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…
Tag: Wyoming Spring Creek Field Studies
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…
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 Lesson
Davey was born on an airplane and has two social security numbers. He’s bandy-legged in his riding boots and sweating through his felt hat – a character and a cowboy, a great roper and a decent teacher. It’s 4th of July in Rock River and we’re taking turns swinging his lariat at a barbecue grill….
Wyoming Spring Creek-Space, the final frontier…
Space. Vast chasms of it, unbroken by tree or building or person as it sprawls outward limitlessly into the pale blue horizon. In an open prairie like this, space seems to take on the illusion of weight, a sort of ubiquitous presence that you can almost glean in creases of river beds and stretching green…
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 – Stories Told Through Senses
The vast, mostly uninterrupted space of the Wyoming prairie is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It is easy to get lost in the view of the land stretching for miles and miles until it touches the sky. The sun rose to my left as I sat looking at a cliff on Saturday morning, and…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Western Expanse
A good friend told me once that going to the west makes you feel like you want to run away. I didn’t fully understand what he meant until I got to Spring Creek and saw it for myself. Wyoming can almost be described in the same light as the ocean. The vast expansiveness goes on…
Wyoming Spring Creek Field Study Introduction: Maclaine Oskin
Hello! My name is Maclaine Oskin and I am a rising sophomore hoping to pursue an environmental science and urban studies double major throughout my undergrad here at the University of Pittsburgh. After graduation I am interested in exploring the implications of urbanization on the environment, as well as the integration and amalgamation of natural…
Wyoming Spring Creek Introduction: Lillian Taylor
Hi! My name is Lillian Taylor, and I’m a rising junior at the University of Pittsburgh. I’m majoring in environmental science, and I also intend to pursue a minor in history and a certificate in GIS. I am deeply interested in the interactions between humans and the natural world, specifically the impacts of land use…