Since starting a shortgrass prairie garden in our yard in 2017, I’ve gone back to these books for reference and inspiration. I’ll update the list from time to time. If you have any to recommend, get in touch!

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Plants and gardening

Jewels of the Plains by Claude Barr (1983)

The Prairie Garden: a step-by-step guide to creating a shortgrass prairie garden by Rick Brune (1991)

Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Front Range & Foothills by the Colorado Native Plant Society (2016)

Low-Water Native Plants for Colorado Gardens: Prairies & Plains by the Colorado Native Plant Society (2016)

Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie by Kelly Kindscher (1987)

Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie by Kelly Kindscher (1992)

Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames by Joan Iverson Nassauer in Landscape Journal (1995)

Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy (2007)

Prairie Up by Benjamin Vogt

A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin Vogt

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Field guides

Prairie: A North American Guide by Suzanne Winckler (2004)

Peterson Field Guides: The North American Prairie by Ruth Carol Cushman and Stephen R. Jones (2004)

The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction by Cindy Crosby (2017)

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Natural history

The Prairie World by David S. Costello (1969)

The Shortgrass Prairie by Ruth Carol Cushman and Stephen R. Jones (1988)

Grassland by Richard Manning (1997)

Prairie: A Natural History by Candace Savage (2004)

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Fiction

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)

Plainsong by Kent Haruf (2000)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)

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Narrative nonfiction

Great Plains by Ian Frazier (1989)

PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon (1991)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

2020 books

February 18, 2020

Books I read in 2020:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)

Existence by David Hinton (2016)

Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)

Fire Making by Daniel Hume (2018)

Great Plains by Ian Frazier (2001)

Uncertain Path by William Tweed (2010)

Grass by Joe Truett (2010)

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017)

Six Degrees by Mark Lynas (2008)

Art + Objects by Graham Harman (2019)

The Progress of This Storm by Andreas Malm (2018)

Coyote America by Dan Flores (2016)

Hunger Mountain by David Hinton (2012)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1872) (read aloud with H)

Eventide by Kent Haruf (2004)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903) (read aloud with H)

Prairie: A Natural History by Candace Savage (2011)

Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy (2007)

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (1971) (read aloud with H)

Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy (2020)

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2011) (re-read from 2019)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952) (read aloud with H)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) (read aloud with H)

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913)

Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand (2020)

American Cosmic by D.W. Pasulka (2019)

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace (2009)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1953)

A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin Vogt (2017)

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram (1997)

The Prairie World by David Costello (1969)

The Book of the Bivvy by Ronald Turnbull (2001)

Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun (2020)

The Wooing of Earth by Rene Dubos (1980)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719) (read aloud with H)

PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon (1999)

Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt (1932)

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940)

North American Prairie by J.E. Weaver (1954)

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (2020)

The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton (2016)

Artist residencies of the Great Plains

February 03, 2020

[Updated October 28, 2020]

Below is a list of artist in residence programs on the Great Plains, as defined by the green area on the map below (excluding urban settings). The longer I live in Denver, the more I appreciate the beauty of the the Great Plains and how undervalued this region is aesthetically.

If you have one to add please leave a comment below!

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Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska

Art Farm, Marquette, Nebraska

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Saratoga, Wyoming

Cedar Point Biological Station, Ogallala, Nebraska

The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico

Homestead National Monument, Nebraska

Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, Wyoming

Prairieside Outpost, Matfield Green, Kansas

Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Roswell, New Mexico

Tallgrass Artist Residency, Matfield Green, Kansas

Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyoming

…

Map by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Photo captions for Whatever Moves or Makes Noise

January 03, 2020

In Whatever Moves or Makes Noise, my photo essay of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, I decided to leave photo captions out of the book. I wanted to focus on the beauty and ambience of the place, less like photo journalism or documentary photography. But understandably many people asked for this info! So here they are: captions for each picture in the book. If you have any questions, leave a comment below!

1. Looking across Taylor Valley over Lake Bonney (steep glacial valley; the lake occupies the valley floor)

2. Rocks buried in sand dunes, wind action on the sand, Victoria Valley dune field

3. Ice stalactites in an ice cave in Taylor Glacier, Taylor Valley

4. Aerial view of an ice field/glacier, McMurdo Dry Valleys region

5. Rock wall in Upper Wright Valley, within "The Maze"

6. "Moat ice" on the edge of Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley; the perimeter of each frozen lake has several meters of this smooth, transparent ice

7. Eroded boulders near the summit of Mount Falconer, Taylor Valley

8. Footprints and wind action on sand dunes, Victoria Valley dune field

9. Air bubbles in frozen lake ice

10. Sun (lower left) and upward-cast shadow on Mount Falconer, Taylor Valley

11. Silhouette of my friend Cliff inside one of the huts operated by New Zealand in Wright Valley

12. Cracks in lake ice

13. Sand over lake ice, various cracks and ripples

14. Lens flare looking down at moat ice

15. Sand and gravel slope with, trails of moisture and/or rocks, Bonney Riegel (a sort of ridge exposed by glacial erosion), Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley

16. Rock buried in gravel in an area called the “Zen Garden" above Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley

17. Don Juan Pond, Wright Valley (stays liquid water at 40 below due to high salinity)

18. "Popcorn ice,” nickel-size snow balls, Garwood Valley

19. Silhouette of Cliff walking at dusk, Taylor Valley

20. A vertical wall of ice, actually the end of a glacier, with a baseball-size rock, exposed to the light, melting the ice around it

21. Another rock in the Zen Garden, eroded and sculpted by wind borne particles

22. Ice cave, Taylor Glacier, Taylor Valley (look closely, it is occupied!)

23. Boulder, Wright Valley (what's interesting is the top of the "face" is titled 60 degrees toward the camera)

24. Sand waves, Bull Pass, Wright Valley

25. Aerial view of glaciers and exposed rock/soil on the edge of the McMurdo Dry Valleys

26. Cracks in lake ice

27. Bonney Riegel, Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley