Laramie in Pictures: Campus Scenes

The campus has changed a lot since I was a naive little undergraduate here.  For one, we now have a "Cheney International Center" (no freaking kidding) and a new Anthropology building.  I was saddened to find the old Honors house razed to the ground and an OIT center plunked in its place.  (It was just as well, to be honest.)  Somebody finally got wise and also ripped down a good chunk of Coe Library and turned it into a usable library space complete with coffee shop and up-to-date computer lab.  And, most noticeably, they have put what must have been an incredible chunk of money into campus beautification, fuzzing out the hard edges of the concrete public spaces with small gardens full of boulders and birch trees, landscaped with native flowers.  I always thought this was a beautiful campus, but now it might be one of the most charming college campuses in the western US.  I'm serious. 

But the important things-- to me at least-- haven't changed much at all.  The sandstone walls of the buildings still glow like gold when the sun is at the right angle, Prexy's pasture is still the same, and the squirrels still cuss and throw things at you when you walk between Merica Hall and Old Main.  The Fine Arts building still looks like it's built out of cardboard graham crackers, sagging a little around the edges.  Although I didn't see him out there this summer, I was reassured that Dr. Shive in the Honors Program still roams the green spaces, plunking down birdies on the ad-hoc Frisbee golf course with deadly accuracy despite his advancing years. 

So, here are a few pictures of some of the places that most define the Laramie campus: Old Main, the original campus building from the territorial days, Arts and Sciences, and even some of that fancy new landscaping that blurs the distinction between public and natural space in ways that I think I rather like.  Enjoy!  

Laramie in Pictures: By Night

Most of my memories of Laramie are by night.  Evenings were the only time I had to get off campus most days, so the landscape I most commonly knew as an undergraduate was one lit by the streetlight rather than the sun.  The town has a completely different character under the moonlight, and one that, I have to admit, I rather fancy.  So, on July 3rd this year, I was wandering around downtown Laramie, Wyoming with a camera and a tripod taking night pictures of the city.  

I know these streets look completely deserted for a Saturday night, but you have to understand Laramie culture (and its climate) to realize how busy things actually were. I was walking around town in a thick hoodie and a coat, and I was still shivering because it dropped down into the fifties that night; if you're smart, you were indoors.  Late at night, the streets are deserted because all of the bars are packed; the next morning when I took pictures, the streets were deserted because all the churches were full. It's an interesting little social comment on Laramie culture.  Enjoy! 

Laramie in Pictures: The Railroad

When I left my hometown to go to Laramie this summer, I did so with the goal of fulfilling two different requests:

1. From my father: "Go take your brother Coyote out for a steak and make sure he's eating." 
2. From my husband:  "Go spit on a train for me." 

I guess that tells you, in a tacky sort of way, where trains rate in the Laramie experience.  As you know, in the first play, the railroad plays an important part in setting the scenery in setting up Laramie's mythical landscape.  This is a ranching and railroad town, we learn.  And, even today, that's true, even if the railroad isn't as central-- or as busy-- as it once was.  The enormous rail-yard bordering the edge of the downtown district and dividing east from west Laramie is still one of the focal points of Laramie culture.  Some of us go to the catwalk over the switching yard to think, or to spit on trains.  Some people go there to make out.  And there are always photographers hanging about trying to get pictures of the engines which go zipping through the town. 

So, I wanted to give you some idea of what kind of experience the Laramie rail-yard affords in pictures: by day, by night, and from the catwalk.

And did I spit on a train, you ask?
Well, I couldn't leave my husband disappointed, now could I?

Laramie in Pictures: Prairie Storms

Many people think that the Great Plains and the prairies are boring because they are so uniform: unending, unchanging, lifeless; nothing but an endless stretch of flat grass and mosquitoes.  (They're right about the mosquitoes.)  In reality, the prairie is a land of tensions and contrasts, and therein lies its real beauty.  The prairies I roamed as a little jackrabbit lay at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and above that endless stretch of golden grass is an endless sky, so deep blue you could swim in it; and in that sky are an endless parade of clouds fleeing as fast as the ripples through the golden tide below, casting shadows over the grass which glide, like ships, over the ground.  And in the seeming stillness and peace of the flatlands lurks the ever-present threat of the prairie storm, one of the most amazing feats of raw power God's ever given mortal man.   

