by John Brady
by Francisco Pantoja Martinez
by Lori Erickson Photos by Bob Sessions
Blending curiosity with play, Lori Erickson challenges herself to learn about the flora and fauna of the Midwest with a guidebook that turns nature study into a treasure hunt.
by Steve Hopkins
Two stories about water quality in Iowa, one good and one bad, written by the former Non-point Source Coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
by Kylie Klassen
by Emma Kieran Schaefer
This piece needs a blurb!
by John Whittaker and Devin Pettigrew
Experimental archaeology reveals the effectiveness of hunting bison with ancient weaponry.
by John P. Lee
by Lucien Akira DeJule
by Kamyar Enshayan
By Anika Jane Beamer
For many, the coyote is a symbol of America’s wide-open spaces. So why is it appearing in our cities, our parks, our back yards? For essayist Anika Jane Beamer the coyote’s tenacity and resilience amidst urbanization and climate change make it a lens we can use to examine the broader implications of human and ecological displacement.
by Kailee Shermak
Can you name the plants in your front yard? Do you know which ones are edible? Join Associate Editor Kailee Shermak on her journey to answer these questions by learning the ways of foraging.
by Betty Moffett
by Mariah Manoylov
In this essay, a Georgia-based writer shares her introduction to the prairie’s wild beauty.
by Beryl Clotfelter
by Benjamin Schrager
by Felix Benardo
An hour-and-a-half drive from Chicago, the Zumwalt Acres farm operation calls tiny Sheldon, Illinois, home. Sheldon is 98 percent white and politically ruby red—a fact that might make it seem an unlikely place to be managed according to traditional Jewish principles. But the Welbel sisters are doing exactly that, on land that’s been in their family for six generations. Associate Editor Felix Benardo describes what it’s like to live and work there.
by John Freeberg
by Dan McCue
Some dread the coming of a prairie winter. Since 2010, Dan McCue has helped his family view the cold with anticipation. He builds them an ice rink in his backyard in Grinnell, Iowa.
by Dan Weeks
by Mary Ann Schwindt
When Associate Editor Mary Ann Schwindt’s Belgian forebears immigrated to the Midwest, they brought Rolle Bolle with them. The sport—sort of an amalgam of curling and horseshoes, played with a lopsided cross between a discus and bocce ball—still brings families like hers together for friendly competition. Her film takes us inside the Rolle Bolle subculture.
by Sandy Moffett
by Zoé Strecker
Ceramic artist and college professor Zoé Strecker is friends with her neighbor, who just happens to be one of the most respected and influential figures in American letters and environmental activism: Wendell Berry. Her essay limns the effect Berry has had on her life and her work.
By Luke Bryson
The phrase commodity crop is familiar to anyone living in the rural Midwest. Generally, it applies to corn and soybeans, but in Associate Editor Luke Bryson’s multimedia project, we can see how the machinery of marketing has been employed to co-opt one of the Midwest’s iconic wildflowers.
by Frank Heath
by James Colbert
by Zach Spindler-krage
by Eleanor Corbin
Fermilab, the United States’ premier particle accelerator laboratory, is on a 6,800-acre campus in Batavia, Illinois. It’s also home to a small herd of bison whose genetic purity makes them important to the species’ survival.
Betty Moffett takes daily walks on the acreage where she and her husband are restoring the prairie. The couple’s dog always accompanies her on these rambles, and one day her companion provided her with a reminder that even in the tamest territory, the wild is a hairsbreadth away.
by John C. Whittaker
by Tim Johnson
A hotbed of activity for truckers and families alike that garners over 5,000 visitors per day from across the country.
by Zainab Thompson
by Amanda Gray
by Abigail Evans
by John Ikerd
by Shiraz Johnson
by Chloe Kelly
It’s a familiar story: an artist leaves her rural home to feed her creative process amid the hurly-burly of the big city. What happens, though, when an artist reverses that process? Meet Lisa Bergh, who did exactly that.
by Tristan Aschittino
by Maizie Schaffner
When most people hear "Prairie School Design," they probably think of Frank Lloyd Wright’s low-slung houses or Louis B. Sullivan’s towering office blocks. Ceramics, though, are one of the ways high-end prairie-influenced design became known to average people. And among the day’s most influential potteries was the American Terracotta and Ceramics Works, in Terra Cotta, Illinois.
by Kaitie Hess
What’s the best way to find out how “community” is defined where you live? Ask the local kids to make a mural.
by Sophia Unzicker
What stories can fabric scraps tell? So many stories of love and family, of laughter and healing, and of community.
by Cornelia F. Mutel
by Ingrid Meulemans
by Harriet Behar
by Mary Kay Shanley
Want to know how prairie culture has changed? Consult the obituaries in your local paper.
by Toby Cain
by Elizabeth J. Queathem
by Jackson Menner
Driving the back roads of rural Iowa with civil rights icon John Lewis, contributor Jack Menner learned the meaning of retail politics.
by William G. Stowe
by Connor Arneson
by Dan Kaiser
by Craig Howe and Abe Katz
On any given outing on the prairie, you might just turn over an artifact from the country’s indigenous past. Or maybe not…
by John Lawrence Hanson
by Mary LaHay
by Joshua Lockyer
How do we reverse the degradation of our prairie home by industrial ag? The residents of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage think they know.
by Drake Larsen, Dr. Lisa Schulte and Dr. John Tyndall
by Emma Thomasch
by Jennifer Mueller
Our first contributor from Canada tells how a piece of prairie history was preserved in northern Alberta.
by Abby Aresty and Eden Marek
by Nina Kouchi
by Samuel Goldberg
by Frederick L. Kirschenmann
by Will Fellows
by Mckenna Doherty
by Kayla Koether
by Mikayla Trissell
by Laura J. Jackson
by Lanny Haldy
by Mustard Seed Farm workers
by Byron Hueftle-Worley
How could a hunk of rock buried on a college campus have so much history attached to it? This woodworker/amateur historian tells us.
by Sophie Neems
by J. Harley McIlrath
by Janet Carl
by Jon Andelson
by Lesley Delmenico, Baz Kershaw, and Susan Haedicke
by Eric Bjorn Boyce
by Jason Ross
by Jason Darrah
by Maya Andelson
by Pete Ferrell
by Nicki Kreutzian
by Tenzing Sherpa
Corey Wannamaker, on behalf of the Dakota Sunset Museum
by Mary Rose Bernal
by Thomas Rosburg
by Lane Atmore
by Paul Goodnature
by Thomas Dean
by Alicia DeHaan
During the yearly migration, an astonishing forty-five percent of all North American shorebirds pass through this Kansas marsh.
by Cindy Crosby
Blake said we can see the universe in a grain of sand; can we see the prairie expanses of the past in a remnant on an Illinois hi…
by Emma Schaefer, Wyatt and Monika Sutherland
by Harrison Kessel
by Steve Adair
by Sebastian Braun
This scholar of Native American culture meditates on the meaning of roots, and the challenge to them represented by energy extrac…
by Sarah Beisner
by Sam Perez
by Hannah Taylor
by Kendra Bradley
by Robby Burchit
