I was going to lay over in Cheyenne today, but they were all booked for the night.  There’s some sort of festival going on there.  Frontier Days, they’re calling it.  So I had to blast my way to Laramie before they were all booked there too.  The room I was finally able to get was in a place not far from where it happened.  I can look out my motel room and see the general area of it.

I tried to wander around the old historical district for a bit with one of my F1s, but it’s hard to see Laramie.  I took a few photos, mostly around the rail yard.  But everywhere I look there’s a face that haunts me.  The face of a sweet young gay kid who had his whole life ahead of him.

Before bedding down for the night I light a cigar and take a wander up the road away from the motel.  It’s mid July, and the night is a tad chilly here on the high plains.  I walk up the road and quickly leave the town lights behind me.  It’s lonely on the plains.  Quiet, save for the constant plains wind that tugs at my ponytail.

The stars are shrouded by a cloud bank.  I can see a few, shining weakly through the clouds.  But mostly it’s pitch night here.  My path recedes ahead of me into blackness.  All around me rolling sage covered hills swell and dip in the night like an unsettled sea.  My guide stars are nowhere to be seen.  I’m not sure which way is which.  Only the footpath I’m on suggests direction, and it leads further and further into the darkness.  Eventually I stop, drag easily on my cigar, watch the smoke drift away into the night.  Behind me are the town lights.  Somewhere, many unseen horizons to the east is my empty little home, waiting patently for me to return.  To my right, at the top of a small hillside, is a wooden post and wire fence, silhouetted against the night.