To Sophia from Six Weeks Ago– Years ago, Wyoming captivated your five-year-old eyes when you saw Old Faithful for the first time. It enchanted your twelve-year-old heart when you came back in the family RV on a yearlong road trip. I remember you thinking Yellowstone was all the natural wonder Wyoming had to offer. How…

Two days after getting back from our trip around Wyoming, I’m reliving all the incredible experiences we had and mentally preparing myself to leave this amazing state. Laramie and the shortgrass prairie have stolen a piece of my heart, but the northern part of the state–the Bighorns, Yellowstone, the Tetons, and Shoshone National Forest–is so…

For my independent research project in the Wyoming Spring Creek program, I chose to examine riparian and forest ecology in a montane environment. I wanted to see if proximity to a stream affects plant species diversity, depth of duff (dead plant material and leaf litter), and invertebrate activity. My hypothesis is that plant communities proximal…

Wyoming is full of remarkable landscapes: sweeping prairies, colorful badlands, and towering granite peaks, all teeming with diverse plants and wildlife. These ecological communities are an important resource for our studies here, but they sometimes distract us from the vast expanse of ancient ecosystems that are right at our feet. Here you can see layers…

I’m sitting on top of a small ridge overlooking a drainage into the Laramie Valley. In front of me stretches the expanse of the valley, broken only by a line of windmills and the Medicine Bow Range to the East. They appear to be close, but distance here is deceptive; it would take two days…