Settling in

The other day I switched my car registration to Wyoming, which I feel is a sign that I actually do live here now. The Wyoming license plates have a mountain range (I'm told it's the Tetons) in the background and a bucking horse in the foreground. And of course half the plate is taken up by big sky. Wyoming has no vehicle inspection, so changing registration is pretty painless. You go to the courthouse, and a county sheriff (wearing wranglers and cowboy boots) checks that your car is not stolen, and that's about it. Then you get to prove that you deserve the new plates by putting them on your car in freezing conditions.

Other signs of settling into Wyoming are a little more subtle. I have a wallet full of Laramie-related cards, including a library card, Safeway card, movie rental card, and WyoOne card. I bought 2 pairs of cowboy boots at a second-hand store, and I actually have worn them in public. I now own a tent (bought second-hand for $25), and am very sad that there is way too much snow in the mountains to use it (and will be for the next 6 months). I am learning to deal with the fact that Laramie does not plow, sand, or salt residential streets, and so if I manage to get my car to start (difficult in -20 degree weather), stopping at intersections is not guaranteed. I have discovered that your snot will in fact freeze in temperatures below -10, and that your skin doesn't have to be exposed to get frostbitten. I have learned that ice can and will form on the INSIDE of windows without storm windows.

And lastly, for all you Yale folks who have enjoyed Elkfest, know that I participated in butchering an elk on Thanksgiving morning this year. I'll spare you the photo here; it's already on facebook.

Hello, welcome

Since I moved to Wyoming in July, I've been asked a few times whether I've been keeping a blog. It is a pretty weird experience to move from Connecticut to Laramie, Wyoming, after all. My answer was generally "No, I live in a tent."

But I have a home now, with four walls, heat, and wireless internet, and I've started thinking that maybe writing a blog would be interesting for me and a good way to keep in touch with you. So, here we are. Enjoy?

(p.s. I'm starting from when I moved here, so as to include all the field work craziness. Please don't be offended if you see that I've reused an email I sent you.)

I feel like I'm finally getting used to Wyoming- or at least, I felt like I was getting the hang of things, and then hunting season started. Apparently rifle season for pronghorn antelope started on Friday. I think that the best way to explain the first day of hunting season is that it's like St. Patrick's day in Boston. People go crazy. I drove home from the field at 5 AM on Saturday morning, and there were swarms of people at the little gas station in Rock River (pop. 235) dressed in sagebrush camo. It's actually pretty silly-looking- since there aren't really forests in my part of Wyoming, people dress up like sagebrush instead. They look like little kids in patterned pajamas. Except they have guns.

In reaction, my field-clothes fashion has become even more compromised. Now, in addition to wearing the same clothes for five days on end, I also wear a super-duper bright orange baseball cap that's too big for me, and a child-size orange hunting vest. I'm trying hard not to resemble an antelope, you see. It gets even sillier, though. We're currently tracking nocturnal rodent activity, so we work from 5-7 PM and 2-5 AM most days. We put out seeds on pans of day-glo powder (pink, orange, or nuclear waste green), and then come back with UV flashlights at 2 AM to follow the glowing mousey footprints in the dark. Of course, I'm incapable of dealing with day-glo powder neatly, so all my field clothes are vaguely fluorescent pink, and I usually have a smear of powder across my nose or in my ear. The (few) locals think we're nuts, but since it's Wyoming they're kindly incredulous, and politely offer us food, beer, and showers.

I just returned from backpacking Cirque of the Towers- another completely foreign experience. Real mountains are super awesome. We saw multiple Momma Mooses. We also saw a pika:
http://images.google.com/images?q=pika&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=aTCnSvP3I5PQtgPSkvTCBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1, although I didn't get a good look at it because it was scurrying away. I'd never heard of them before, probably because they're fairly mountainous, but they're really cute. Also really endangered, sadly. They freeze to death in winters when it doesn't snow enough and their burrows aren't insulated. (Ironic to freeze to death due to global warming and warmer winters...)
But anyway, enough bio nerdiness from me.

My dears,
I'm back in town for a few days and reveling in internet access, hot water, people, canless food, and coffee that is not instant. Felicia arrived today, so I also get to revel in not living alone. And in the general awesomeness of having her as a roommate. We may even get furniture. : )

Field work goes on... my job for the past two weeks has literally been to hug trees. Not as fun as it sounds, due to the general scratchiness of branches/pine needles, large quantities of sap, and crazed swarms of red ants. (We play a fun game called "Ant or Plant?", where we try to figure out what's poking us, and whether we need to quickly drop our pants to extract all the ants. Also, my field partner sat on a prickly pear cactus. Haha... I mean, ouch.)

Other excitement of the past week includes seeing elk, 3 porcupines (so cute!), nesting kestrels, various hawks, baby bunnies, jackrabbits, mule deer, and pronghorn antelope. I also saw a great blue heron when I went swimming in the Laramie river one afternoon (completely sans clothes, I might add, since there was absolutely no one around).

We had a spectacular view of the Perseid meteor shower on Wednesday night, since there are no artificial lights for miles around (the nearest town is 45+ minutes away, and has a population of only 200 people). We sat on the hill until very late, wrapped in blankets drinking wine and watching the shooting stars. The sky goes right down to the horizon on all sides here, so you can see much more of the sky than in New England.

Wyoming quickly goes from breathtakingly beautiful to ridiculous, though, as it did when we packed up our tents in a raging thunderstorm on Saturday. The storm produced marble-sized hail (painful), and we had to take shelter in the truck and plug our ears until it passed. Ah Wyoming. So crazy.
love,
Liz

p.s. For anyone interested, I put up a bunch of photos of our camp site and study site on facebook- enjoy! (disclaimer: photos taken with a crappy disposable camera)

I'm safely arrived in Wyoming- started work last Wednesday, and will move into my new apartment next weekend! I like my job and Laramie so far, although I was a little sick for the first couple days of work (bummer). My job involves camping ~5 days/week at an old abandoned homestead about an hour and a half north of Laramie, 45 minutes from the nearest tiny town. The homestead is awesome- beautiful location, miles from anywhere except a few ranches. It's basically just a collection of falling-down barns, rusting farm equipment, and a rotting old house with everything still in it. At night we only hear coyotes, cows (moo!), and the wind in the grass. Getting up to pee in the middle of the night is especially nice because you see stars like you've never imagined.

The local ranchers are incredibly (ok, Felicia, not eerily) nice. They go out of their way to offer you dinner, cold beer (out of a cooler full of fish they just caught), and rides in their pick-up trucks to see elk or especially pretty parts of their ranches. I knew I'd entered an entirely foreign land when I found myself bouncing along in the back of a pick-up at 10 miles an hour on no distinguishable road, drinking beer with an off-duty cop, a fellow named Cody, and my field partner, Lauren.