Many people take the breathtaking beauty of the Bad Lands for granted, going on with their lives and assuming it will always be as it has been for thousands of years. Well, gentle reader, it ain’t so! Stalwarts have been diligently working for decades to protect the remaining wild landscapes so future generations can enjoy the grandeur. The effort culminating …
In a major victory for conservationists, and for the North Dakota Bad Lands they work hard to protect, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland of Bismarck ruled this week that the state of North Dakota and four western North Dakota counties have no right to go in and build roads in areas of the Little Missouri National Grasslands that have been inventoried …
We spent the weekend in the Little Missouri National Grasslands, camping in Slope County, at the Burning Coal Vein U.S. Forest Service campground, attending the Badlands Conservation Alliance outing, gathering with old friends and making new friends. While Saturday was cool and windy, Sunday was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny. We also got a brief, but enjoyable, visit with …
We cooked soul food for “cumpnee” Tuesday night. Meat and three — walleye, black-eye peas, green beans, creamed corn and Mama Crook’s cornbread. Salad from our garden. Whenever I cook this menu, I think, of course, of my Mississippi kin from whom I learned much of what I know about cooking. I heated the griddle, slicked up the skillet with bacon grease and …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner and his wife, Sheila, recently returned from a weeklong vacation, which started with a stay in Medora, N.D., and a visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Here are a few shots of what Dave has tilted “North Dakota Badlands Scenic Images.”
I crossed off another item on my North Dakota bucket list last weekend. With Lillian, her two sisters and her daughter, I hiked to the top of Black Butte, and at the top, promptly declared, to the amusement of the ladies, that I was the oldest person ever to climb to North Dakota’s second-highest point. Well, there was no one …
In honor of what would have been Sheila Schafer’s birthday, today I want to share my personal memories of her, a bright spirit of this world who departed a little over a year ago. That said, it is so very challenging to capture Sheila’s essence. She exuded joy. I’ll share some of my memories and, to that, add some links …
Because I promised my friend Marilyn I would share with her the photos of my Navajo rugs, I’m writing this blog. It’s just easier. I must confess that I feel a little like it is bragging, but, if nothing else, it is documentation for my loved ones. My husband Jim and I have a lifetime’s worth of Native American art …
I need to clarify a few things and bring you up to date on the ongoing saga of the proposed new bridge across the Little Missouri River north of Medora, N.D. The bridge is a project — if completed — could be an environmental disaster for the North Dakota Bad Lands. That’s why I keep writing about it. To review, …
When was the last time someone called you a dipshit? I swear, I hadn’t heard that word in 20 years, or maybe 30 or 40, until this week, when somebody called me that in a comment at the bottom of my blog. I remember it as a word we used back in the 1950s or ’60s, to describe someone we …
In the early 1990s, a group of 17 conservation organizations, as diverse as the National Wildlife Federation, the Bismarck-Mandan Bird Club, the North Dakota Wildlife Society and the Fargo-Moorhead Audubon Society, gathered under a symbolic big tent and produced a document outlining the dangers facing the North Dakota Bad Lands and offering a plan to protect some of North Dakota’s …
A few of you might remember a big dust-up about five years ago over the State Land Board’s decision to offer, for lease, the right to drill for oil on the west side of one of southwest North Dakota’s major landmarks, Bullion Butte. The butte and some of the acreage around it are owned by the U.S. Forest Service, and the …
I’ve spent a lot of nights sleeping within spitting distance of the Little Missouri River. God willing, I’ll spend a lot more. I’m pretty sure I’ve slept there in every month on the calendar. Some nights — and some months — were better than others. I’ve slept there alone, I’ve slept there with canoeing buddies, I’ve slept there with wives, …
I’ve written a two-part series about winter camping at the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park for Dakota Country magazine. Here’s the first part. The Elkhorn Ranch Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a tiny 218-acre island in a vast million acre sea of Bad Lands, broken prairies, scoria roads, cattle ranches and oil development. The fact that even …
Setting aside protests for a while, let’s look at a planning effort that’s being done right. Here’s an article I wrote for this month’s Dakota Country magazine. Is it too much for North Dakota citizens to expect that they should be provided a reasonable forecast of the environmental effects of 20,000 to 50,000 oil wells on our western landscape? Hmm. …
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article here about the Little Missouri State Scenic River Commission and how important it had been to protecting the integrity of North Dakota’s only “State Scenic River” during our first oil boom in the 1970s and ’80s. If you missed it, you can go here to catch up. Well, we’ve had another boom …
I love the Little Missouri River. It is one of the longest, free-flowing rivers in America. In reality, I believe it IS the longest because the Yellowstone, which claims the honor, is full of low-head dams that create little pools and eddies all along its length, even though they don’t create giant reservoirs like the Big Missouri’s dams do. The …
U.S. Highway 85 is North Dakota’s deadliest highway. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the road that runs north and south along the western edge of the state, from our border with Canada to our border with South Dakota, through the North Dakota Bad Lands, some of the state’s most scenic and fragile landscapes. Even though it passes …
A month or so ago, in an article I first wrote for Dakota Country magazine and posted later here on my blog, I talked a bit about my father and his love of North Dakota’s outdoors. If you missed that, you can read it here. I need to share a few more words about my father — and growing up in …