<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2Ybol3_0wFBz6l900" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2Ybol3_0wFBz6l900" width="1200" height="800" ><figcaption>Design by Vivien Wang.</figcaption></figure>When I visit a place, the art I consume there is inextricably linked to my memories of where I visited. When I rewatch a film I first saw on vacation, I feel like I’m right back where I first watched it. Director Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” will forever be connected to my first day in Prague when I watched it while too exhausted to leave the comfort of my AirBnB. This past summer, I lived in western Wyoming for just less than two months while taking classes and doing research, the longest I’ve ever spent outside southeast Michigan. I was born, raised and now go to school within an hour’s driving distance of Detroit. But for the first time in my life, I got to explore a new part of the country, find a new home in the west and experience art along the way. I went to Wyoming to take classes at Camp Davis, the University of Michigan’s Rocky Mountain field station located near Jackson, Wyo. My days were filled with climbing landslides and wading through streams, all while learning about geology and environmental science; my afternoons were spent salivating for dinner, wondering with my classmates what delicious meal we’d be served that day; evenings passed by as I lost at pool with movies on in the background while avoiding schoolwork, nights ended stoking a campfire as everyone drifted off to sleep. I was exhausted for every second of it, sleeping in for any last moment of rest. I was often the last person to arrive at breakfast, but never once was I the first one to go to bed. My days off were not spent catching up on sleep; I instead would wake up early, drive to Grand Teton National Park and hike up a mountain with my friends. We were surrounded by one of the most beautiful landscapes in the country: Giant spires of rock vaulted up from the earth with swaths of grassland and mazes of water at their base. Bears, elk, moose and eagles were all right in our backyard; it’d be a disservice to not seek them out and observe marvelous wildlife in a pristine environment. That is if we hadn’t had “Lord of the Rings” to watch.Squeezed in between our classes and hikes, my friends and I watched all three of the extended versions of Peter Jackson’s (“They Shall Not Grow Old”) “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy. It’s a little silly in retrospect: When living in one of the most stunning and unbelievable landscapes in the world, we all decided, instead, to watch fantasy movies set in a beautiful fictional world. But even the most nature-loving outdoorsmen need a break and “Lord of the Rings” was an apt choice: My love of the outdoors was fostered by stories like “Lord of the Rings.” While watching the films, I felt a special connection to nature and life that is hard to find outside of Middle Earth. The film reminds the viewer that all life is precious, and it’s important to savor the peace you can find in a green land. In Wyoming, while hiking and traveling with friends, I found a little bit of this peace. Among the many well-worn paths or while driving down backroads with Howard Shore’s (“Pieces of a Woman”) soundtrack in the background, I found a new home. But that home wasn’t permanent; it was a fleeting journey that slipped through my fingers. Eventually, I did leave and my time frolicking in the woods while daydreaming had to end. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel, “The Dispossessed,” protagonist Shevek lacks a home. I’ve read “The Dispossessed” a couple of times before — it’s one of my favorite books. But when I was in Wyoming, I had to reread it. The novel tells the story of Anarres and Urras, two worlds that are diametrically opposed. Urras is wealthy and Anarres is poor; Urras is an idyllic, bountiful planet and Anarres is a barren desert with barely survivable conditions; and Urras is dominated by a capitalist, patriarchal society and Anarres is entirely anarcho-syndicalist. Anarresti society split off from Urras after a revolution; they collectivized, abandoned monetary systems and rejected hierarchy in daily life. Wyoming felt like a tumultuous mix of these two worlds. It is possible to drive from desolate flatlands to rolling pastures in less than an hour; million-dollar ranches owned by the uber-wealthy sit next to run-down family farms on dirt roads.In “The Dispossessed,” Shevek matures from a child to a leading physicist and decides to leave the Anarres for Urras. While he is an ardent believer in the anarcho-syndicalist application of mutual aid and the dismantling of capitalism, his focus on theoretical physics creates discord between him and his community. Shevek is an outcast on his home world, often keeping to himself until he meets the woman who will become his future wife. He leaves for Urras partially to study physics, but his secret primary goal is to continue the struggle that started when Anarresti society was founded: He aims to reshape both Urras and Anarres for the better and bridge the gap between the two worlds. But while on Urras, he realizes that he belongs even less there. Urras accepts him not for the sake of scientific or ideological advancement, but in the hopes that his theoretical work would prove useful economically and militarily. Anarres is not perfect — the novel is subtitled “An Ambiguous Utopia” for a reason — but Urras is built on domination and subservience. Its idyllic facade covers the immense inequality and exploitation present across the planet. The new home I found in Wyoming wasn’t perfect either. I was there to take geology courses and knew, with the state’s long history of exploration, there was vast scientific data available. But part of the reason Wyoming’s landscape is so extensively studied is its long history of oil drilling. Many early geologists in the region were there not for