April 2008

...from Dan O'Brien
A great many things to write about have come up in the last year and, as a result, the children's story, THE HOMESTEAD BENEATH STRONGHOLD TABLE, was put on hold. There has been a quiet clambering for more installments so, after a hiatus...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Sometimes I just don't believe it. I mean the things we seem to accomplish and mostly within the time we have, which is never enough, to accomplish them in. During the last two to three months...
...more

March 2008

...from Dan O'Brien
A great many things to write about have come up in the last year and, as a result, the children's story, THE HOMESTEAD BENEATH STRONGHOLD TABLE, was put on hold. There has been a quiet clambering for more installments so, after a hiatus...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
I have been looking this evening, past my television, out the window toward the Cheyenne River and Little Corral Draw. The buffalo are over there on the winter pasture, and I was looking for them to come across Zebell Table...
...more

February 2008

...from Dan O'Brien
One of the great ironies of the natural world is the fact that just below one of Earth's driest agricultural regions lays a 174,000 square-mile ocean. That huge expanse of pure, sweet water has been one of the selling points for the...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Real winter has finally come to us this month. It snowed, maybe a little more than we have seen for the past couple of years, and the temperature fell at night to what I call "hard cold" lows...
...more

January 2008

...from Dan O'Brien
It is not simply rareness that attracts us to endangered wildlife. Though a Fairburn agate or a Folsom spear point might be fascinating, their numbers can not increase or decrease. There is nothing dynamic about...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Almost thirteen years ago I retired from the University of South Dakota where I had served as a professor in the English Department since 1968 and where also, during my last four years, as Chair of the Department...
...more

December 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
I am sore from head to toe. My fingers hurt from gripping knives and buffalo hide. My back is stiff from a hundred ascents of a step-ladder. Ancient injuries are screaming from every quarter of the old body. But I slept like the dead last...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Well folks, the first real chill of winter has come upon us, catching us not completely unaware; but the first night that the temperature dropped to about 4°F, the previous day had been in the low 70's. Yes, around here it happens...
...more

November 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
At the invitation of the World Wildlife Fund and the Grasslands Foundation, a group of perhaps thirty people gathered at Chico Hot Springs to talk about ways to stimulate Great Plains economies as a way of protecting communities and...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Lately I've been watching the annual, southerly migration of birds. The Meadowlarks have now all gone. A month or so ago the last of the Long-billed Curlews vacated these premises. The Burrowing Owls have...
...more

October 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
Gutzom Borglum began carving the four faces on Mount Rushmore in August of 1927. When he died in 1941, his son, Lincoln, took up the metaphoric chisel and finished the work. Lincoln's son, Jim, is a friend of...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
After Ben Cunningham returned home to Switzerland in mid August I went to Oklahoma, for about three weeks. My travel had a three point purpose: 1) to relax and take a break, 2) to replace an old fence around my...
...more

September 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
I picked up a semi-truck in Louisville, Kentucky on a Tuesday night and had it back in the center of South Dakota before sunset the next day. I wasn’t thinking much about the Great Plains as I waited for the truck salesman to pick me up at the Louisville airport...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
For about five or six weeks this summer we had a young Austrian/American man helping out on the ranch. He is now back in Switzerland for a short visit with his parents before returning to school. Ben Cunningham, the eighteen year old son of friends of the ranch, has...
...more

August 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
Last week I sat-in on a discussion about carbon sequestration. You've heard about carbon sequestration. It's a hot topic now that the world has finally agreed that humans are contributing, big time, to climate...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
At the ranch I live in a small, but rather comfortable, second floor apartment. It has a nice view overlooking the Cheyenne River Valley and into both Little and Big Corral Draws, which empty into the river. It...
...more

July 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
The organizers of a book signing in Aix en-Provence invited Jill and me to a party in a lovely apartment in the center of town. There were mounds of pasta, wonderful greens, and lots of wine. Many of the other guests were food people and there were a few...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Having just read a few of my archived River Ranch Diary entries, I realized that something was missing because we are not just about buffalo and grass and water and fences. We are also about food (principally Jill's venue--and who better?), health (each of us...
...more

June 2007

...from Gervase Hittle
Not all ranches operate in country where the "buffalo roam, where deer and antelope play;" but this one does. In the winter the antelope gather into large groups and flow about the land like schools of...
...more

May 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
We have all heard the saying that the only two things you can count on are death and taxes. To that short list I think we can safely add the maxims, boys and girls will get together and change is inevitable. The ancient philosopher...
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
I have just recently returned from a road trip to Austin, TX, where I went to visit my son, Greg, his wife, Michelle, and their two children, Mary and Esther. I had not seen them for quite some time; so the visit...
...more

