So last weekend I was camping in the Medicine Bow Wilderness Area of southern Wyoming, loving it, my family all alone in a beautiful campground, when the sound of loud motors, screams, dogs barking, and shouting wafted through the forest of spruce and lodgepole pine. Then came the thunderous roar of engines and rising dust behind them. It was like something out of Mad Max or The Road Warrior, only it was teenage girls on ATVs, racing around in circles. We joked that they were teenage mutant cannibals coming to have us for dinner. But mainly they just made a lot of noise, reinforcing my belief that ATVs are The Scourge of the West. After they left we watched the Perseid Meteor Shower from about 10,000 feet elevation, saw sixteen shooting stars in a short time. On our way home, we passed the Mangy Moose Saloon, with its sign below.
And in this morning’s New York Times, some frank warnings about climate change and drought in the West, here.
