Nancy: So, when we moved here, my kids were ten, sixteen, and eighteen and we had been living in Doha, Qatar for six years. I had never been to Wyoming. My husband was the lead employee, so he came over for a job interview and he met people. I had met some English department folks over Zoom, but I had not been to Wyoming on a site visit. I had no idea what it looked like, and I wish I could say that I took the time to get on Google Maps and Google Earth [to] look at the town, but the reality is, I was by myself with my three kids and a full-time job for about six months before we moved. I had to pack up the house. I had to work with the movers. I had to close our lives abroad. I was just too busy and too exhausted. I did not do any homework on Laramie before we got here. We flew into Denver, and it was four of us and we each had one big suitcase and one little suitcase because we had to live off that for six months. My husband rented an SUV in Fort Collins and came to get us. We drove home and it was [at] night because our flight got in [at] like 10:30 at night. It was dark. I didn't see any of the landscape driving home.

We got up the next morning and, for whatever reason, we had to take the Suburban back to Fort Collins. My kids hadn't seen their father in six months. I got in a little car, [and] they got in the Suburban so they could visit, and we headed down Highway 287, the last little tail of Wyoming and then into Colorado. I saw how beautiful it [was] here, I started ugly crying. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be in this kind of landscape, and I just couldn't get over it. I can't even describe it. [It] was so emotional: thankfulness. We still say, almost 10 years later, I can't believe we get to live here because it's just so profoundly beautiful. I probably cried for half an hour into Colorado, and I'm really glad my kids weren't with me because they would've been like, what is wrong with you? Are you sad that we moved here? But truly it was beautiful because it's because. It's hard to explain. We had come from a beautiful desert, but that was very flat. It was 13 feet above sea level. So, it's the magnitude of the change. But then just the enduring beauty, I still kind of get that, you know, kicked in the chest feeling, when I get to go take a road trip around Wyoming still today.

Grace: What inspired you to tell the story of Wyomingites?

Nancy: A lot of Wyomingites don't get talked about at all. When you see the national weather [map], the word Wyoming isn't even on the state. So, it's like it gets reduced to stereotypes and it gets erased. And what I witnessed from living here was something very different in terms of the beauty, not just of the landscape, but of the people. When I first moved here, one of the things I noticed is that people in Wyoming or in Laramie tend to really value the quiet and their personal space. I can see why. There’s so much space here full of beautiful things, but there's so much space that you can relax and kind of have a little space instead of always having to share it with other people. Wyomingites, I noticed, were quiet, soft spoken; they weren't bragging about themselves.

They weren't telling tall tales or like telling you what they were going to make for dinner in the grocery line. They were just mild mannered and quiet. I've experienced needing some help on the side of the road, and sure enough, the second person that passed stopped to help me. I think they're helpful, but they're just like quiet about their lives, and so having the privilege of meeting people and listening to their stories during this project has really been a lot of fun because it’s like you get to see a little peak behind this veil of quietness, and you get to see that people have really interesting opinions and they have interesting stories, and they have interesting families and interesting experiences. What I've learned about Wyoming and Wyomingites is that there is a lot going on, even if they're not standing on a street corner shouting about it.

When we first moved here, that first summer we lived here, a friend of mine came to visit and she had lived for a long time in New Mexico. She made the funniest comment to me as she was leaving. She was, you know, wishing us well. It was so nice to see her. We had spent a lovely weekend together and she said, “the mountain will either accept you or reject you, and after a while you'll begin to feel that acceptance or that rejection.” So, she said, just listen and be aware, because if the mountain rejects you, it's okay to move on, but if the mountain accepts you, you'll know it. Ever since she said that to me, which [was] almost 10 years [ago], every time I'm where I can see the mountain or the mountains, I always say hello. Like, “hello, grandfather mountain, I'm here. I appreciate being here.” I try to demonstrate my respect for the land that we get to live on, and its complicated history. I just want to say I'm really grateful on a daily basis that the mountain seems to have accepted me and, and I don't ever want to leave. 

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.