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)