Skijoring

 

They have piled up the little snow that nature provided this year, making way for Winter Carnival in Pinedale, Wyoming.  Ice sculptures in Pinedale are half the normal size and number.  Signs at Nordic skiing trails say, “Caution, Thin Coverage.”  It’s the warmest and snowless winter anyone can remember.  

 

Nevertheless, Skijoring has not been cancelled.  Horses have been trucked in from ranches many miles away, and 200 entries have been registered in the annual skijoring event.  If anything can be said for Wyoming cowboys it is that they persevere in conservative politics and slow-talking Christian values.  Most of you in California will call them Trump radicals with no compassion for the poor. 

 

Only thirty-four percent of them are vaccinated, and almost none of them are masked.  I will be leaving Wyoming on Thursday after a month of trying to understand.  Returning to Pasadena, I expect to be shunned, an unholy contaminate to upright living, a friend of the enemy, a person to be avoided.  

 

So, in this my final post, give you one of their major sports, held on Superbowl Sunday, alternative to Democrat society.  They call it skijoring, where a horse and rider pull a skier on a rope.  The horse is required to gallop in a straight line, while the skier maneuvers jumps and ring-catches.  The best time wins.  But time is added for every ring missed and every gate missed.  Like time subtracted from life lived with injuries and losses.  It’s a high-speed gallop combined with Olympic-style slalom that cowboys, cowgirls, and skiers excel at.

 

Thanks to all of you who have read and commented on this blog, some by public comments here and some by private email.  I appreciate your interest in my travels.   

Until next adventure I bid you happy travel or happy isolation.  We deal with the current catastrophe each in our own way.  I hope not to lose any of you as friends in my admittedly dangerous way. 

 

See a map by Michael Angerman at  Michael's Map   

 

Love to you all, 

Sharon