Gathering the Wild
October 22, 2026 @ 5:30PM — 9:00PM Mountain Time (US & Canada) Add to Calendar
Chico Hot Springs Convention Center: 163 Chico Rd Pray, MT 59065 Get Directions
.png)
Finding refugia in a broken world with J. Drew Lanham
Join us for a celebration of the future of the American wilderness. Doug Peacock opens the night and introduces our keynote speaker, J. Drew Lanham, who will speak on Refugia: finding sanctuary as marginalized people, protecting the wild, and how we build an American landscape that acts as a refuge for the next 250 years. In addition to Drew's keynote, festivities will include hearty appetizers, cash bar, and live & silent auctions with celebrity auctioneer Scott McMillion.
J. Drew Lanham is a cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, and writer using robust science, artful essays, and evocative oratory to color the conservation conversation. Guided by principles of interconnectedness and interdependence, his work centers on the growing issues within environmental justice as observed through the multifaceted perspective of a Black Southern man. As a storyteller, poet, and passionate advocate for accessibility and stewardship, his writing is in praise of wandering and wildness and in protest against all not justice or joy.
A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow (2022), Lanham's many honors include the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society (2019), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016), and the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation from the Center for Biological Diversity (2020) and the Thoreau Award in 2024.
Doug Peacock is a disabled Vietnam veteran and ex-Green Beret medic, and was the real-life model for Edward Abbey’s George Washington Hayduke. His books include Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness, ¡Baja!, Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness, The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears, and Was It Worth It: A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home.
The American Academy of Arts & Letters recognized Peacock with a 2022
literature award, and he was named a Guggenheim and Lannan Fellow in for his
work on archaeology, climate change and the peopling of North America.