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…
Author: sophiaboquist
Wyoming Spring Creek: Road Trip Day 4
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…
Ecological Research in the Medicine Bow National Forest
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 Spring Creek: Ancient and Modern Earth
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…
Wyoming Spring Creek: Culture Shock?
When I attended the Study Abroad agreement meeting in early February, I received a heavy warning about the difficulties of culture shock. “It’s one of the hardest things to adjust to when you travel,” they warned us in the presentation, and I scoffed at that. This was clearly meant for students going to London, Ecuador,…
Wyoming Spring Creek: A Morning on the Preserve
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…
Wyoming Spring Creek Field Study Intro – Sophia Boquist
Hi, everyone! My name is Sophia and I’m a rising junior in the University of Pittsburgh Honors College. I’m majoring in Environmental Science with a minor in Studio Arts and a certificate in Global Information Systems (GIS). Outside of my classes, I am on the Pitt Ski and Snowboard Club’s executive board, where I work…