Five Months on the Missouri River
Five Months on the Missouri River

Author: Thomas Elpel

Publisher: HOPS Press

Published: 2020-03

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 9781892784506

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This archetypal story of adventure in Montana involved carving and paddling a dugout canoe along the Missouri River like the famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Author Tom Elpel was privileged to live out this long-time dream when he connected with Churchill Clark, the great-great-great-great grandson of Captain Clark. Together they whittled a 10,000 lb. Douglas fir log down to a 500+ lb. canoe. Tom led a five-month "Missouri River Corps of Rediscovery" expedition, paddling this 2,341-mile segment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail from Three Forks, Montana to St. Louis, Missouri. Tom and friends paddled the Missouri River as a conduit for exploring the land and meeting its inhabitants. Every campsite offered a new opportunity to hike and explore the geographical landscape and geology, identify plants, and forage for wild foods. They enjoyed a leisurely pace paddling through the heart of America while diving into Lewis and Clark history and the history of Native American tribes along the route. They were assisted by many River Angels along the way, meeting some of the nicest people on the planet. Throughout the journey, Tom wrote a weekly column that was published in newspapers along the Missouri River corridor. He fleshed out the story for the book, filling in additional details and whole new essays, accompanied by seven hundred stunning color photos from the adventure. "Five Months on the Missouri River" is tantalizing in its imagery, and anyone who picks up the book to look at the pictures will quickly be captivated by the story following the expedition from the beginning until its conclusion.

A Quiet Place of Violence
A Quiet Place of Violence

Author: Allen Morris Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2012-05

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9780982860144

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In this landmark work, Allen Morris Jones spends a year exploring one of the wildest ecosystems in North America, hunting and examining the philosophical issues of blood sport. In the process, he creates both a compelling defense for the hunt as well as one of the tradition’s first formal ethics. Jones argues that hunting must be right in that it returns us to the environment from which we evolved. When we hunt, we’re no longer watching nature, we’re participating in it as essential members: predator and prey. From this premise, it follows that those aspects of hunting that tend to return us to the world are more ethical, while those aspects that displace us—such as the use of modern technology—are less ethical. This simple, compelling thesis is supported by example, by the highly-personal narrative of a conscionable hunter coming to terms with the central passion of his life. And it’s a thesis that finally has profound implications for the way we each approach the natural world. If you’re a hunter, A Quiet Place of Violence will help put into words those aspects of the hunt that you have found most essential; and if you’re a non-hunter, it will offer insight into the allure of this otherwise puzzling pursuit.

Floating on the Missouri
Floating on the Missouri

Author: James Willard Schultz

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1989-02-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780806121642

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This is a true story of a float trip down the Missouri. It compares, in some ways, to the most famous float trip in American literature, the one that Huck Finn took down the Mississippi. At the end of his trip, young Huck says, “…I reckon I got to Light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” That young escapee, to extend the comparison, is epitomized in James Willard Schultz. Just expelled from military school, the seventeen-year-old Schultz goes West, stays, grows up and lives among the Indians, marries into the Blackfoot tribe, and lived the kind of life he loved. In the fall of 1901, Apikuni and his Piegan wife, Nataki, took a long float trip down the Missouri. They camped out and lived off the land for the entire trip, from Fort Benton to the juncture off the Missouri and Milk rivers. The account of that trip is presented here in book form for the first time. Like Huck’s adventure, this was something more than a simple float trip. It was a trip through space and time through memories of early experiences along the river, of friends and enemies (Assiniboines, Crees, Sioux, and others), of early white trappers and traders, of carefree days of the buffalo hunt, of a naturalist’s dream world populated with the deer, eagle, antelope, fish, bear, wolf, and animals known only in Indian mythology. This idyll was nostalgic trip that could not be repeated, for the river and world were changing, Apikuni and Nataki knew first-hand the many changes of the past and sensed the momentous changes coming. With the advance of the white man’s world, with the dams and reservoirs, it would be impossible for today’s adventurer to duplicate the trip described here. But, for the armchair adventurer, it is still possible, though the account that has been left for us, to take this remarkable trip.

Great Plains
Great Plains

Author: Michael Forsberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-03-22

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 022668167X

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The Great Plains were once among the greatest grasslands on the planet. But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole. Three broad geographic regions in Great Plains are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses. The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.

Pretty Much True
Pretty Much True

Author: Kristen Tsetsi

Publisher:

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780578428130

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The semi-autobiographical Pretty Much True, originally released as Homefront, begins in early 2003 when the US is still reeling from-and deciding how to respond to-the September 11 attacks.Mia, a 26-year-old cab driver and failed adjunct English professor, is desperately in love with Jake, a 101st Airborne Division helicopter pilot who, like many, assumes the floating speculation of a war with Iraq is nothing more than an absurd rumor.It isn't a rumor. Before long, Jake deploys, and Mia nervously watches from her living room couch as the televised Shock & Awe missiles pummel Baghdad. With an eye or an ear constantly on the news for the latest updates from embedded reporters or insufferably sensationalist talking TV heads hungry for soldier tragedies (great for ratings!), Mia is overtaken by the numbing fear that she'll never see Jake alive again.

Have You Seen?
Have You Seen?

Author: David Thomson

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 1025

ISBN-13: 0375711341

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"Including masterpieces, oddities, guilty pleasures, and classics (with just a few disasters)"--Cover.

Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border
Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border

Author: Donald Gilmore

Publisher: Pelican Publishing

Published: 2005-11-30

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9781455602308

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During the Civil War, the western front was the scene of some of that conflictï¿1/2s bloodiest and most barbaric encounters as Union raiders and Confederate guerrillas pursued each other from farm to farm with equal disregard for civilian casualties. Historical accounts of these events overwhelmingly favor the victorious Union standpoint, characterizing the Southern fighters as wanton, unprincipled savages. But in fact, as the author, himself a descendant of Union soldiers, discovered, the bushwhackersï¿1/2 violent reactions were understandable, given the reign of terror they endured as a result of Lincolnï¿1/2s total war in the West. In reexamining many of the long-held historical assumptions about this period, Gilmore discusses President Lincolnï¿1/2s utmost desire to keep Missouri in the Union by any and all means. As early as 1858, Kansan and Union troops carried out unbridled confiscation or destruction of Missouri private property, until the state became known as "the burnt region." These outrages escalated to include martial law throughout Missouri and finally the infamous General Orders Number 11 of September 1863 in which Union general Thomas Ewing, federal commander of the region, ordered the deportation of the entire population of the border counties. It is no wonder that, faced with the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, Missourians struck back with equal force.