Entry #1: First Days

These are not the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The Blue Ridge are big hills compared to the Medicine Bow Mountains, and the Medicine Bow are foothills compared to the Rocky and Sierra Madre Mountains. This is the West. I don't know why but since the days of John Wayne, the West has had some sort of cavalier aura around it that made sense to me. I wanted to move "out West" before I saw my first snowcap in a National Geographic. The rivers here inspire me. Excuse me for the next few sentences, but I have to get a little cliche. I feel a sense of purity driving in a car just looking at a river that I have only previously found fishing in one. There is something pristine and untouched about this place. Wyoming. The name brings up images of elk, moose, bald eagles and antelope, and of course wild trout just waiting for you to peel your line off your reel and go screaming into the depths. Okay, cliche writing over. I'm excited to see the days to come and how my summer will unfold.

I wonder if the people I work with will like me or not, or if I will like them. The definition of the middle of nowhere should have my location locked in on a G.P.S. The closest town is about 35 minutes if you drive fast, and the only thing there is three bars. I have to drive an hour to Laramie to get real necessities. I like that though. I like knowing that I am in the middle of nowhere. It makes me feel like I'm in it. I'm really out West guiding people on a beautiful mountain-fed trout stream. I still have to learn my section of the North Platte, which is in between Saratoga and Laramie. Coming from the East I'm used to fishing very specific "match the hatch" flies right down to the exact size and life stage. I have to get used to the fact that a Stimulator or Adams might work better than a Dorothea Sulphur Comparadun, or a Pseudocloeon Blue Wing Olive emerger. This is the West. Things are a little different out here.