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A day in Rapid City, spent mostly writing (and doing laundry) before an evening drive east to Murdo, via the Badlands National Park. For the next few days I'll be travelling with Karissa Kary, the US organiser of the Outriders project.
Today marks the end of the first leg of this trip. Geographically, there will be four parts to the journey: the Dakotas, the Great Plains, Appalachia, and 'The South' (Mississippi and Louisiana). For this past week, I've mostly been thinking about the energy industry – fracking in Williston, and the pipeline protests at Standing Rock – as well as the differences between indigenous and non-indigenous (colonial) ideas of land use, exploitation and economics.
Driving through the Great Plains over the coming days, it will be impossible not to continue thinking about land use (and agriculture in particular), culminating in my visit to Wendell Berry's farm in Kentucky next Sunday. |
The projectI was one of five Scottish writers chosen by Edinburgh International Book Festival to undertake extraordinary journeys across the Americas in spring and summer 2017.
The journeyI travelled through the United States for three weeks, from north to south, beginning in North Dakota, through Appalachia, and ending in Louisiana. For much of this time I was accompanied by the novelist Jennifer Haigh.
The route
Click on the map to view full size.
ArchivesFollow meYou can follow my progress on Twitter and Instagram, and keep up-to-date with all the travellers using the hashtag #Outriders.
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