Stranger than Fiction

This is my fourth full day here and I am slowly developing a rhythm. In the morning, the residents make their own breakfasts. My go to meal has been homemade granola, yogurt and sliced strawberries. This place is like a butler that anticipates your every need from bug spray to flashlights to office supplies. The kitchen is also equipped with an espresso maker and a bottomless cookie jar, as well as an endless supply of coffee and tea.  I fear that I may return to - or roll back to - Boston a little more spherical than before. 

View when riding my bike from living quarters to studio.

There is a 2/3 of a mile path leading from where we eat and sleep to where the studios are located.
UCross provides old sturdy bikes, the kind that you have to pedal backwards to brake. Mine is black, clunky and squeaky with a basket in the front. The joke has probably gotten old to people here, but I can't help singing the song in Wizard of Oz when the witch flies past Dorothy on her bike. You know the song I'm talking about. The path leads through a grassy field where there are almost always deer grazing. They usually unabashedly stare at anyone approaching, their heads immobilized like statues. This morning they broke into a run as I neared, their long white bushy tails waving back and forth.

 Being here has been like landing in a National Geographic special. Since arriving, I have seen a bunny hanging out with a deer, a skunk, a couple of raccoons, and one night as I drove home in the pitch darkness down a long, straight, tree-lined road, I spooked a owl, which took flight ahead of me and led me, gliding, down the path with its awe-inspiring wing span. It was a magical moment that I tried to commit to memory as it happened. It reminded me of running behind a great blue heron that had taken flight over a path in Brookline, near where I used to live. Its wing-span was so unbelievably wide and its legs looked like those of a prehistoric bird. I have also seen magpies, crows, and long-horns, which look like deer but are more closely related to giraffes. Down the street, I am told, is the carcass of a deer that was jumping over a barbed wire fence and got stuck. Its body is now hanging on the fence like a sweater thrown on the back of a chair. This morning I rode my bike down the highway trying unsuccessfully to find it. I did, however, pass what everyone here keeps referring to as Prairie Dog Village. It is another wide open field filled with literally hundreds of prairie dogs that are darting around and standing on their hind feet. This afternoon, I spent a few hours drawing a perfectly preserved dead hawk that had died with its head, body and wings forming a graceful arc.

The people who run this place and all of the people I have interacted with since arriving here have been nothing but warm and generous. I like the Wyoming drawl and local terms. We aren't supposed to use names so I am going to refer to people by what they do. The head of grounds and maintenance was telling me about how long and hard last winter was. "Winter just drug on," he told me. We are surrounded by a ring of rolling hills. Sometimes the tops of these hill are a rich burnt sienna or a charcoal black. The locals call this "clinker" which is formed when underground coal supplies light on fire and create a natural kiln, heating iron oxide in the soil until it turns red or blackens.

Last night I made a bonfire near the studios with a few of the other residents. At the end, it was only me, a photographer, and a writer that remained. We sat around the dying embers in fits of laughter. The writer is 27 years old, the youngest amongst us. When he relays any kind of information, he is hilariously funny, always wildly gesturing with his hands. The photographer is a kindred spirit, thoughtful and kind. At the end of the evening we rode with our headlamps through the pitch darkness. When we aimed our flashlights into the field, it lit up with at least a dozen pairs of glowing eyes. The deer were motionless and the little sharp lights of their eyes were all frozen in place. We thought it would somehow make a great start of a Far Side cartoon. The sky at night is usually a planetarium of stars. On this particular night, we had the extra added bonus of lightning lighting up the distant mountains. This was another moment I tried to record in my memory as it occurred. I have done this a lot since arriving, feeling this strange mix of joy and premature nostalgia for a moment that I am still in. It is just so heart breakingly beautiful here.  Even though I have had a rough start in the studio, I am in my own personal heaven here. I could not be any happier.

Dead hawk near my studio.