Billy Peeble's Christmas

I’m kind of on hiatus from some medical procedures for a couple days, and I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be for the next week or so, so I’m going to share with you today my Christmas offering of Some Of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.

I’m not a big fan of James W. Foley, our long time North Dakota Poet Laureate, but I'd agree with most North Dakotans that he’s a pretty good poet (technically, at least--he writes in classic verse) and he has a good feel for our state and the prairie and its people.

Short biography: Born in Missouri in 1874, moved to North Dakota with his family almost immediately after his birth, lived here, mostly in the Medora area, until ill health sent him seeking a better climate in southern California. His biographers have said he had a “homespun” philosophy of life and the enviable ability to put it into words of the common man.

He published numerous volumes of poetry, apparently with sales enough to support himself, and many of them targeted at children. He died of cancer in 1939 at age 65 in California and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Here’s my favorite, I guess, of his poems, in my opinion probably the best Christmas poem ever written in or about North Dakota. Especially if you read the last two lines very, very slowly. Merry Christmas.

BILLY PEEBLE’S CHRISTMAS

By James W. Foley

Billy Peeble he ain’t got no parents—never had none ‘cause

When he was borned he was an orfunt; an’ he said ‘at Santa Claus

Never didn’t leave him nothin,’ ‘cause he was a county charge

An’ the overseer told him that his fambly was too large

To remember orfunt children; so I ast Ma couldn’t we

Have Bill Peeble up to our house, so’s to see our Christmas Tree.

An she ast me if he’s dirty; an’ I said I guessed he was

But I didn’t think it makes no difference with Santa Claus.

My his clo’es was awful ragged! Ma, she put him in a tub

An’ she poured it full of water, an’ she gave him such a scrub

‘At he ‘ist sit there an’ shivered; and he tol’ me afterwurds

‘At he never washed all over out to Overseer Bird’s!

‘An she burned his ragged trousies an’ she gave him some of mine;

My! She rubbed him an’ she scrubbed him till she almost made him shine,

Nen he ‘ist looked all around him like he’s scairt for quite a w’ile

An’ even when Ma’d pat his head he wouldn’t hardly smile.

“En after w’ile Ma took some flour-sacks an’ ‘en she laid

“Em right down at the fireplace, ‘ist ‘cause she is afraid

Santa Claus’ll soil the carpet when he comes down there, you know

An’ Billy Peeble watcher her, an’ his eyes stuck out—‘ist so!

“En Ma said ‘at in the mornin’ if we‘d look down on the sacks

‘At they’d be ‘ist full of soot where Santa Claus had made his tracks;

Billy Peeble stood there lookin’! An’ he told me afterwurds

He was scairt he’d wake up an’ be back at Overseer Bird's.

Well, ‘en she hung our stockin’s up and after w’ile she said:

“Now you and’ Billy Peeble better get right off to bed,

An’ if you hear a noise tonight, don’t you boys make a sound,

‘Cause Santa Claus don’t never come with little boys around!”

So me an’ Billy went to bed, and Billy Peeble, he

Could hardly go to sleep at all—ist tossed an’ tossed. You see

We had such w’ite sheets on the bed an’ he said afterwurds

They never had no sheets at all at Overseer Bird’s.

So we ‘ist laid and talked an’ talked. An’ Billy ast me who

Was Santa Claus. An’I said I don’t know if it’s all true,

But people say he’s some old man who ‘ist loves little boys

An’ keeps a store at the North Pole with heaps an’ heaps of toys

W’ich he brings down in a big sleigh, with reindeers for his steeds,

An’ comes right down the chimbly flue an’ leaves ‘ist what you needs.

My! He’s excited w’en I tell him that! An' afterwurds

He said that they never had no toys at Overseer Bird’s.

I’m fallin’ pretty near asleep w’en Billy Peeble said:

“Sh-sh! What’s that noise?” An’ w’en he spoke I sat right up in bed

Till sure enough I heard it in the parlor down below,

An’ Billy Peeble, he set up an’ ‘en he said: “Let’s go!”

