Nate Hegyi, rural reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, is embarking on a 900-mile cycling trip crisscrossing the continental divide in August and September, interviewing and listening to Americans ahead of the 2020 election. 

“It’s a tumultuous year,” says Hegyi. “A pandemic grips the region and the economy is in freefall. But the voices of folks in the Mountain West’s small towns and rural communities are often unheard in regional and national media outlets. So we’re embarking on this trip to learn more about the region’s residents and to hear their stories.” 

The Mountain West is home to a quarter of the nation’s news deserts and, like much of the country, it’s enduring high unemployment, a surge in COVID–19 cases, as well as reckoning with a history of racism and police violence. 

Hegyi will travel across four states in the Mountain West: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado. He’ll begin his ride in the liberal college city of Missoula before winding down toward the small ranching towns of eastern Idaho; past Yellowstone National Park and down toward the Wind River Indian Reservation. 

He’ll cycle deep into Wyoming’s oil and gas country and up into the mountain towns of Northern Colorado before ending his journey in Greeley, Colorado. 

We’ll listen to his regular reports as he speaks with folks who live in the frayed edges of rural and small town America – ranch hands, school teachers, oil and gas workers, wealthy retirees and tourism industry workers. 

“This is an exciting and significant project for us,” says Kate Concannon, the Mountain West News Bureau’s Managing Editor. “What Nate hears will inform future reporting and help us connect the dots on some of the biggest issues facing our region ahead of the November election.”

You can follow Hegyi on social media, an online blog and on a specially designated “Where Is He Now?” map. He will also invite some of the people he meets to convene in online listening sessions after the trip. The sessions will be done in collaboration with the Local Voices Network.  

Finally, the people Nate meets and the lessons he learns will be documented in a podcast set for broadcast in late October 2020.

Do you have a story to tell Hegyi or want to follow his journey? Here’s how you can find him:

Email: natehegyi@gmail.com or mountainwestnews@gmail.com

Twitter: @natehegyi using the hashtag #acrossthegreatdivide

Blog: natehegyi.substack.com 

Where’s Nate: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1uJv0ZzqEpTJZdTnEw6DVwkqH-QQyiD9

The Mountain West News Bureau is a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Montana, and KUNC in Colorado and KUNM in New Mexico and affiliate partners across the region. It is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This effort is funded by America Amplified, a 2020 community engagement journalism initiative supported by the CPB. Mountain West News Bureau is a partner network of America Amplified.