Current Project:
My current book project is Three Rivers: Journeys and Junctures, essays about the Platte, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers. Several of the essays have been published or are forthcoming:
"What the River Carries" considers the various objects, organisms, chemicals, philosophies, and mythologies carried by the Mississippi River. Forthcoming in Prairie Schooner.
“Restorations” interweaves three stories: fishing with my son at Boyer Chute; the restoration of that side channel of the Missouri by several local and federal agencies; my son’s recovery from addiction through time spent in wild places. Forthcoming in the North Dakota Review.
“Nauvoo: The Beautiful Place” presents a town in western Illinois with a remarkable past: it was the site of two, mid-19th-century utopias, one Mormon, one Icarian, as well as the oldest vineyards and wineries in the state. In recent years, many of the locals who have long loved Nauvoo, myself included, have had to grieve the loss of buildings, landscape, and access resulting from the surge of development by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the related influx of tourists and new residents. Forthcoming in Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley.
“Meanders” considers the serpentine shape of meandering streams of water (both the Platte River and the sinuously-shaped street in front of my house, a former creek bed) from the perspectives of scientists and artists. Forthcoming in NEBRASKAland.
“Ex Situ” profiles Margaret From, a botanist, who is micro-propagating the threatened western fringed prairie orchids at the Henry Doorly Zoo’s Center for Rare and Endangered Plants in Omaha, Nebraska, and transplanting them at the Valentine Wildlife Refuge. Forthcoming in Organization & Environment.
“No Other River” celebrates the sandhill cranes that stage on the central Platte, my discovery of them nine springs ago, and those who are working to protect crane habitat. Published in the Iowa Review, 39:2 (Fall 2009).
“Fleet” muses upon hummingbirds in Nebraska, my father’s long illness, the hummingbird display at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, and the passage of time. Published in Gettysburg Review 20:4 (Winter 2007-2008).
“Nine-mile Prairie” tells parallel stories: that of my 20-year relationship with prairie and that of the grassland ecologist, John Weaver, who conducted his seminal research at Nine-mile Prairie, adjacent the Lincoln, Nebraska, airport. Published in Michigan Quarterly Review 46:3 (Summer 2007).