So we got up an’ sneaked down stairs, an’ both of us could see

‘At it was surely Santa Claus, ‘ist like Ma said he’d be;

But he must have heard us comin’ down, because he stopped an’ said:

“You, Henry Blake and William Peeble, go right back to bed!”

My goodness, we was awful scairt! An’ both of us was pale,

An’ Billy Peeble said upstairs: “My! Ain’t he ‘ist a whale?”

We didn’t hardly dare to talk and got back into bed

An’ Billy pulled the counterpane clear up above his head,

An’ in the mornin’ w’en we looked down on the flour-sacks,

W’y sure enough we saw the soot where he had made his tracks.

An’ Billy got a suit of clothes, a drum, an’ sled an’ books

Till he ‘ist never said a word, but my, how glad he looks!

An’ after w’ile it’s dinner time an Billy Peeble set

Right next to Pa, an' my! how he ‘ist et an’ et an’ et!

Till he ‘ist puffed an’ had to leave his second piece of pie

Because he couldn’t eat no more, an’ after dinner, w’y

Ma dressed him up in his new clo’es, an Billy Peeble said

He’s sorry he’s an orfunt, an’ Ma Patted Billy’s head.

W’ich made him cry a little bit, an’ he said afterwurds

Nobody ever pats his head at Overseer Bird’s.

An’ all day long Pa looked at Ma an’ Ma she looked at him,

Because Pa said ‘at Billy looked a little bit like Jim

‘At was my brother, but he died oncet, years ago,

An’ ‘at’s why Billy Peeble makes my mother like him so.

She says ‘at Santa brought him as a present, ‘ist instead

Of little Jim ‘at died oncet. So she ‘ist put him to bed

On Christmas Night an’ tucked him in an’ told me afterwurds

‘At he ain’t never going back to Overseer Bird’s.

Dancing Dakota

It all started with a posting on my blog back in July, when I was writing in praise of Chuck Suchy and his music. I said “My two favorites (of Chuck’s songs) surprisingly, are a couple of waltzes, “Saturday Night at the Hall” and “Dancing Dakota.”

That prompted a response from Tom Isern over in Fargo, he of “Plains Talk” fame, who wrote:

“So Jim, will you join a campaign to designate "Dancing Dakota" the new state song of North Dakota? I believe a waltz is the appropriate sort of song for a prairie state, and this one is just right.”

I wrote back that I agreed, but was nervous about finding a legislator who would introduce legislation to do that. After all, our North Dakota State Song, “North Dakota Hymn,” is embedded in Section 54-02-04 of the North Dakota Century Code (along with the State Bird, and the State Tree, and the State Fossil and the State Grass and the State Beverage, among other official things) and has been there for almost 90 years. There is also a North Dakota State March, “The Flickertail March,” designated in NDCC 54-02-09.

The North Dakota Hymn was written by our former Poet Laureate James Foley. In 1926 Minnie J. Nielson, North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction, asked Foley to write the lyrics for a song about North Dakota. Foley created a poem that could be sung to the “The Austrian Hymn.” Dr. C. S. Putnam, conductor of the North Dakota Agricultural College Band in Fargo, arranged music for Foley's work. The first public presentation of the “North Dakota Hymn” was in the Bismarck City Auditorium in 1927.

Frankly, that was probably one of the last times it was performed in public. First, it’s not a very good song—oh, the lyrics are patriotic enough, but very 1920-ish—and second, there probably weren’t 40 Austrians in the entire state, so why we chose their tune was a mystery. Maybe Minnie and Foley and the Legislature just figured there weren’t enough Austrians around to object to us stealing their melody.

I can honestly say I have never heard it. Or if I did, it did not make enough of an impression on me to register. It wasn’t part of the repertoire of the Hettinger High School Band when I was there. So I certainly wouldn’t have a problem “joining a campaign” to change it. Except that my record at trying to get official things changed is pretty dismal.

