Hal Herring will host this 6-day exploration of journalistic storytelling in the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. This is a land / water hybrid adventure, with the first four days of course spent paddling canoes slowly downstream through the meandering Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River, along spectacular white cliffs of Eagle sandstone. The final two days we travel through and around the American Prairie Reserve, examining the complexities and challenges of collaborative management of an exceedingly fragile landscape.

Participants will hone their ability to critically analyze and discuss place-based literary journalism; consider and strive toward creating a sense of place and well-developed character in their own journalistic writing; and examine their moral or ethical accountability for protection of wild spaces, as well as the impact that societal, ecological, and personal decisions or forces can have on those places.

The course will explore the following central questions, among others:

• How might a writer’s connection to wild, ecologically intact places underpin works of literature that, on the surface, have little to do with nature or environmental themes?
• How might one’s exposure to tales or myths, most of which have their origins in the primal and untamed spaces, shape and influence our work as modern storytellers?
• How does literature expose the foundations of all human endeavor, interaction, and psychology as the wild world that surround us?