Program 495: National Parks Dinner Party; The Great Southwest; Utah's Craziest Bike Ride

Release Date: 08-19-2017

Description

Author Terry Tempest Williams describes the various "personalities" of a dozen US national parks, and examines each one's contributions to the American character. Then historian Flannery Burke tells us how Arizona and New Mexico came to embody what we now think of as The Great Southwest. And travel writer Christopher Solomon enjoys getting dusty on a mountain-bike tour across southern Utah.

Guests

  • Terry Tempest Williams, author of "The Hour of Land"  (Sarah Crichton Books)
  • Historian Flannery Burke, author of "A Land Apart: The Southwest and the Nation in the Twentieth Century" (Univ. of Arizona Press)
  • Travel writer Christopher Solomon

Related Links

Haiku Awards

Northern lights I saw
New Mexico, March '03
Sun storms drove them South
— Kollin Luman, Portland, Oregon

 

Sun descends — wind gusts.
Sugar cane sways, gilt-green in
ephemeral blaze.
— Lyn Gerner, Wailuku, Hawai'i

 

How to get back up
To the top of old Quebec?
Ah, the funicular!
— Mark Coen, Beverly, Massachusetts

Program Extras

More with Flannery Burke - Historian Flannery Burke and Rick welcome back caller Laura from Texas to talk about preserving Native American languages. They also further discuss the borderland tensions between different groups in the American Southwest, including the changing fortunes of Mesilla, New Mexico. (runs 8:23)