when i lived in wyoming in 2005, i didn’t have many friends.  but don’t feel sorry for me.  it wasn’t because of the excessive whiskey drinking, or the lack of bathing.  no, it was mostly due to the simple lack of people in the great state of wyoming.  a numbers game.

you see, the entire state boasts a smaller population than the city of austin, tx.  i believe the last count was around 750,000.  and it didn’t help that i lived in a town of only 2000.  so the few friends i had were very important to me.

among those few friends were two of my closest; anna and kim.  we called ourselves the “three musketeers”.  original, huh?

this last trip up to my former home partially happened because i had a good excuse.  well, two.  the first was that anna, who now lives in new york city, had planned her first trip back to pinedale since she had to leave in ’05.  and the second reason was that kim, who is from the area and thus stayed, had a baby a few months earlier.  kate.

kate is a darn cute kid.  so the three musketeers, plus one, set out for a reunion hike.  we decided to hit up sacred rim in the wind river mountains, just outside pinedale.

it was a great time to be with my ladies again…  and i must say, kate is quite a nice addition.

i was raised by a family of grizzly bears in a former life (or so i tell people), so we reenacted a scene from my past when i used to attack unassuming hikers…

it seemed as though we hadn’t skipped a beat.  and truly, i guess we never did.  i’ve been going back up to wyoming a lot since i left, and almost every time, i get to see kim.  i also have had the opportunity to visit anna up in philly and new york, and we tend to email, talk on the phone, and mail each other music mixes every so often.  so really, the unique situation here is that we were all together again in the very place we met and became friends…

sacred rim is a pretty amazing place….

but it seems that we wore little kate out.

more bear attack scenes…

by the time we made it back to the car, kate was out.

it was really special for all of us to get together.  we all live thousands of miles from each other, and our lives have all gone their separate directions.  i hope we can reunite again before time gets away from us.

regardless of how much time passes in our busy lives before we’re all together again, it was evident with this short reunion, that we will always stay connected.  these are the type of friends you keep for life.

all images © andrew r. slaton | photographer 2009