It was getting close to Halloween as I pulled in. The sign at the gate said, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

Autumn and Joy on the Open Road

There is nothing quite like the magic of traveling America in the fall.
Just as rivers serve as an automatic and compelling metaphor for our life journeys, so roads invite us to muse about the trajectory of our lives.
After grueling weeks on the road, our weary, and perhaps delirious, wayfarer visits the “Last Resting Place” RV park in the northern Colorado Rockies.
Clay will join noted author and MacArthur Awardee Patricia Limerick at the Vail Symposium in Colorado on August 21 to discuss George Orwell’s novel 1984.
A new chapter in my life begins. For the next several years, I plan to spend about half of the year on the road with my new Airstream trailer for our big humanities initiative, Listening to America. My plan is to get out on the open road, see the vastness of America and report my findings to you.

Nuking the Rocky Mountains

Clay and two colleagues met near the town of Rifle in western Colorado to visit the spot where the federal government set off a nuclear device in 1969 to test the feasibility of using atomic bombs in oil “fracking.”
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Sand Creek Massacre sign
Clay drives into eastern Colorado to spend time at the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and then to Denver to see an exhibit on the tragic event at the History Colorado Center. .
Charles Wilkinson
A beloved educator and leader in environmental and Native American law, Professor Charles Wilkinson of Colorado University, Boulder had a profound impact throughout the American West and beyond.…
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This is six in a series of dispatches from Clay Jenkinson chronicling his recent journey with two compatriots following the Colorado River and neighboring region.
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