Jewelry. Art. Cupcakes. Magic.
While hiking in Vedauwoo, we found two mushrooms that were approximately the size of our heads. And two frogs which posed nicely in mute terror while we snapped away. The T Rex is a sculpture outside of the Geology Museum on campus. We always take visitors to see it.
…and a taxidermied badger (dude wanted $125 for it). Suffice it to say, I am not the new owner of said badger.
Taken in Laramie, Fort Collins, and Denver.
When people come to visit, there are a handful of things that I like to show them: the art museum, sculptures, Snowy Mountain range, Vedauwoo, and the Wyoming Territorial Prison. The prison was in use in the late 1800′s, and counted Butch Cassidy among its colorful inhabitants. The site includes the restored prison, which highlights the compelling stories about its prisoners, a broom factory where they worked, the warden’s house, and quite a bit more. My favorite areas are the exhibits about the female prisoners, and the working platen press. If you find yourself in Laramie, Wyoming, it’s definitely worth a visit.
For my 30th birthday, my husband took me on a fabulous week-long vacation to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. We did tons of hiking, and saw moose, elk, mule deer, a grizzly bear cub, and many bison. We dined on sushi in Jackson, stopped in to a few art galleries, and camped a few feet away from a gorgeous lake. It was an incredible trip!
Rocks and cattle: the defining characteristics of Wyoming’s landscape. Vedauwoo is only 15 minutes away from us.
A mere half-hour drive from Laramie–past saddle shops, ranches that welcome guests, and a charming little town of 100 with a mercantile and historical buildings–one reaches the winding paths up the Snowy Mountain Range. Here, we discovered that we can go sledding and skiing in June, which strikes me as magical (being from Ohio and all).
In an area where cowboy iconography/mythology/actuality plays such a huge role in regional identity, how is the matter of Native American identity addressed? The answer, to my newcomer eyes, seems to be: it’s not. Sure, there’s a prominent sculpture of Chief Washakie that greets people as they enter the University of Wyoming campus, but by and large, the issue seems to just be skirted. Even in a state with Native American reservations, they seem largely absent.
There is an exhibit of Crow regalia at the University of Wyoming art museum right now, which does not have as much explanatory material as I would like. The matter of ethnic representation in museums is a hot-button issue (who describes the objects, how they are displayed, messy issues around provenance, and the very idea of turning people into study objects for academics are all argued).
The museum also hosted a Pow Wow. I’d never been to one before, and I wondered how the practitioners felt about performing their traditions for a bunch of Euro-Americans. How would it feel to be made exotic in your homeland? To be trotted out as an educational opportunity? I don’t know. I am working on an oral history project, interviewing locals about this area’s history, and their place in it. Maybe it will help to answer some of my questions.
Since arriving here, I think that my identity as “the crazy girl with the camera” has been firmly established. One of the greatest things about moving to a new place is seeing it with fresh eyes; I’ve been marveling over little details that I’m quite sure locals don’t give a second thought to. For instance, houses tend to be painted in vivid colors (though 50-60 years ago, this was not the case, a local man informed me). People decorate with large stone slabs, weathered, gnarled hunks of wood, and/or garden ornaments. Business signs often have a retro flair, often harkening back to the 1940s and 50s. I’ve seen quite a few retro cars here as well. Lilacs dot almost every yard, and I’ve been introduced to trees that look almost as though they have been formed from thin sheets of copper. The trees that make me nostalgic for Pittsburgh are the ones that look as though half of them have been charred–it reminds me of the sooty exteriors of older buildings.
Things like perpetual sunshine, the disarming friendliness of strangers, and the wonders of high-altitude baking are all new experiences. So far, I’ve greeted them with an air of optimism and adventure (we’ll see how I feel this winter).
More on the culture of the place soon!
