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…
Tag: Wyoming
Wyoming Culture: Comfort in Isolation
Reflecting on my time so far in Wyoming, I can’t help but recognize how much the culture that I originally felt friction against has grown on me significantly. Wyoming is marked deeply by a sense of independence. In the small town of Laramie where we’re currently residing and in the even smaller towns we stop…
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 Big Small Town
Coming from Pittsburgh, the thing that stuck out the most when coming to Laramie was just how red the area’s politics were. It was easy to quickly judge the town just for having different beliefs than myself. As time went on and I interacted with more locals I began to see the genuine nature of…
Wyoming Spring Creek Week 2: Cultural Experiences
Wyoming’s reputation stems more from a broad assumption of the greater American West. Personally, I believed that it was a land of plain and rough cowboys and cowgirls with deeply patriotic ancestry. I imagined that there were not enough people around to expose them to a fair number of perspectives in order for them to…
Spring Creek Morning Observation
I sit along a ridge overlooking a valley to the south of our camp. It is early in the morning. The ground immediately surrounding me is the first thing I make note of. I am in a patch of grass, seemingly dense from afar but sparse up close. Around me are thistle and sagebrush, the…
Observations of My Own
As I walk out into the plain from the field site, the fragrance from crushed sagebrush wafts up from beneath my boots. In the wide-open expanse of the Laramie Valley, the smell is always around, but the uniqueness of the aroma never seems to get old. Taking a seat near the dirt road that leads…
Wyoming Spring Creek: Morning from a Ridge
I am currently sitting on a ridge overlooking one of the many valleys of the Spring Creek Preserve in Wyoming. I can see the camp where we spent the night sleeping out in tents from my perch. The land rolls out before me for miles. I can see the mountains in the distance, rising up…
Wyoming Spring Creek: Time to Observe
As we adventure through Spring Creek, it is easy to get wrapped up in trying to learn every new thing about the area. A whole day could be spent simply identifying the plants and animals littering the seemingly barren landscape. Over the past few days, I feel like the land has become increasingly familiar to…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Observing the Landscape
As I write this, I am sitting next to the opening of a prairie dog tunnel system, there are ants, bees, and beetles are hard at work all around me, and there is a bird of prey circling far above my head. Life persists. Plants of so many species grow around me, and I am…