April 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
Three years ago a group of Lakota people came to Wild Idea and asked if we could come out to the reservation and harvest their buffalo the same way we harvest our own. These were our neighbors. They had looked at our website and many had heard me raving about ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
I think I was about twelve years old when I saw my first buffalo. My mother had decided to take her Girl Scout Troop, of which my two older sisters were members, on a weekend camping trip to the Wichita ...more

March 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
Molly and Jack sat across the fire from Grandmother Iron Cloud. They crossed their legs and looked into the embers as the old woman stirred them gently and laid the stick on top. The dry cottonwood burst into a tiny flame that lit the live trees that surrounded them. "The animals know your heart," she said without looking up. "They are ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
We are rapidly emerging from our slow season. The work is beginning to pick up its pace a little, which means that the horses hooves must be trimmed in preparation of our Spring roundup. That the corral be ...more

February 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
There was no rain that spring. The wheat had been planted in the fall and had begun to grow. But by May, when it should have been six inches high and as green as the way Pappa Robert remembered Ireland, it was short and yellow. Unless it rained there would be no crop to sell and so no money to buy the things they could ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
In many respects this month has been rather slow at the ranch--and at times a little bleak. The buffalo are out on the US Forest Service ground; so we see them infrequently. And we have had almost no snow when everywhere else on the Great Plains has had more snow than they want or need. We have had hardly enough to ...more

January 2007

...from Dan O'Brien
I have been challenged by a Wild Idea customer to "write a children's story with buffalo, why don't you?" Well, I've never done that but I've always wanted to try. It might take me a few months but here is the first part of a first draft of a first children's story. I am looking for advice ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
This morning I am waiting to learn what is supposed to happen with the weather. The Weather Channel is on the on behind me, distracting me with its constant run of sound bytes. My windows overlooking the Cheyenne River ...more

December 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
It doesn't look much like Christmas here on the Cheyenne River but you can feel it gathering beyond the northern horizon. The landscape is brown and cold. Below zero this morning, but sunny. It is a good morning to sit... ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
On Sunday, November 26, the buffalo went back out on the Big Corral Draw unit of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. Erney and I took them to what we call the main gate... ...more

November 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
I began writing this monthly musing about Sir Nicholas Stern's report on the economic impact of global warming but I couldn't do it. The subject, and the report, is just too hard. I couldn't read the entire report because it is 700 pages long ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Two years ago Nancy Anderson, Director of the Leslie Powell Art Gallery in Lawton, OK invited me to speak at their Lunch Bag Lecture series. We finally were able to schedule a date; so on October 19 of this year I was there to talk about "Great Plains, Buffalo, Restoration, and Other Stuff" ...more

October 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
Perhaps my best argument against the theory of Intelligent Design is the indisputable fact that the vast majority of the good things to do in life happen in the same month. I'm talking about October and more specifically, October on the Great Plains ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
A couple of weeks ago we had a nice Fall rain--finally. The buffalo were in a pasture on the other side of the river, which is not always a good situation. ...more

September 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
I've been feeling mortal. I suppose it started when I came down with pneumonia and the doctor looked at my chart and said, "In light of your age, we'd better order some additional tests." He was about thirty and had that wrinkle and flake-free tan that doctors get from being able to choose the sort of sun they stand in. ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Today I'm writing from Lawton, Oklahoma, the place where I grew up and from which I left more than a few years ago. Some of you may be familiar with the Lawton/Ft. Sill area. If so, you will also be familiar with the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge; if not, perhaps by the end of this article, your interest will be a little piqued ...more

August 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
In the mid-ninetieth century the word spread around the world that the United States of American was about to begin a project that would alter the future of that new country, North America, and the world beyond. It would be an unparalleled engineering feat that would bring transfiguring prosperity to the Great Plains and to the country as a whole. ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
It is sundown and at this moment the day has begun to cool. I am sitting outside and eating a rotisserie grilled chicken from Safeway and watching the Nighthawks fly. They are not alone. There are hundreds of dragonflies flitting around over the trees a little lower than the Nighthawks. ...more

July 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
The first thing I saw when I pulled into Tuttle, North Dakota was a corner gas station that looked like it could have been the model for a Norman Rockwell painting. Everything was the way it might have been in 1958: the red and white frame building, the single mechanic's bay ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
A low profile part of our prairie grazing program, having little to do with the romance of building fence, moving the herd on horseback, seeing Curly Bill, the legend, or taking pictures of golden buffalo calves ...more

