Iowa and Wisconsin

Iowa and Wisconsin

Horseshoe Lake, way the heck north in Wisconsin, near where Bill Holtz lives William Holtz was an English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia when he stumbled upon the papers of Rose Wilder Lane. He committed himself to writing her biography even though...
No Limits But the Sky

No Limits But the Sky

Cover The Best Mountaineering Stories from Appalachia Journal 2014, Appalachian Mountain Club Books This anthology collects the most riveting, real-life adventure stories from America’s oldest mountaineering and conservation journal, Appalachia. Each of these...
My AT thru-hike

My AT thru-hike

The Eight-Legged Thing on Katahdin, end of our thru-hike, from left: Cay, Phil, Chris, Nat. Photo by Cowboy Paul Lybarger. The thin paperback’s cover bent back. My friend Phil held it up above his head in his left hand and tipped the page toward the beam of his tiny...
80 years since the Dust Bowl’s horrible drought

80 years since the Dust Bowl’s horrible drought

Dust buries a South Dakota farm in 1936. Wikimedia Commons Eighty years ago, in 1934, over-plowed land in the interior lands of the United States began to spread. The drought was the worst in American history. As Public Broadcasting said in its meticulous notes about...