Logan Gilbert pitches for the Seattle Mariners and doesn’t believe that Wyoming is real.
Gilbert isn’t much of a pitcher, only one complete game out of eighty or so and an ERA that’s crowding four. So, it probably doesn’t matter whether he thinks we’re real or not.
But, apparently, there’s also a Reddit group that disbelieves Wyoming as well, and there are over a thousand members. They claim that anyone who has an experience, or a memory of an experience, in Wyoming has been subjected to some sort of voodoo mind-control project by the federal government.
Go ahead, slap your forehead with me. What have these people been drinking?
Nonsense like this means that our chamber of commerce impresarios and travel promoters have been doing a poor job convincing folks out in the Big Elsewhere that we actually exist. We need to push back, and push back hard, against the lie that we are merely AI images generated by a chip planted in somebody’s brain.
Wyoming is real as it gets!
We, collectively, need to inform folks in the cities that a race of Lilliputians once lived in the rocks and caves of the Pedro Mountains, near the Miracle Mile. Mummies of these little rascals have been found and studied.
Mom & Dad & Buddy & Sis in Akron or Amarillo need to know about this part of our history, and nobody will tell ‘em but us.
Area 51 has absolutely no bulge over area code 307 when it comes to alien life forms, either. Wyomingites have been beamed up into alien mother ships, prodded, probed, studied and finally released back to terra firma with secret extra-terrestrial information about where to drill to find artesian water.
And how about Yellowstone’s Zone of Death! The existence of that strip of land between Wyoming and Idaho (a state which a whole lot of folks believe in, by the way) needs to be taught in classrooms across the land. It's where geography trumps jurisprudence, and one can literally get away with murder.
Things don’t get more real than that!
Speaking of Yellowstone, how many tourists believe that there are animals living there that will eat you just because you’re chewy on the outside and crunchy on the inside?
Or that there are thermal pools in a caldera that will eventually erupt and destroy life on earth and those pools will totally dissolve you, zipper and all? If we don’t educate folks that it's real, they’ll wander across our border and go skinny dippin’.
Our guests also need to know that Wyoming is home to the densest concentration of pit vipers on the planet, so that they can hike around the Big Empty accordingly.
Granted, it might be disturbing information to visitors but we need to educate our guests about our proud Western heritage. For instance, if they knew that one of our early governors campaigned for office wearing shoes made from the hide of an outlaw, they might be more prone to believe that we’re real.
By the way, the candidate wearing human skin shoes won handily.
If we are somehow able to publicize facts like these about life in Wyoming, then maybe marginal pitchers and Reddit fantasists would open their minds and not consider us mere figments of their imagination.
This is not a job we can trust to our government, friend and neighbors! We need to take this responsibility upon ourselves.
Together we can convince the rest of the world that yes, in fact, Wyoming is real. Once the rest of the nation learns that we in Wyoming annually go to war with a bunch of sheep from Colorado over a boot, they’ll take us more seriously.
Keep it real, Wyoming!
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