June 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
As one travels the center of our country the effort to conserve and restore the diversity and natural systems of the American Great Plains is evident. Conservation groups, government agencies, and individuals are hard at work on a thousand projects; from habitat restoration, to reintroduction of endangered species, to water shed protection, to base-line science that will help us understand what needs to be done
...more
...from Gervase Hittle
As noted in last month's RRD, we were bringing the buffalo in during early April. The time I wrote about concerned a group of about forty animals. We had maybe forty in already so that left maybe a hundred animals to gather, which made the middle of April a very busy few weeks ...more

May 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
Is it our twentieth century lives or is it human nature that makes us pile too much on our plates? Or maybe it is me?

All my life I have felt like I'm running about a week behind. Sometimes, like this spring, I fall many weeks behind and the weight of it slows me to the point that the eternal funk that has been chasing me since childhood threatens to catches up. I fantasize that it has something to do with ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Three people in the cab of a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer and approaching yet another gate. That's the situation. Here's the question: who is the real cowboy/girl? Answer: the one in the middle--doesn't have to drive, doesn't have to get the gates ...more

April 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
I was asked to speak to a local church on Easter Sunday concerning the joys of living on the Great Plains. There are a couple problems with this request: first, I have never been a big celebrator of Easter and second, putting one's finger on the joys of living on the Great Plains is a difficult job ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
On March 15th, after a nearly two week absence from the ranch, I returned to the Cheyenne River, where the Badlands meets the Black Hills. I had been in Oklahoma, mostly with family and in somewhat atypical, dry, warm times. By the time the Ides of March had arrived, South Dakota had been blanketed by about a foot of snow ...more

March 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
It is well known in conservation circles that epiphany and new direction have often been found in an animal's instant of death. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is the fierce green fire that died in the eyes of a mother wolf killed by the father of the modern conservation movement ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
The common wisdom around here at this moment says that winter is closing down but is also hoping for either a nice, big, warm snowfall when the ground is thawed or a week of soaking rain. Either would be all right with the Folsum Community ...more

February 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
A few weeks ago, on a warm winter evening along the North Platte River, I meet a small, gentle man by the name of Gilford Rauch. His day job is a mid-level executive for one of the big insurance companies in Omaha. I don't know exactly what that means but by the looks of Gilford I figured he might be an actuary or, at least, someone who spends most of his days in a windowless room with long columns of numbers as his main stimulation ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
Recently I have read an interesting book, 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which considers in a fair amount of depth and breadth, the impact and effects that some very populous cultures had on the environments in which they lived. These cultures existed throughout the American continent, extending from the ancient Siberian land bridge through North America, Mexico, and Central America to South America ...more

January 2006

...from Dan O'Brien
A fifty-degree, windless day in January is something to savor on the Northern Great Plains. So yesterday we saddled up the horses and rode off for the far side of the river - onto the immense expanse of "empty" land that is being pushed hard to be made an official Wilderness Area ...more
...from Gervase Hittle
After spending a quiet New Year's Eve dinner with Dan and Jill, an early to bed and not so early to rise, and after taking care of my morning chores, I am welcoming this new year by watching a light, misty rain turn slowly and gently into a thin layer of ice ...more

December 2005

...from Dan O'Brien
Not long ago I had the pleasure of driving down the length of the Great Plains from my home in the Dakotas to South Texas. I passed through nearly all of five large states and as I drove I watched the land change. To the careful observer there is a world of difference in topography, flora, and fauna between the Missouri River breaks of South Dakota and the Cap Rock of Texas. Even the people change ...more ...from Gervase Hittle
A couple of weeks ago I attended a "Wilderness Symposium" held in Rapid City. The four presenters represented a wide variety of concerns and beliefs, about proper uses of public land. But it was not only a question about public land use that attracted me, it was specifically a question about the Indian Creek Draw area ...more

November 2005

...from Dan O'Brien
We live in a land of accidental monuments. Mostly they were erected in the beginning of the last century and were not intended to mark the passage of great events. ...from Gervase Hittle
Because I have retired from academia does not mean I have quit reading or have walked away from literature. Not by a long shot, folks. more...

October, 2005

...from Dan O'Brien
"We've been expecting it, hoping for it,"...finally it's here. ...from Gervase Hittle
August and September are months in which we make preparations for the months to come. more...

September, 2005

...from Dan O'Brien
Dan share a excerpt form the first full draft of his new novel.

