Gone Riding – On the trail of the Whispering Giants

Visiting Kanauga, Ohio on 6/8/13 as part of my A Trip From Z to A Grand Tour.

Many of you may know that in addition to teaching mass comm/media literacy, I also like riding my motorcycle fairly long distances. One of the activities I try to do every summer is a Grand Tour. These tours have a theme of things you need to collect photos of. For example, two years ago I did a tour where I needed to collect towns with names that either started with the letter Z or ended with the letter A. It was called “A Trip From Z to A.”

This year, I’m On The Trail of the Whispering Giants. Whispering Giants are 10-20-foot tall sculptures of Native American figures carved out of tree trunks by artist Peter Wolf Toth. He’s done approximately 70 of these, scattered across the United States and Canada. The goal of the tour is to find and photograph as many of these as possible, along with your “rally flag.” So far, I’ve collected three: ones in Lincoln, NE; Troy, KS; and Iowa Falls, IA.

Over the next few days, I’m going to be riding around the Great Lakes with my friend Matt, and I’ll also use this as an opportunity to collect more Whispering Giants. So, for the next week-and-a-half my blog is going to be devoted to stories and photos from my travels. And then back to work!

Giant #1 – Lincoln, Nebraska, May 3rd.

These photos were taken at the Indian Center in Lincoln. The center provides counseling services, meeting space, and a powwow circle, among other things. I visited this Whispering Giant with my friend Mike Konz, and we had a nice chat with Nettie Grant Sikyta, who is the youth suicide prevention coordinator for the center.