Wonder Book of Nature

 It is an incalculable added pleasure to anyone's sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder book of nature. 

President Theodore Roosevelt

Quoted by a park ranger at Mount Rushmore

Evening flag retirement & lighting, September 9, 2020 

 

 

I was picturing a buffalo bull standing majestically on gently rolling hills of South Dakota, with seasonal grasses subtly signaling the transition to fall.

 

Instead, my first glimpse of a buffalo at Custer State Park was next to a picnic area. But it didn't keep me from snapping away with my camera, joining a bunch of other wildlife paparazzi. (I was safely ensconced in my car at the time because I'm a rule follower. Those people over on the bridge must not have seen the signs.)

"Not what I was hoping for," I lamented to my faithful chauffeur as we drove away. 

 

We were nearing the end of the wildlife loop at Custer State Park before we saw any other buffalo or wildlife of any kind.

 

Randy made a new friend.

This young burro seemed to give me the Greta Garbo treatment, "I want to be alone." As you can see, we weren't the only visitors stopped along the roadway. People literally were weaving around them on the road to continue their journey. They reminded me of cattle who sometimes have to be nudged from a feed bunk with the fender of the pickup.

The wild burros (who didn't appear so wild anymore) trace their roots to a herd that once hauled visitors to the top of Harney Peak. At the rate they move these days, it would take awhile.

 

This stretch of road also featured a landscape dotted with buffalo. OK, maybe I have to tell you that's what they are. But I did get the interesting sky and those rolling South Dakota hills I was talking about.

 The buffalo didn't seem too concerned about the traffic jam in their neighborhood.

This coming weekend, September 24-26, Custer State Park will have even more spectators. But they'll get to see the buffalo on the move as cowboys and cowgirls roundup and drive the herd of approximately 1,300 buffalo to corrals for health checks, branding and sorting. It would be a sight to see - as long as you could find a place among some 20,000-plus people expected to gather to watch.

On second thought, I'm just as happy with our more solitary viewing - even if it wasn't particularly dramatic.

Sightseeing wasn't really on the agenda for our trip to South Dakota. However, we did manage to check out some sights during our arrival and departure. And, yes, I was the country bumpkin taking photos of farm things found in downtown Rapid City after supper.

Our trip took us through portions of the Black Hills National Forest ...

One of several one-car tunnels on the twisty road

... and Wind Cave National Park. (Randy was the one who wanted to stand by the signs. Really, I didn't make him!)

We also drove through part of the Badlands on the way to Rapid City. Randy really wanted to use his Senior Pass to the National Parks system.

It's kind of been burning a hole in his pocket, so to speak. (My parents used to say that about birthday money acquired by one of my siblings who shall remain nameless.)

 

It was an overcast morning, but there was still mysterious beauty in the landscape.

Beauty on the landscape, but just a couple of old Kansans in the foreground. 

 And speaking of Kansas things, I had to take a photo of a sunflower, too. The background didn't look much like home though.

 

 

The Badlands is another one of those "you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it" places. 

 

 

It's also a place where amateur photos just don't capture how beautiful it truly is (kind of like Grand Canyon photos). 

 

 

But, of course, that didn't keep me from attempt after attempt. This was our third time to drive through portions of the Badlands. But it's different every time because of the lighting and the season.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in 1935: "I've been about the world a lot and pretty much over our own country, but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Badlands. What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal ... and an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."

 

It's amazing how much the landscape changes from one overlook to the next - from browns, to reds to yellows and tints in between. The Lakota Indians knew the place as mako sica. Early French trappers called the area les mauvaises terres a traverser. Both mean "bad lands."

They may be "bad lands." But they sure are pretty.

 

We had a pretty stop at the Valentine (Nebraska) National Wildlife Refuge, too. 

It may not have been a long stop. But we still explored "the wonder book of nature" that Franklin Roosevelt was talking about. Thankfully, we're not far from that bestseller here at home either.