When I was in Laramie, I was treated to an amazing display of weather-- in fact, a prairie storm which swallowed up the plains and spun off tornadoes to the north of town.  Here are a few shots of that storm so you can see it for yourself as it rolled towards, and through, Laramie:

Laramie in Pictures: Bosler

On the 4th of July, I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting for one of the nastiest prairie storms I had seen in ages to blow into town. I drove out chasing the storm about an hour previous to watch the thunderhead build up and get a few pictures. The clouds were stacked up about a mile high, thick, with a lot of heat and water in them. They were almost black near the bottom. If they hit town, I was pretty sure we’d at least get some serious hail. Once I realized that the black, ominous eye of that storm was hurtling in my direction, I turned around and went back to Laramie.

So, while I’m eating lunch and watching the wind pick up, two people, an older lady and a kid in his twenties, greet each other and start chatting about the day’s events. Eventually that conversation turns to the storm gliding over the prairie towards town.

“I heard there was just a tornado north of town,” the lady says.
“It didn’t kill anybody, did it?” The kid asks. “There’s not much out there.”
“Nah, it can kill a couple of cows for all I care,” the lady replied. “As long as there’s no harm done.”
The young man thought for a moment. “It could kill a couple people in Bosler and I wouldn’t mind,” he observed dispassionately.  Yeowch.  

As it turns out, it became clear as their conversation unfolded that the young man was referring to a certain eccentric old man who has a small role in The Laramie Project. Apparently, opinions haven’t changed much since I was here last. 

The funny thing is, about ninety minutes after that kid hoped for a tornado in Bosler, I guess it really did happen. From what I could see, however, none of the buildings or houses were touched-- not that I’m sure I could tell even if they were. Bosler’s pretty much a ghost town anymore; it's no longer even considered a town by the state.

So, for your viewing enjoyment, here is the legendary Bosler....

Laramie in Pictures: The Road to Laramie

While I was in Laramie, I took literally hundreds of photos from Vedauwoo to Centennial, and I'd like to share a few with you over the next couple of months as I continue to write through some things. The first series I would like to share with you isn't Laramie proper-- rather, the vast chunk of land between Laramie and Casper.  These photos, taken on that lonely, beautiful drive, stretch from the Shirley Basin, to Medicine Bow, Rock River, and just north of Laramie. 

So, here are some of the most iconic images from the road to Laramie: wind turbines, antelope, and fences.  Oh, and mosquitoes, but they don't photograph so well.

Enjoy! 

---

Why, yes, I am sitting down in the middle of an active highway...
This is the road approaching the Shirley Basin.  

Medicine Bow, WY's newest additions, which aren't producing power just yet.




These are snow (also called "drift") fences, which keep the snow off the roads in winter.

Free Stuff! Yay!

Okay, so an important goal for this blog is to make it useful for others who are interested in The Laramie Project or Laramie, Wyoming.  One way I've tried to do that in the past has been to put together a running bibliography of useful literature on the plays.  So far, it has (rightly) been the most popular page on this blog, which makes me quite happy.

The next thing I wanted to do was provide visual materials.  It's hard to find pics of Laramie or relating to TLP that are actually, you know, usable for free.  It's mostly protected under full copyright.  There's not a lot on Flickr for Laramie that's under Creative Commons, so I took a bunch of pics while I was in Laramie this summer, and I'm currently cleaning them up and posting them.  These range from pics of the campus and the plains to a surprisingly close reproduction of the Vintage cover of The Laramie Project (which, if you've ever wondered, is the exit from I-80 onto Grand Avenue). 

You can access the ones I have up so far (and the list will be growing) at the links gadget on the right.  There's one page right now for pictures of the town of Laramie, one for the campus area, and one for landscapes.  These pages will be growing over time, so it wouldn't hurt to check back in a month or so to see what's new.

These are free for any non-commercial or editorial use, and you're free to print them without specific permission in any materials, as long as you're not specifically selling them.  (And if you do want to use them for sellable stuff, just drop me a note.)

They're protected under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons copyright, so that gives you a lot of flexibility!

To give you a sample, here's one of my more interesting photos-- a picture of the Matthew Shepard memorial bench being put to good use.  Enjoy!