A University of
Wyoming graduate has just published a nonfiction book in which he chronicles
walking from Kansas City to Helena, Mont.
Patrick Dobson,
who currently lives in Kansas City, earned a master’s degree in history from UW
in 1993. In 1995 he set out on a two-and-a-half-month walk to escape to the
high plains. “Seldom Seen,” published by the University of Nebraska Press, is
the product of that walk.
In the book,
Dobson spends time in the Wind River Valley, Yellowstone and Jackson,
encountering wildlife and meeting people who let him into their lives.
The inspiration
for the journey came as Dobson balanced several jobs in Kansas City and felt
trapped in the process, with the open plains calling him as a means of escape.
“I thought the
plains were always beautiful … and then I began to realize I’d never seen
(them) except through car windows, gas stations, rest stops. So that experience
of walking in all that space became important to me,” he said.
He set out with
the intent to walk the whole way, but within a few days he decided to accept
rides when people offered.
“One of the reasons
I wanted to do this was to see and meet people and experience places, and very
soon I found out that just walking was not doing it. It had to be with the
contact with people,” he said.
Along the way he
learned the ins and outs of long-distance walking and began to trust that
people would help him out along the way, since he couldn’t carry everything he
would need. Dobson called the people of the Great Plains the “bare bones of
America,” and praised their honesty, openness and kindness.
“Without exception,
those who opened up to me were people who had to little to give,” he said.
Dobson chronicled
his trip in a series of columns for an alternative weekly paper, which lead to
a career in journalism. In 2001 he was finally able to sit down and piece those
columns together into a book, but the finished product was still a long way
off.
He began working
on a Ph.D. in American literature at the University of Missouri Kansas City and
used a summer in 2005 to fine tune the first few chapters and send them to a handful
of university presses. Finally, the University of Nebraska Press picked up the
manuscript and coaxed it to completion.
“I’ve been able
to get a lot of good guidance from the press in terms of finding the story that
matters, that works best in that big pile of words that I used to have,” he
said.
He said there
were many occasions along the way when he considered abandoning the attempt to
publish his manuscript, but he kept receiving encouragement to carry on.
“It’s all
accidental,” he said of finding a publisher. “It’s just like winning the
lottery.”
These days Dobson
is still working on his Ph.D. while also teaching at a community college and
working as a member of the Ironworkers Local Union #10 in Kansas City.
“Seldom Seen” is
available from the University of Nebraska Press, www.nebraskapress.unl.edu, as
well as from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
Eve Newman’s
e-mail address is lbedit6@laramieboomerang.com.
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