The Last Wyoming Days
Welcome to the inaugural post of ‘A Midwesterner’s New England Guidebook.’ In ‘The Last Wyoming Days,’ we embark on a journey not just across the country but through the layers of life decisions that shape our destinies. This post reflects on the bittersweet farewell to a place that became a home against all odds, setting the stage for new adventures in New England. Join me as we explore the transitions that define not just the geography of our lives but the emotional landscapes we navigate.
I never imagined ever loving a place so much I wouldn’t want to leave. I escaped Ohio with a velocity that stalled out many times, always returning to that dismal state because that’s where I was from, that’s where my family ate, worked, slept, played.
Stuck in dead end jobs—gas station clerk, pizza delivery driver, and trying to find people to pay me for web design—I made a decision: to return to school, to get my master’s. I thought I’d go to school in Ohio. Wright State, Ohio State, anywhere within driving distance, and my wife looked at me one evening and said, “What about the University of Wyoming?”
“What about the University of Wyoming?” I asked back.
Years ago, my wife drove cross country in her red Cavalier to a Jackson Hole lodge to work as a receptionist. On a day off work, she made it to Laramie, visited the University, and fell in love. She said on that drive out in her mid-twenties—an age really too old to work at a lodge and yet too young to have a decent job—layers of stress peeled off her skin like peeling onions down to their cores.
The return trip for her, how many years later, was not as restorative, with two kids and after having sold everything we owned except what we could manage to cram into a Ford Escort with a smashed front end thanks to a deer and untreated sleep apnea, and the Ford Windstar van with a cracked rear axle and a tail pipe attached with bailing wire neither of which we knew anything about because the dealer said it had all been fixed for us. We never looked underneath the van to really find out because we didn’t really want to know. We were driving to an apartment we had never seen before, and when we arrived the university housing felt like a hotel room, temporary and demanding with crazy strict rules like no drinking alcoholic beverages outside, no grills, no pets—never mind the cracked vinyl blinds, the crumbling dry wall, the bedroom doors without locks.
This place became home.
I looked out my kitchen window and saw mountains. I drove down the road to drop the kids off at school or dance or any number of activities, and I saw mountains.
The people we met; we will never forget. The support for what we were trying to accomplish out there, what we did accomplish out there was amazing. My wife and I walked together at graduation. She received her bachelor’s in English with a creative writing minor and a professional writing minor. I got my master’s. She was accepted to the University of New Hampshire MFA program; we packed through the night. We are rushed to leave a place we did not want to leave. And we drove across country one last time and it all felt so much like an exodus.
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I’d love to hear about your own experiences of leaving a beloved place, the challenges of new beginnings, and how you’ve navigated significant transitions. Share your stories in the comments below or email me directly. Your insights enrich our collective journey and remind us of the universal threads in our individual narratives.
