My Own Private Wyoming

Architects don’t always get to design and oversee the construction of large gleaming band shells. Sometimes they are pushed into the large catacombs of factory-style architectural firms to design banks or Arby’s or nondescript condominiums. Not all hairdressers spend their days fluffing Jennifer Anniston’s caramel mane. Some of them stare at patchy scalps for long hours under the din of green fluorescents in a neighborhood Supercuts, And I am here to tell you that not all photographers get assignments on the coast. Some of them are sent to Scottsbluff, Nebraska to photograph retirement homes.

Pulling into the Horizon Retirement Facility, I was greeted by pruned faces pressed to windows, cupping hands around their eyes in the shape of a moon, their spectacles flashing little coins of light at me like jawas peering from a darkened cave. Quiet and decorative, Horizon residents look like old bodies tossed into the background of a Golden Girls episode – extras in their own life. A woman in pink sat in front of a large bird emporium positioned in the center of the lobby. She craned her head from side to side, alternating hands under her chin, tracing the brief six foot flight of the half dozen tiny birds.

I was assisted by a Mrs. Rosa Martinez who showed me around the facility and talked a bit about Scottsbluff. She pointed out the actual bluff a few miles away and told me with complete seriousness that it was named after a guy named Scott. Hiram Scott was a fur trapper that “gained a certain immortality by dying, alone and deserted by his companions, at the base of a magnificent formation of bluffs along the North Platte River in 1828.” Looking around at the residents of the Horizon Retirement Facility I wanted to say that Mr. Scott hadn’t really achieved anything that out of the ordinary. But Rosa is a sweet woman so I kept my mouth shut and nodded, hoping to run into her again some day.

On my drive back to Denver, I saw a chilling sight - a green sign pointing toward Laramie. I can’t say it was my wailing wall or Lourdes or Auschwitz but it immediately got to me and I made the decision to drive the 50 miles to Laramie from Cheyenne. I didn’t know what I would do once I got there but it felt important. I doubted there would be signs pointing me to the site where Mathew Sheppard was found strung up on a fence, but I thought there might be something, some acknowledgment or coffee mug or bumper sticker.

Halfway there I changed my mind. Pulling over, I scanned the fields and lolling landscape of paper-bag wheat, the seemingly endless amount of barbed wire bound between pole after rotting pole and knew I had seen enough. What would I have done there anyway? Walked around? Asked for directions? It seemed disrespectful so I turned the car around and sped as fast as I could toward Denver.