No Small Journeys relates to a series of photographs of Denver and its suburbs near the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, a version of which was published by Aperture under the title Our Lives and our Children in 1983. In recent years, Adams felt it was important to expand the project to emphasize the simple beauty and humanity that can be found in the seemingly improbable environments we have created for ourselves all across America. Rather than focus on some looming disaster, he composed this series as a testament to that unlikely and markedly human beauty, summing up his new reaction to the work with a quotation by Edward Dahlberg: "Homer sang of many sacred towns in Hellas which were no better than Kansas City."