I picked up Noah Westergaard a little after sunrise on a cool September morning. From leaving his apartment parking lot, I took a right onto Main St. in Spearfish and didn’t take another right until two hours later when we hit I-95, 20 minutes outside Medora. From then on, it was another 6 hours of zero turns and cows that were only outnumbered by the hay bales.

This wasn’t my first time driving up and across the Great Plains chasing a magazine story, and I doubt it will be the last. Two years ago, I made the same journey, plus another hour and a half north to Grand Forks, only to stay in a hotel room by myself to spend a couple of hours in the morning taking photos of a race car driver. I drove straight home after on a roundabout route to avoid a snowstorm my parents warned me about. Those photos were published in the inaugural issue of Ponder Magazine. Since then, two more issues have been released, and Issue 4 drops Dec. 5.

Noah and I left that day to interview and photograph for a story about Drekker Brewing, featured in the upcoming issue. We spent the weekend there, experiencing Drekkerfest 11 and learning about the development of the largest brewery in North Dakota. We tasted every beer on the menu, got backstage access to concerts and watched two burly men wrestle it out. On the way home, the lower part of my thigh hurt, similar to the pain in Noah’s arm from the matching Drekker logo tattoos we got for free. A couple of months later, we were back on the road again.

This time, the stories pushed us to Sioux Falls, a comparably boring drive with an equal number of turns. It was also the largest city Nathan Feller had ever driven in, and he nearly lost his mind when he encountered two right-turn lanes side by side. We were there to cover two stories, a chef and an artist. 

One of these was Marcela Salas, who at a young age crossed the Mexican border with her mother and all her belongings on foot. Eventually, she settled in Sioux Falls and started a salsa company with her mother. She now owns and operates Bibisol, bringing authentic Mexican cuisine to South Dakota. The other is Cameron Stalheim, a queer sculptor from Sioux Falls who combines realistic human figures with fantastical characteristics to explore the shared human experience.

Another artist featured in Issue 4 comes from a completely different background. On the seam of the Pine Ridge reservation and Badlands National Park, next to the White River, resides Catlin Clifford’s home. Clifford’s family has watched over said land for generations. As a self-proclaimed “badlands indian cowboy,” he spends his days making artwork out of leather, playing guitar and on the back of a horse as a Hollywood stuntman.

Ponder has had an incredible year. Starting in March, the College Media Association awarded Ponder the David L Adams Apple Award for best magazine. Shortly after, Ponder won Best in Show at the Black Hills chapter for the ADDYs, Gold at the districts, and was the only magazine to be awarded Gold at the national level. The next couple of months came with first place from the Association for Education in College Journalism and Mass Communication for general excellence. And multiple finalist nominations at the Pinnacle and Pacemaker awards. Among competition like Syracuse and Harvard, schools that have a media budget only rivaled by their enrollment numbers, Ponder excelled and won in multiple categories, including the Pacemaker, becoming the first collegiate magazine from South Dakota in history to take home a Pacemaker.

The Issue 4 launch party takes place on Dec. 5 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Joy Center on Black Hills State University’s campus. Ponder photography and contributor’s artwork will be auctioned off along with free snacks and light refreshments. Come celebrate and hear from the student creatives behind Ponder as well as some of the people featured in the new issue.