Our field study in Wyoming is split into two classes: Ecology, and Geology and Paleontology. The two topics are interwoven and alternated throughout the week, as we might first study Cretaceous fossils from the Western Interior Seaway (basically, the middle of the continental U.S. used to be covered in water), and then look at modern…
Category: Wyoming Spring Creek Field Studies
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 – Earth’s Intersectionality
4.5 billion years. No one can truly comprehend how large that number is, let alone imagine something taking that long. However, that is earth. Just 4.5 billion years of heat and gas that somehow churned out us. There is so much ambiguity shrouding what we are and how we came to live in this modern…
Wyoming Spring Creek – A Home Away From Home… or something like that
I wasn’t originally supposed to be here. I had initially been signed up to go on a different study abroad program, but as fate would have it, I ended up in Laramie, Wyoming. At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had never been west and I had never given much thought to Wyoming…
Interacting with Laramie Locals
After spending two weeks in Wyoming, I feel as though I have gotten a decent taste of its’ residents’ hospitality and have started acclimating to the barrenness of the landscape. Everyone has been very helpful and excited to share their knowledge about their home, whether that be directions, dining recommendations, or things to do. Our…
Wyoming Spring Creek: Unity in Division
1735 miles away from home, 5-4 hours by airplane or 1 day 49 minutes by car per google maps nearest estimation. It certainly seems that I have traveled to a distant land. Gone are the tall buildings and bustling streets, the green forested hills of eastern Pennsylvania have shrunk and stretched into the flat prairie…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Cosmic Insignificance and Cultural Connection
I find a lot of comfort in the idea of cosmic insignificance. Our existence on this planet is so infinitesimally small on nearly every scale – Wyoming itself, for instance, was covered in water for the majority of its geologic history; our human perception of it is an abnormality. In general, I tend to get…
Fireworks and Floats
While Laramie is a fairly large city for Wyoming, our class spent the Fourth of July in the small town of Rock River, the nearest community to our field site. Rock River has a population of 245 people, so it was a bit different from the usual bustle of Pittsburgh. Towns like Rock River are…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Perceptions and Pleasantries
Severing ties with our perceptions is a difficult task. Holding on to our original presumptions and belfies about people or places is easy; it gives us a sense of security, especially when you’re being dropped into a completely foreign environment. In complete honesty, I made fairly harsh assumptions about Wyoming originally. I didn’t trust that…
Wyoming Spring Creek – The Culture in Cattle Ranching
The first thing I noticed when I got to Laramie was the importance of cowboys. Walking around the University of Wyoming campus, you see cowboy statues everywhere, which makes sense given that the school’s mascot is a cowboy. Even beyond the campus though, the silhouette of a cowboy on his horse is emblazoned across the…