Growing up in Montana I never thought I might find a sense of home on the ocean, but every time I visit coastal North Carolina it gets harder and harder to leave.
Stories from the Prairie | American Prairie Journal Vol. 02
Writer and photographer Max Lowe set out to paddle one of the last truly wild stretches of river in the lower 48 — 47 miles of the Upper Missouri Breaks, uncrossed by roads, unchanged by time.
He and his wife Lia spent three days tracing the same current that carried Lewis and Clark, the Lakota, the Aaniiih, and generations of Montanans before them. They launched sunflower yellow canoes into a mid-August rainstorm at Coal Banks Landing and didn’t look back. They camped beneath a full Sturgeon Moon, listened to coyotes echo off canyon walls, and stood at the base of the White Cliffs — the same sandstone formations Meriwether Lewis once described as rivaling the grandeur of human architecture.
But the river wasn’t just about the landscape. At every bend — tipi rings half-hidden in the grass, cattle grazing the monument flats, the Sun Prairie bison herd moving along the distant bank — they met the layered story of this place. A country where the past doesn’t fade. It just waits for you to float by.
Read the full story through the link in our bio.
As someone who frequents the national parks, National Geographic Explorer @max.lowe knows they are a perfect place to appreciate the wonders of our natural world.
Which national parks have had an impact on you?
“For those with restless, curious minds, fascinated by layer upon layer of things, flavors, tastes and customs, which we will never fully be able to understand, Tokyo is deliciously unknowable. I’m sure I could spend the rest of my life there, learn the language, and still die happily ignorant.” - Anthony Bourdain
Moments captured walking the streets of Tokyo from Jan 2026 // Pt 2
“The first time I came here, it was a transformative experience... It was just like taking acid for the first time—meaning, What do I do now? I see the whole world in a different way”. - Anthony Bourdain
Moments captured walking the streets of Tokyo from Jan 2026 // Pt 1