strict academic study, but to find natural resources to exploit. Cattle farming is foundational to Wyoming’s agriculture system and cattle are a leading agricultural source of greenhouse gasses. To me, Wyoming is both Anarres and Urras. It contains the highs of scenic nature and the lows of environmental exploitation. In the Tetons, I saw untouched landscapes hidden in snow-capped peaks. To get there, I drove miles through endless industrial agriculture. But regardless of this, I didn’t want to leave. I saw Wyoming’s beauty and wanted to appreciate it as much as possible. Luckily, I didn’t have to leave with the rest of my peers.After my classes ended, I spent my final two weeks in Wyoming working with two PhD students mapping geologic features in southwest Wyoming. We were in the middle of nowhere; there were multiple days when the only people we saw were each other. I would only get cell reception in brief flashes while standing on a ridge hundreds of feet above the valley below. It wasn’t the idyllic world of Jackson County, but it was still Wyoming, a place I had come to think of as a second home. The final book I read there was science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future.” It follows the titular organization established to advocate for the rights of the world’s future generations as the effects of climate change ravage the world, including a heat wave in India that kills millions. The novel covers decades of events, exploring social, economic and political responses to climate change. I never finished “The Ministry for the Future.” It wasn’t for a lack of time either: I watched an entire season of Survivor downloaded on my phone while getting groceries and spent the three-day drive from Wyoming to Ann Arbor listening to multiple podcasts. “The Ministry for the Future” presented a future that filled me with so much dread, I had to put it away. This surprised me at the time, considering the book has been praised for its supposedly hopeful and positive outlook. Bill Gates complimented it for its urgent yet inspiring message regarding the necessity of climate action; the book even made Barack Obama’s list of his favorite books of 2020. While the book is sanguine and full of inventive ideas to combat climate change, something felt off. Many of its hypothetical solutions sounded technically feasible but their implementation and whether they would tangibly better the climate stood on shaky ground. The book devotes a large chunk of its page count to exploring how to use both traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies to prevent worsening climate conditions. It was the first domino fall that ended in me not finishing the novel. Even more grounded ideas, like pumping water on top of Antarctica to slow sea level rise, weren’t much better. The supposedly inspired ideas of “The Ministry for the Future” felt like Band-Aids at best. In previous works, Robinson directly criticized figures like Obama and Gates for their complicity in environmental exploitation. The dissonance was jarring. In one chapter, Robinson would discuss the inevitability of eco-terrorism; in the next, he’d talk about how it’s necessary to work within systems to enact change.This is ultimately what made me stop reading “The Ministry for the Future.” When I looked out across empty Wyoming plains and river basins, trying to admire the landscape, one thing would always stand out against the natural beauty: oil pumps. In Wyoming, oil is inescapable. I’d be on a mountain and see a pipeline in the distance. My brother visited, and instead of the beautiful landscape, he talked about the oil pumps he saw. And here was an author I previously enjoyed for his radical thinking, also unable to surmount its oil’s omnipresence. I started “The Ministry for the Future” hoping to see a brighter future, one where the bleak world around me was not an inevitable endpoint. But there were no calls to end the burning of fossil fuels up until the point I stopped reading — about two-thirds through the book. There was only my dreary reality. I was no longer exploring the Tetons with friends: I was surrounded by oil wells in an empty landscape.But Wyoming still feels like my second home — that same brother who visited me recently moved there, and I look forward to returning to the state, even beyond simply visiting family. Months later, I still remember the dread I felt leading up to my departure, but it doesn’t feel so bad knowing I will go back. Perhaps it’s nostalgia, but that initial feeling of home that I first found while watching “Lord of the Rings” with friends has intensified now that I’m back in Michigan. My apprehension while facing the reality of climate change is still there, tied to Wyoming’s main sources of industry, but it’s not strong enough to stop me from returning. All of the art I read or watched in Wyoming feels like a time capsule of my experience there. Like any good home, my feelings are complex and ambiguous. Wyoming is both a nightmare and a dream. Wyoming is where I belong.Managing Arts Editor Zach Loveall can be reached at zloveall@umich.edu.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

The natural beauty and horror of Wyoming

When I visit a place, the art I consume there is inextricably linked to my memories of where I visited. When I rewatch a film I first saw on vacation, I feel like I’m right back where I first watched it. Director Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” will forever be connected to my first day in Prague when I watched it while too exhausted to leave the comfort of my AirBnB. This past summer, I lived in western Wyoming for just less than two months while taking classes and doing research, the longest I’ve ever spent outside southeast Michigan. I was born, raised and now go to school within an hour’s driving distance of Detroit. But for the first time in my life, I got to explore a new part of the country, find a new home in the west and experience art along the way.