Downsizing Pays off Big — With a Trip Down Abbey Road

I don’t know exactly what I expected from my personal downsizing campaign, but something really interesting is happening to me.
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Clay behind the wheel of the Caddy with the late Senator Alan Simpson in the middle and author Jack Kerouac riding shotgun.

Running Out of Gas (And the Value of the Humanities)

I nearly ran out of gas yesterday on a remote highway in the Bitterroot Mountains. It was a winding, narrow road with no shoulder to pull off onto ... but more of this crisis later in the story.
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About 40 boxes of books culled from Clay’s massive personal library sit ready to be taken to their new home.

The Great Downsizing Campaign

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” — Thoreau
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The Latest in My Great 2025 Downsizing Campaign

Friends have encouraged me to downsize for well more than a decade. I’m making progress!
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Natalia (Nat) and Michael (Mikey), two British school teachers, are currently on holiday in the US. They are canoeing over 3000 miles from Three Forks, Montana, down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

UPDATE: Two Brits and a Wee Paddle From Montana to New Orleans

Featured on our podcast last week, LTA followers have asked for an update in the saga of Nat and Mikey, a couple of Brits currently paddling from Montana to New Orleans.
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Inspired by Thoreau and the inevitability of time, Clay undertakes sorting through a six-decade collection of thousands of books.

My Adventures in Downsizing

After spending five or six decades buying books, an enormous number of books, I have begun to downsize.
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Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail marker.

The Stubborn Enigmas of Lewis and Clark

After decades of close study and a year following their trail, Clay remains dogged by the many unknowables surrounding the famous American expedition.
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Fort Peck Dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has operated the dam since 1940. Stretching across the upper Missouri River in northeastern Montana, it is the furthest upstream of six dams and reservoir projects built on the mainstem of the upper Missouri River. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Drowning the Missouri River — Lewis and Clark on the Reservoirs!

The Missouri was a wild, free-flowing river when Lewis and Clark began their epic western journey in 1804. Today, much of that river is a series of reservoirs.
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Meriwether Lewis was ignobly shot in the buttocks by his visually impaired hunting companion, Pierre Cruzatte, on their return to civilization in 1806

How Meriwether Lewis’ Unfortunate Hunting Mishap Brought to Mind the Bounty of American Consumer Capitalism

On the 221st anniversary of Meriwether Lewis’ hunting calamity, Clay ponders salt, macrobiotics, and an earlier extended personal journey on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
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Aerial view of Clay, Nolan and Brian's

On the Missouri River With Two Rapscallions

When I began to plan for my 2025 retracing of the Lewis and Clark expedition, hauling an Airstream from Jefferson’s Virginia across the country to Astoria, Oregon, I realized I was planning a paradox.
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