In Wyoming, the winters are long—sometimes lasting from October through May—so when the summer rolls around, we like to make use of it. This series will celebrate some of the strange, wonderful and/or inspiring thing we got up to this last summer, activities that will be fueling poems, essays, stories and bar-talk for the months to come. And some activities that won’t, but that were just too enjoyable to resist.

First up: second-year Nonfiction student, Rebecca Golden. Rebecca spent her sumer in Detroit, Michigan, supported by the James Orr Willits Ethics Award and an English Department Travel grant.

Here’s what Rebecca had to say about her summer:

“This summer, I conducted interviews in Detroit, and spent a lot of time at the Heidelberg Project. I did a lot of the interviews there, and took a lot of pictures. Heidelberg is a fold art environment created by Tyree Guyton. You can find it in Detroit near Mt Elliot and Mack. It’s in the 5th district for city council — a district that also contains Eastern Market and Belle Isle (although the idea of anyone living in the public park that is Belle Isle is a little preposterous). I lived in Grosse Pointe this summer, in a house once occupied by Jack Kerouac. I swam in the Detroit River. I saw the ruins of robot-devastated Hong Kong (they’re filming Transformers 4 downtown and have recreated China in Michigan).”

Sounds like a great summer, Rebecca! We can’t wait to read the writing (or hear the bar-talk) your summer inspires!