Been through hundreds of small towns, none smaller than Many Springs, on Highway 160, so small that the city limit signs are on the same pole, back-to-back.
Highways Tell Stories.
A highway’s back may be black, brown or tan, red, white or blue. We name them after saints and music and Mother. A highway’s makeup may be heavily applied and easy to see, or it may be worn thin. Her … Read More
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
Along Highway 13, I found The Shrine of Our Lady of the Two Ugly Utility Poles Standing Side by Side in Our Front Yard. That’s my name for it anyway. It’s the world’s best attempt to divert your attention from … Read More
Devils and Elbows
I found a hideaway. When I rolled to its door, a thundershower was beating down on the low slung structure made mostly of logs with mud chinks, its back wall standing just a couple of feet above the swollen Big … Read More
Best Show This Side of the Bolshoi
It’s not just the prairie chickens. Yeah, they dance big. But so do the prairie grasses, whose roots run deep in this community. And the prairie flowers, whose seeds can survive wildfire. The prairie is a salad bowl for buffalo, … Read More
Turkey. Squirrel. Me.
Deep in the woods, Turkey Camp is the perfect venue to hunt turkey. But the turkeys are safe, mostly. The closest most camper-hunters get to birds happens when folks take a pull on the fifth of Wild Turkey that passes … Read More
Rising Above It All
Dunklin is Missouri’s tallest county, standing almost 44 miles from its sole to its crown, and shaped like the left side of an hourglass, seemingly stuffed with cotton, mostly, until I scratched a little deeper. Down near the border, just … Read More
Over Rocky Falls In A Barrel?
“Would you go down Rocky Falls in that?” He pointed to a submarine in the yard at River’s Edge Resort. “Not on your life,” I laughed. “Although today there might be enough water.” Earlier that morning, we had hoped to … Read More
Seven Wonders of Shannon County: Devil’s Well
Paraphrasing Jerry Vineyard, Missouri’s preeminent geologist-explorer, Devil’s Well is a big stomach. It’s mother nature’s idea of an indoor pool, except that it’s cold and dark and scary as hell, hence the name. It is perhaps the world’s most dramatic … Read More
Seven Wonders of Shannon County: Welch Spring
Upriver from Akers Ferry, which connects the wilderness north of the Current River to the wilderness on the south, Welch Spring is home to an abandoned country hospital. Nearly a century ago, a physician built a stone sanitarium at the … Read More