Excuse me, but do I know you?

Doppelgängers.

They’re a trick of the mind.

I see them all over the place.

I find myself in mid-greeting, with hand half-raised, ready to hail someone I think I know only to I realize “I don’t,” that they merely resemble someone from back east—sort of. 

Then there’s that vertigo-esque feeling I get when talking to someone and for just a split second I think: “Hang on a sec—how do I know you? From here—from back east?”

Weird.

Really weird!

Stop in mid-sentence kind of weirdness.

It’s doing a number on my mind, leaving me feeling a bit, well... schizophrenic.

It’s hard to explain. 

Maybe my mind—my psyche—is fighting to hang on to my former life as we’ve entered our third year here in Wyoming.

Maybe it’s an adjustment, that everyone experiences, after living in a new place for a while.

It would make for some interesting research.

Research is on my mind, a lot, these days—but that’s another post.

So if I don’t say “hi” to you one of these days, don’t be offended.

It’s because I won’t have figured out if it’s really you, or merely your doppelganger!  

And so it begins...

I know that some out-of-town guests here for the Bar Mitzvah found the weather, and the two-hour drive from the airport, to be a bit beyond the pale.

Indeed, traveling to Laramie makes for a long travel day.

One friend equated the trip to Laramie to a “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

She, however, used more colorful language, not quite appropriate for this G-rated blog.

On Sunday evening, we watched the fire works from our front porch, wrapped in jackets or blankets—something I’d never expect on the 4th of July.

I found myself rather bemused by the comments and the “wonder of it all” by some of our out-of-town guests.

We are in Wyoming—at an elevation of over 7,000 feet—so cool temps, wind, late afternoon thunderstorms and long car rides to get from point A to point B, are par for the course.

There must be a bit of the imp of that Frontier Woman in me—finally!

Besides, in less than 5 weeks, I become an official “resident” of the beautiful state of Wyoming.

Yee-ha!

In my previous life…

sometimes when flying over less populated spaces across the U.S., I would peer down at places like Laramie and wonder, “What is that town?” “Who lives there?” “How far is it, from ‘civilization?” “What are the people (and their lives) like?” and finally, “Do they want to be there?”

I think I may have mentioned—once or twice—that with our teeny-tiny airport we don’t see many planes around Laramie, except for an occasional glimpse of one of the three daily departures or arrivals of a Great Lakes airline plane to and from the Denver airport.

Occasionally, we’ll also get a glimpse of that miniscule speck way up in the sky, that is sure to be a jet crisscrossing the great expanse of the United States, or what’s left in it’s wake—the white fluffy plumes of jet smoke.

The only clip art I could find

Now, as I look skyward and see those very same planes way—way—way up in distance, carrying people like me to destinations unknown, I wonder, “Who are they and where they going?” and finally, “Do they want to be where they are going ?”

And if any of them are peering down at me, let it be known that, “Yes. I do, in fact, want to be here.”

At least—for the time being that is.