John (Fire) Lame Deer’s essay about the 1970 occupation of Mount Rushmore highlights a monumental clash between two visions of sacred land.
Places
Waiting for a ride with the hitchhiker’s blues
I composed a song while hitchhiking to Cooke City, standing alone in the vast quiet amidst a sagebrush land empty of the summer crowds.
Reflections on a first encounter
Reflections on our first encounter in Yellowstone National Park, written on a bitter cold night in Ohio more than 15 years later.
Romance in Yellowstone: remembering the best day of my life
Recalling a magical day in Yellowstone National Park that changed our lives and sent us on a journey that we are still traveling forty years later.
The end of the season in Yellowstone
The end of September was a quiet time in Yellowstone National Park, and beautiful beyond words. Warm days, cold nights, golden aspen mixed among the dark ridges of pine.
Autumn air carries me to remembrances of Ohio
The start of autumn turns my sights northward, recalling those glorious days of colorful melancholy in the falls we spent in Ohio. It almost makes bearable the anticipation of winter.
Elvis religion and the sacred space of Graceland
Is Elvis a religion? Students explore this and other questions, including whether Elvis really left the building, or is he still with us in ways we never imagined?
The many Yellowstones: a simultaneity of places
Even though it is a national park with all of the complicated and historically shifting meanings associated with parks, Yellowstone is also (simultaneously) many other places as well.
We found the Beatles in a remote Arkansas town
The Beatles in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas: murals, a yellow submarine, and an Abbey Road sculpture commemorate the tiny town’s surprise visit in 1964 from the immortal band.
The Calvinist roots of appreciating Acadia’s scenery
Visitors who delight in nature and stunning scenery at places like Acadia National Park often do not realize their aesthetic debt to Protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin.