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<v Katie>Welcome to Great Plains: Anywhere,</v>

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a Paul A. Olson lecture

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from the Center for Great Plains Studies

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at the University of Nebraska.

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Today we're speaking with Carson Vaughan,

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the author of "Zoo Nebraska,"

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and a journalist who covers the Great Plains region.

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His recent works include covering

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the October, 2022 Bovie Fire

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at the Nebraska National Forest,

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Bessey Ranger District,

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and writing about author, Mari Sandoz.

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The University of Nebraska is a land grant institution

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with campuses and programs on the past, present

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and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria,

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Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples,

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as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox,

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and Iowa Peoples.

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<v ->I mean, for me, the most, I guess,</v>

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important part of covering the Plains

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is that there's just not

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that many of us around to do it. (laughs)

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You know, like, I'm born and raised in Nebraska,

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went to school here, traveled around, came back,

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lived here a little bit longer, and like, you know,

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my focus could have strayed at any point along the way,

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and sometimes it did,

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but it never felt like I was doing as important of work

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unless I was looking back at where I came from.

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You know, like in Chicago, I'm one of

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a million other journalists covering Chicago politics

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or Chicago culture or whatever.

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I just feel like there aren't enough of us

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covering what's important in Nebraska or the Great Plains,

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and so that's what keeps me coming back,

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and that's like both the challenge of doing it

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and also the fun opportunity of doing it.

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You know, I've tried to think about that more, like,

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in recent years as my career is kind of playing out

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and I really don't know if I'd be a writer at all

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if I didn't have initially that sense of place

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or that, like, sort of rootedness in a particular ecosystem.

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Like, I don't always write about the environment,

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but I do write about culture in one way or another,

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and sometimes I feel like environment falls under the rubric

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of culture, or at least the way I look at it.

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And I don't like to write if I'm not passionate

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about what I'm writing (laughs), you know,

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I can do without it if I don't care about it.

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And so, yeah, I don't think if I didn't have this, like,

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weird fascination with the place that I came from,

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and if I wasn't constantly trying

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to figure out more about it,

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I don't think I would be a writer at all,

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so I see the two as sort of, you know, inseparable.

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I mean, I've always loved trees

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and maybe I've loved them, like,

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in the absence of them growing up

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in the Sandhills, you know?

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I think a big part of it is that I first sort of refound

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my weird, obscure passion with the Nebraska National Forest,

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and looking at those trees made me start looking

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at other trees and, you know,

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it led me down this weird rabbit hole.

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So, like, the Taylor Juniper tree is something

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that I kinda like vaguely knew about growing up.

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You know, Taylor is only 45 minutes from Broken Bow,

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so I was in that town a lot too,

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and I kind of heard stories about it

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but didn't know that the Taylor Juniper

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is just a weird variation of the eastern red cedar tree,

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and the eastern red cedar tree obviously

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has a host of problems associated with it,

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but at the same time, there's a whole culture

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that's grown around this strange variety,

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and now, you know, we're sitting here on the, what,

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third floor of this building, looking out over Lincoln,

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and I'm sure if I looked close enough,

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I could point out some Taylor Junipers from here.

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Like, they've become a huge landscaping tree.

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Everybody loves them. (laughs)

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There's this weird history going on

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at the Capitol building itself using that tree.

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I don't know, it's just another rabbit hole

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that I fell into that I kind of love, okay. (laughs)

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The Taylor Juniper tree is a very tall,

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skinny, evergreen ornamental,

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but it's like a random mutation that happened

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out in the Sandhills outside of Taylor, Nebraska,

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and a landscaper from Columbus, Nebraska, Alan Wilke,

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happened to be driving through in the '70s,

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pulled off the road,

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asked the rancher if he could take a clipping,

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and, to make a long story short,

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ended up propagating this species through grafting,

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commercialized it, and now it's sold all over the country,

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but it is just essentially an eastern red cedar tree.

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"Zoo Nebraska" is a book about

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a small roadside zoo right off of Highway 20

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in Northeast Nebraska near a town called Royal,

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and a sort of amateur primatologist

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who grew up in that town brought all these animals together,

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and it grew sort of wildly out of control.

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It was started in the late '80s, and by 2005, you know,

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there were more animals and mammals in that zoo

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than there were people in town.

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And, unfortunately, in 2005, the chimpanzees got loose,

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ran around town, and it ended very poorly.

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The important thing for me though, in writing that book,

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is that it wasn't about, like, the novelty

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of exotic animals running around small town rural America,

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it was about how this small, really small town,

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Royal was only 65 people,

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how they sort of dealt with having a big attraction

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like this zoo and how the town crumbled

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at the same time the zoo crumbled.

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So you see a lot of, like, small town politics at play

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and just the inner workings of, I think, small town life.

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You know, the weird thing is,

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when I was growing up in Nebraska,

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I felt like everybody I knew, when they said Midwest,

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they were referring to where we already were. (laughs)

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Like, Nebraska to me growing up was the Midwest, fully.

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It wasn't until college that I even thought twice

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about whether I should call it the Great Plains instead,

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and it wasn't until grad school

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when I started meeting people who were from Indiana, Ohio,

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who would look at me funny

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when I said that I was from the Midwest,

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and that's when I decided, you know what?

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The Great Plains can use a little more love anyway,

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I'm gonna start saying I'm from the Great Plains,

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and that's where I've landed now,

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so I say I'm from the Great Plains.

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You know, it might be the space, honestly,

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just the openness.

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I mean, I hate that to explore it in the way I love most

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it requires driving around in a vehicle and wasting gas,

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so I'm a bit of a hypocrite when I talk about it like that,

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but there's nothing, like, more exciting to me

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than being on a road trip, reporting, talking to people,

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covering that kind of mileage.

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You know, there's not, when you're driving around,

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you know, New England, it's beautiful.

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A lot of small towns there too,

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but they're all so close together

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and you don't have these giant expanses,

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you don't have the same kind of sunsets.

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It's just, like, it's a different environment out here.

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Sometimes culturally I find myself asking

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whether I'm a great fit for this place or not, you know?

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But I've also done enough reporting to know that, like,

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for every five people I disagree with,

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there's gonna be one person

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that I fall in love with, you know? (laughs)

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And so, like, I'm certainly not alone out here,

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and the environment is something that I will always love.

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You know, the love/hate relationship with the culture

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is something that I oscillate on all the time,

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but I'll always come back around.

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People can go to www.carsonvaughan.com.

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<v Katie>Fantastic, thank you so much,</v>

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we really appreciate it.

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<v ->Thanks a lot, Katie.</v>

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<v Katie>We'd like to thank Carson Vaughan</v>

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for speaking with us today.

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Find all of our short Great Plains talks and interviews

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as videos and podcasts at go.unl.edu/gplectures.