Altitudes, Low Multitudes and The Best Part of America, are on sale in fine Wyoming bookstores. His email is bsniffin@wyoming.com.

PERMALINK:
Fall thoughts in Wyoming | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

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