State park trail entry point.

Journey Home

Tales from the pilgrimage.

Sustainability

  • Earth Day 2013

    LAKE MACBRIDE— There is little new to say this Earth Day. It’s not that I’m down about it, but most everything has been said before. What started in high school as a way to participate in a national environmental movement by selling green and black buttons leading up to April 22 has become institutionalized in… Read more

  • Pelicans and Cranes

    LAKE MACBRIDE— The pelican migration is underway, and flocks of the white and black birds fly lazily— above our lakes and river— back and forth in a pattern I recognize, but can’t adequately describe. Pelicans appear here twice a year. I stopped during a trip to North Liberty to watch them fly near the construction… Read more

  • Sustaining a Creative Life

    LAKE MACBRIDE— Today, the key element in sustaining a creative life in Big Grove Township is magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salt. A thirty minute foot bath provides a form of relief few other things can provide. I recommend it, although for the most part, people already know about it, and for some it works, for… Read more

  • Main Street Today

    SOLON— The city recently upgraded the street lights, sidewalks and business entryways to make Main Street more appealing. Mostly successful, Main Street is welcoming… and more handicapped accessible. With the rise of our automobile culture, combined with an ongoing movement from rural to urban areas,  Main Street suffered. What was a stable rural community developed… Read more

  • Working to Live

    LAKE MACBRIDE— Let’s face it, we’re not like the Kennedys. We have no progenitor who leveraged a rising mass society in a way that both produced wealth and enabled new generations to focus on life free from financial concerns. That such a family existed, was well known, and equally well documented, influenced my generation in… Read more

  • Cotton, Capital and Sustainability

    LAKE MACBRIDE— During the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, lodging books up well in advance. The annual March event started as a way of controlling the snake population and has evolved into a festival that attracts more than 40,000 visitors annually. I haven’t tried rattlesnake meat, which is popular at the festival, but it reportedly… Read more

  • On Our Own

    LAKE MACBRIDE— Unexpectedly, as the automatic garage door opened, the rural mail contractor was pulling up the driveway in his SUV to leave the box that contained my last 1,610 posts, written in a fever since 2008. They didn’t seem like much for the investment in time and resources. I thanked him for the delivery… Read more