The Long Dreamed Airstream Joins the Listening to America Team
Monday, August 28 2023
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.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Jackalopes, Black-Footed Ferrets and Big, Big Sky
Monday, August 14 2023
On Clay’s third day from Bismarck to Vail, he travels through Wall, South Dakota and visits the U.S. National Grasslands Visitor Center and Badlands National Park.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
A Detour to the Home of American Writer Hamlin Garland
Tuesday, August 01 2023
As I continued my drive and not far into South Dakota, I visited the homestead of the Pulitzer Prize winning author Hamlin Garland.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Forgotten Battle of Whitestone Hill, North Dakota
Monday, July 31 2023
My first stop was the lonely Whitestone Hill, a grass hill in south central, North Dakota. It is the site of the bloodiest battle in North Dakota history in 1863.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
A Quest for an Ancient Tree
Friday, June 16 2023
I co-led a hike in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park recently. There were about a dozen of us. Our goal was a very old cottonwood tree in an obscure corner of the park down by the Little Missouri River. The tree is said to date to 1641.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
The Unnamed, Unheralded Falls of North Dakota
Saturday, June 10 2023
Geographers say North Dakota has only one waterfall. It’s a waterfall without a name, over in Ransom County, near the Minnesota border. For twenty years I have wanted to go see it.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road
Thunderstorms, Cottonwoods on the Great Plains
Thursday, June 01 2023
Typically we don’t get genuine punishing thunderstorms until after Memorial Day. I sat in a camp chair on the porch and studied the sky.
- Published in Dispatches from the Road