---

...from Gervase Hittle
By learning to feel the land I mean acquiring the ability to know how and why things are as they are: the way a thunderstorm sends waves of water in successive sheets down the grass of hillsides. more...

July, 2005

One of the first buffalo that came to this ranch was a scrawny orphan with a crooked horn. He couldn't have weighed over forty pounds and no one was betting that he would even survive, let alone thrive. The twisted horn is what gave him his name, Curly Bill, and it wasn't long into that first tough winter that the little urchin began to win our heats. .... more...

June, 2005

I have never been to the Mission San Juan Capistrano but my mother told me about the swallows. What I remember from her stories is what many of us remember from the legend of The Swallows of Capistrano: There is an old Catholic mission somewhere in far off California where swallows return each year.... more...

May, 2005

The day Jill was due to arrive home from France I got a call that an old friend had just died. Tim Hjort and his family had become my friends through Jill..... more...

April, 2005

Now we move into Spring. Both the Ides of March and the Vernal Equinox have passed. Dawn comes a little earlier each morning; the sun eases itself little by little northward in the eastern sunrise sky. The prairie winds blow and whistle and sometimes howl. But if you are going to live in the prairie, you will live with the winds... more...

March, 2005

Last month I thought our winter had finally arrived. I thought so because we had both snow and cold. Well, I was wrong. Neither the snow nor the cold lasted, and now the robins have returned to the ranch. I mention the robins because they seem to be early... more...

February, 2005

The holiday season has come and gone and I can safely say that winter, in its full attire, has arrived. Let me get you caught up on what's been happening out here. Dan and Jill and Erney are deep in the process of taking up permanent residence here at the Cheyenne River Ranch. Needless to say "hectic" right now is normal... more...

January, 2004

On this quiet, chilly, but snowless afternoon I started thinking about a part of this ranch's life that I don't often write about. Houseguests. We have frequently had houseguests here, and they have done a little bit of almost everything there is to do at the ranch... more...

November 28, 2004

As you well know, buffalo are our business. I don’t just mean in a strictly commercial sense. I mean that it behooves us to know something about them for entirely other reasons... more...

October 15, 2004 (2nd entry)

Last evening the Fifth Annual Spring Creek School Soup and Pie Supper was held. Two weeks ago the Folsom community Club hosted its annual Supper, Bazaar, and Auction, which also took place at the Spring Creek elementary School. Both events are designed as fundraisers for the school, the Folsom Volunteer Fire Department, and the Folsom Community Club itself. more...

October 15, 2004

Five days ago we finished the 23 miles of fence--well, essentially. And five days ago we ate a sandwich with one hand while we tamped posts with the other. We were watching a monster cloud build up in the northwest, and we had a lot of equipment way back on the other side of the Cheyenne River--not the best of situations. more...

October 12, 2004

The cottonwood trees at the ranch headquarters are shedding their leaves in a tumble of green tinted gold. The breeze carries a new scent, a harbinger of winter's chilling winds. I've seen a lot of coyotes lately. Their coats are becoming plush and full with those silver-gray and yellowish to brown casts. more...

Sept. 3, 2004

Yesterday I was on the high bluff overlooking the Cheyenne River where it transects this ranch. The valley winds down toward the little town of Wasta –twenty miles away. The river meanders and flows over rocks and sand, carrying fine clay silt, depositing it in the broader, flatter bends and curves of its water course. All in all, the entire river is a beautiful sight. more...

August 3, 2004

Over the past months I have written more about taking out old and putting in new fence than anybody ever thought to read. But, now the end of this Cheyenne River Ranch fencing project is drawing near. And, well, I hope one more article on the subject would not be amiss. We can actually see the end where the final post will go, where the last wire is to be stretched and the last staple hammered into place. more...

June 27, 2004

I spent yesterday morning taking out an old barbed wire stack yard--a storage area for hay within a pasture. The stack of hay is fenced in to prevent animals from using it before the winter season. For our purposes with the buffalo, we don’t need stack yards and do not wish to have the animals wander into them; so we remove the old wire and fence posts. more...

May 29, 2004

Ranching carries a kind of romanticized mystique about it, some of which is true. This mystique is what we love to love about ranching, which also carries an oftentimes harsher reality to it. This reality is what we love to hate about ranching. more...

Feb. 29, 2004

I'm writing this midmorning as I wait for Dan and Jill to arrive to help with moving the buffalo herd from the River Pasture to one of the other pastures, either Sam's Barn Pasture or the South Pasture, sometimes called the Bale Pasture. more...

