“Dare to do Dirt”: Seeking rural places (and how to best experience them)

“Domestic travel to rural places can be as important as international travel that is more obviously cross-cultural.”  –Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Marci talk about how the best trips are guided by curiosity about eight key things, rather than checklists (2:00); what Marci has learned from several decades of writing guidebooks to rural and small-town Kansas, and how these places are worth fighting for (10:30); how urban people can better experience rural places (17:00); using your five senses as a traveler, and other strategies for exploring the nuances of new places (26:30); and seeing places as “mysteries to be solved” (37:30).

Marci Penner (@GetRuralKansas) is the executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, which preserves and sustains rural culture by educating Kansans about Kansas and networking and supporting rural communities. She is involved with the PowerUp Movement (empowerment of those 21-39 who are rural by choice), the Big Rural Brainstorm, and the We Kan! Conference.

Notable Links:

• Kansas Guidebook for Explorers, by Marci Penner and Wendee Rowe (guidebook)
• Physiographic Regions of Kansas (map)
• 8 Wonders of Kansas (travel destinations)
• Skeleton Coast (coast area of Namibia)
• Sterling (town in Kansas)
• Microaggressions (accidental verbal slights)
• Big Kansas Road Trip (rural tourism event)
• Daniel Boone (American frontiersman)
• New Almelo, Kansas (community in Norton County)
• Nicodemus, Kansas (town founded in 1871 by formerly enslaved Americans)
• Damar, Kansas (town founded in 1888 by French Canadians)
• Exodusters (movement of African-Americans to Kansas in 19th century)
• Boot Hill (cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas)
• Fencepost limestone (stone bed in the Great Plains)
• Cuba, Kansas (Czech-American rural community)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.