… “when I started this project, I did wonder: Would anyone talk to me? The bike offered one response by creating an orthogonal approach to people and the land.  More often than not it has proved a charismatic partner, creating offers of lodging and entreé into revelatory conversations.”

–Jenny Reardon, Nowhere in Particular, May 20, 2021

Central to Caring for Prairie is an embodied way of knowing I have dubbed cyclology.  In other words, I cycle around my-home state of Kansas on every kind of road (a thousand miles traversed so far) with a camera, recording gear and enough water, and learn from the land and its inhabitants. Doing this requires taking risks.  To know, as Donna Haraway argues, is to risk becoming otherwise.  Certainly the risk of being swept up in a tornado, or stuck in the mud on a barely maintained road, has made me wise to the ways of weather systems, and appreciative of local knowledge. Cyclology also requires openness.  Plans never work as envisioned. Routes must be improvised, shaped by local advice, and Kansas’ highly changeable environment.