John Clayton

Montana

Author and Writer at Freelance

I write nonfiction books -- including NATURAL RIVALS and WONDERLANDSCAPE -- and the Substack Natural Stories. I love basketball, the Red Sox, beer, and dogs.

Articles

Iowa should invest in family farms, not more big agribusiness

May 13, 2024 | bleedingheartland.com | Tommy Hexter |John Clayton |Bruce Lear |Laura Belin

Tommy Hexter is running as a Democrat for Iowa House District 53, representing Poweshiek and most of Tama County. He is currently Rural Organizer and Educator with the Iowa Farmers Union, a commissioner of the Poweshiek County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the director of a local food business called Grinnell FarmToTable that sources products from 35 local farmers.
It was Indian land, and now it's not

May 12, 2024 | bleedingheartland.com | John Clayton |Bruce Lear |Laura Belin |Keith Schneider

John Clayton grew up on a farm in Poweshiek County, which he now farms. During his childhood, going to Meskwaki Pow-Wows in neighboring Tama County was the highlight of each summer. He is a 2024 candidate for Poweshiek County supervisor. Minnesota officially adopted a new state flag on May 11, replacing the previous design, which had long been criticized for its depiction of a Native American on horseback with a spear and a white pioneer farming with a gun.
Banishing the Tukudika

Mar 10, 2024 | mountainjournal.org | John Clayton

Back to Storiesby John ClaytonIn the fall of 1879, Philetus W. Norris was hunting on theback side of Bunsen Peak, south of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone NationalPark. Norris, 57, wore a gray beard and fringed buckskin. Alone on his horse,he gave off an air of self-confidence and prided himself on his frontiersmanship. He was the kind of self-mythologizer who wore gaudy buckskins even for formalportraits.
You’re not the boss in the wilderness

Feb 23, 2024 | wyomingnews.com | John Clayton

John Clayton is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that promotes lively dialog about the West. He lives in Montana and writes the newsletter Natural Stories.
Writers on the Range: You’re not the boss in wilderness

Feb 20, 2024 | vaildaily.com | John Clayton

When my friends and I encountered the fresh grizzly bear scat, we were deep in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness, 20 miles from a trailhead. I’d seen grizzlies before — from the car. But this experience was on a whole other level. I felt vulnerable, nervous. I also felt fully alive. That feeling owes much to the Wilderness Act, which became law 60 years ago, in 1964. When President Lyndon B.
Writers on the Range: You’re not the boss in wilderness

Feb 19, 2024 | steamboatpilot.com | John Clayton

When my friends and I encountered the fresh grizzly bear scat, we were deep in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness, 20 miles from a trailhead. I’d seen grizzlies before — from the car. But this experience was on a whole other level. I felt vulnerable, nervous. I also felt fully alive. That feeling owes much to the Wilderness Act, which became law 60 years ago, in 1964. When President Lyndon B.
Where the Rudder Meets the Road

Dec 22, 2023 | mountainjournal.org | John Clayton

Back to Storiesby John ClaytonAugust 1, 1915 may be the most important single date in thehistory of Yellowstone. Almost a half-century after its founding, the firstautomobile legally entered America’s first national park. Motorized vehicles changed the way people interacted withYellowstone, no longer bunched together on stagecoaches that stopped at centralhotels for dinners of canned food. Now more visitors could camp in the wild andchoose for themselves which attractions were most worthy.
Hayduke Leverages!

Oct 17, 2023 | naturalstories.substack.com | John Clayton

NEWS ITEM: The Durango Telegraph reports Moab’s approval of the Abbey Subdivision, which the developer says is an homage to Edward Abbey (1927-1989). Abbey wrote the memoir Desert Solitaire, set near Moab, and the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, in which the heroes try to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. As an anarchist and anti-growth advocate, Abbey’s greatest contempt was for subdivisions. “All of your loan paperwork is in order, sir,” the banker said.
MSD: Nature is urban culture

Oct 10, 2023 | naturalstories.substack.com | John Clayton

“You cannot begin with economics or industries,” wrote The Galley columnist in the Miami Herald in 1922. It was a column about the “new geography” that could shape the growth of then-tiny Miami. “You cannot begin with people, you cannot begin with groups or societies or systems of government.” South Florida then saw itself as the nation’s last frontier. Even the vast dry expanses of the West had proven easier to develop than this place of swamps and bugs and heat.