This year on the first weekend of the new year I am repeating what I did on this same weekend 20 years ago: traveling to Wyoming to start a new job.

Back then Good Wife Norma (GWN) and I bet our future on a small town in which we knew not a single soul. This time is different.

First, I return to my former duties at the Powell Tribune at age 70, 15 years after I left at age 55. I remind them of this gap from time to time, the better to keep expectations realistic on their end.

Second, unlike the first time, I am bound for a wonderful small town where I know a slug of living souls.

I hold the Bonner family, owners of the Tribune, in highest possible regard. They were wonderful and generous to GWN and me without fail both when we lived there and since.

They had a great sports editor who fell in love with a young lady on the wrong side of the mountain. Replacing him has been a struggle and now, in the teeth of the insane winter sports schedule, the Tribune folks are in deep doo-doo.

Meanwhile, Ole Mose is kinda treading post-retirement water in New-Brass-Key where “dead of winter” is literally true. Dead as a mackerel. D-E-A-D!

Not so northwest Wyoming, which comes alive with the first covering of glorious, sparkling snow.

Skinny skiing (cross country to you flatlanders), Alpine (downhill), snowshoe treks, snowboarding and such light up winter in the high country. Folks in northwest Wyoming are likely to have a couple sleds (snowmobiles to you) trailered up and parked alongside the driveway ready for the weekend. Physically fit but mentally feeble people come there from all over the world to climb the tongues of frozen waterfalls, for cryin’ out loud. Don’t believe me? Google “South Fork Ice Climbing” and you’ll be stunned.

Toss in full-curl bighorn rams, ewes and lambs standing by the road, sheep, mule deer, elk, bison and moose on the winter ranges and you get the idea.

Here, by contrast, snow lies pretty and white and quiet for a couple weeks after the paralyzing blizzard mercifully subsides. After that its hue morphs from dog pee yellow to “I GOTTA GO NO. 2 RIGHT NOW!” brown before the stuff melts. All this on a barren wasteland of frozen corn stubble punji stakes.

Don’t misunderstand. I love the “people” of here, but I hate the “here” of here at this time of year. Winter makes sense to me with mountains under bright, sunny skies … none of which we enjoy here in York, Nebraska.

So off I go, once more to chase the Panthers of PHS and the Northwest College Trappers until: 1) a long-term hire is made and we get the newbie broken in, or 2) until the winter seasons end near the first of April.

GWN will remain at home while I ride off, a bit like Richard Boone’s gunfighter Paladin on “Have Gun — Will Travel” (except I don’t plan to shoot anybody).

Then there’s this: After retirement from the York News-Times on Jan. 1, 2019, I got new business cards and designed them to channel Paladin himself. No idea why I chose that theme, but it did predict what has come to pass. Self-fulfilled prophecy? Perhaps.

I will be TDY (Army talk for temporary duty) for at least a month and as many as three. I’ll be content in paradise until the water softens enough in these parts to load the boat with grandkids.

What of GWN? Not to worry, she’ll work three days a week at the Specialty Clinic, tend her pod of prime tube dogs, play cards, break bread and socialize abundantly with her sister, brother-in-law and niece. GWN will definitely have lots of company and folks to look out for her.

Who knows, perhaps I’ll even blunder into some bighorn sheep, elk, bison, moose or winter waterfall photos to share.

How will Steve’s great adventure turn out? Stay tuned. We’ll find out together.

(Contact Tribune sports reporter Steve Moseley by email at stevemoseley42@gmail.com or by phone at 402-710-0727. This column was first published in the York, Nebraska, News-Times on Saturday, Jan. 4.)