What happens when an English professor takes a year off to explore a tiny prairie creek? Between mishaps with the canoe, long walks to the sites of Cheyenne villages and cavalry trenches, and gallons of coffee with isolated farmers, what happens is insight. In Stepping Twice Into the River, Robert King recounts his exploration of the "almost unnoticeable" along North Dakota's Sheyenne River, from its headwaters to river's end. With each experience along the way - tracing a military campaign, canoeing the river, visiting a ghost town and even trying to sleep in an ancient Cheyenne village - King examines a different aspect of the plains: Native American culture, pioneer society, religion, war, agriculture, and nature.

Blending travel narrative and poetic reflection, Stepping Twice Into the River takes readers on a journey through time, revealing both stability and change and offering prairie wisdom. An affectionate and shrewd observer, King illuminates the ordinary from the perspectives of history, science, and literature. In the hands of this gifted thinker and writer, local facts yield universal metaphor.