March 31, 2004

I've been waiting for Spring. I suppose we all have, particularly those who have born the brunt of a hard winter, but I have been waiting for spring rains to ease the burden of a relatively mild and very dry winter. I see the birds returning from the South: more...

Feb. 18, 2004

About three weeks ago, not too long after the buffalo herd had been moved into the newly fenced River Pasture, I was up on a bluff overlooking the Cheyenne River Valley. I was near what we call the old homestead, where an old, abandoned house, a collapsing horse barn, the remains of a corral, and a chicken coop are slowly returning to the ground on which they stand. I was removing a short section of old cross-fencing and an old stackyard fence. more...

Jan. 22, 2004

This evening I watched the buffalo herd come off the bluff northwest of the house. They ambled down the draw that leads to what we call the homestead site and began crossing east through the newly fenced pasture I have dubbed the River Pasture. They paused at various spring-fed water holes and moved slowly eastward, down river. They really like this new pasture. Watching them put me on mind of several things: the magnificence of the animal itself, the solidarity of the herd as a group, (ie., its grazing habits, its patterns of movement, its social structure), and the quality of meat that this animal produces. more...

Nov. 27, 2003

This morning I was up and about at my usual time, about 5:30. After taking care of a few little chores and getting a quick jump start with my morning cup of coffee and killing a little time, waiting for a reasonable hour, I called my old friend, Erney Hersman, who lives on the Broken Heart Ranch and takes care of that ranch, among other things, as he has done for years. We both more or less work for Dan. Dan met Erney, perhaps as much as a year, probably less, before I met them. That was over thirty years ago. more...

Nov. 23, 2003

Today was that beautiful day that comes after two or three days of overcast, cloudy, snow-filled skies that reveal little or no sun, that features wind and low visibility all the while creating hazardous conditions for vehicle travel and anyone not prepared for that annual, rude introduction to a South Dakota winter. At times like this I marvel at the hardiness and resilience of the native wildlife. more...

Nov. 20, 2003

Only a few of the Folsom Community families are long time residents of the area. The rest of us have moved in from elsewhere, buying a ranch when one became available. So most of us are newcomers of varying lengths of time. The owners and members of what I will call the Cheyenne River Ranch group, having been on this ranch for less than three years now, and me for being the only permanent resident of this ranch for about one year, makes us the new kids on the block. more...

Nov. 10, 2003

If I am not mistaken today is the birthday of the USMC, and once again I am watching the sun come up over the bluffs on the East side of the Cheyenne River. Over the past month or so the sun's point of arrival has moved south, and now I can see it with a glance up rather than a turn of my head to the left. more...

0ct. 26, 2003

Everyone who visits the ranch here asks about the flock of turkeys they encounter. "Are these wild turkeys? Do you raise them? Have you picked one out for Thanksgiving? Christmas?" And I respond, "yes, no, no, no." "But how can they be wild? You just walk through them, almost close enough to grab." "That's true," I say, "maybe 'wild' is a relative term. I don't feed them. They roost every night in the cottonwood trees. I try not to let dogs chase them. more...

0ct. 19, 2003

There are several places on this ranch that provoke thought to the observer. In many respects the observer doesn't even have to be careful. Casual observation will serve quite nicely provided that the observer lets that which is observed register in his or her consciousness as a thought provoking entity. more...

0ct. 16, 2003

A chilly, blustery day for a ride, no sun, possible showers, horses are lively, the clouds are floating around, painting the sky with their shades of grey.
A group of riders is on their way to the ranch with Dan and Jill--to go get some (9) of the yearlings still out. more...

0ct. 6, 2003

We are only two days away from our first buffalo kill of the year, and things are gearing up fairly rapidly. We're helping some neighbors gather their cattle and bringing them in from the "government ground," US Forest Service grazing allotments. The calves will go to the sale barn; the cows and bulls will go home with the owners. It's not only fun work; it's good neighboring. more...

0ct. 5, 2003

On this day in 1954 I enlisted in the U.S.M.C. My mother, my father, and if I remember correctly, my younger brother, Carl, saw me off at the Trailways Bus Station in Lawton, Oklahoma. I was sworn in at Oklahoma City and welcomed some hours later, after my first commercial flight, to the US Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. Nobody is prepared for that! more...

0ct. 4, 2003

This date has significance in my family for several reasons. The first is my father's birthday in 1899; the second is the date of my discharge from the U.S.M.C.; and the third is my younger brother's (now deceased) wedding anniversary. more...

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