My eyes furtive­ly glance at the rearview mir­ror, check­ing for cops, as the fam­i­ly car edges close to forty-five miles per hour, cruis­ing west on South Dako­ta High­way 44. This par­tic­u­lar stretch of asphalt is post-apoc­­a­­lyp­tic emp­ty and flanked on both sides by green and yel­low mixed grass­es, as the road cuts through por­tions of […]

I’m simul­ta­ne­ous­ly try­ing to keep a blan­ket wrapped around me and keep an insipid can of Bud Light wedged between my chat­ter­ing knees, as heavy gusts of wind whip across the South Dako­ta Bad­lands. Despite this being an oth­er­wise scorcher of a sum­mer, the weath­er at night in the nation­al park is pos­i­tive­ly arc­tic. The […]

Shane Crash lies before me in a hos­pi­tal bed, his nat­u­ral­ly lithe frame slight­ly bloat­ed from the steroid injec­tions he has been tak­ing for recent­ly diag­nosed Crohn’s dis­ease.  Despite the intense pain of the inflam­ma­tion and the chem­i­cal stu­por of mor­phine, Shane is in good spir­its.  Just this morn­ing, I awoke to find his most […]