So I did a little research. And I found out some very interesting things. Most of all, it is not unusual for states to have a number of official state songs. There are official State Waltzes, State Polkas, State Hymns, State Anthems, State Folk songs, and even a State Rock Song.

So I suggested to Tom that perhaps we should just ease into this by trying to get “Dancing Dakota” designated the Official North Dakota State Waltz. Who could be opposed to that?

I called Chuck Suchy. He really didn’t want any part of another one of my schemes, but would not object to us seeking such a designation. And Tom said, “What the heck? Why not?” So we’re off.

A few weeks later, I mentioned this to a friend of mine, State Senator Connie Triplett of Grand Forks. And she thought it was a great idea! I mentioned it to another friend of mine, State Senator Tim Mathern of Fargo, and he agreed. (Tim, coincidentally, was the Senator who introduced the bill to change the name of North Dakota to just Dakota back in 1989. He’s a fearless soul.)

So I guess we’re going to do that. I wish I could play the whole song for you right here on my blog, but we don’t have an mp3 available (although Chuck told me last night he’d work on that). But you can listen to the first few bars of it here. And Chuck was nice enough to send me the lyrics, which I’ll include at the end of this post. If anybody out there knows how to make an mp3 and put it on YouTube, we can use my CD, and we could all really appreciate the song. Otherwise you’re just going to have to buy the CD, or come by my house and listen to it.

I know, I know, some of you are just itching to say “But Jim, it’s called ‘Dancing Dakota,’ not ‘Dancing North Dakota.’ You trying to pull something here?”

Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’ll tell you why. State songs come in all colors and flavors. For example:

North Carolina’s state song is “The Old North State,” and the lyrics never mention “North Carolina”—in fact Carolina is only mentioned once, but it’s a pretty good song.

One of Florida’s official state songs is “Old Folks At Home” (better known as “Way Down Upon The Swanee River”) and doesn’t mention Florida at all. Same with “You Are My Sunshine,” the state song of Louisiana.

“Home On The Range” is the official state song of Kansas—no mention of the state though.

Washington’s State Folk Song is “Roll On, Columbia, Roll On” by Woody Guthrie. The Legislature discussed, but never passed, adopting a State Rock Song: “Louie, Louie” written by Richard Berry and made famous by The Kingsmen back in the ‘60’s.

Ohio, though, did adopt a State Rock Song, “Hang On Sloopy,” by the McCoys (you’ve got to be my age to remember them). The McCoys were originally from Dayton, Ohio. In 1985, the Ohio General Assembly approved "Hang on Sloopy" as Ohio's Official Rock Song after Joe Dirck, a columnist for the Columbus Citizen-Journal, wrote a column about the State of Washington considering the adoption of its own rock song. The Ohio General Assembly responded by making "Hang on Sloopy" Ohio's rock song. Ohio is the only state to have an Official Rock Song.

The resolution adopted by the Ohio Legislature read, in part:

"WHEREAS, "Hang On Sloopy" is of particular relevance to members of the Baby Boom Generation, who were once dismissed as a bunch of long-haired, crazy kids, but who now are old enough and vote in sufficient numbers to be taken quite seriously"

and

"WHEREAS, Adoption of this resolution will not take too long, cost the state anything, or affect the quality of life in this state to any appreciable degree, and if we in the legislature just go ahead and pass the darn thing, we can get on with more important stuff. . . . ."

"Hang on Sloopy" is now also the official song of the Major League Baseball team the Cleveland Indians who play at Progressive Field (no, the name has nothing to do with the political affiliation of the city, the team or its owners—naming rights were sold to the Progressive Insurance Company, so all you conservatives can just take a deep breath and relax) Cleveland Ohio. The song is played during the middle of the 8th inning. You can read House Concurrent Resolution of the 116th General Assembly of Ohio in its entirety, and also read the Lyrics to “Hang On Sloopy,” by going here.

There are a lot of seriously great state songs, many of them well known nationally, such as “Rocky Top” and “The Tennessee Waltz” in Tennessee, “The Arkansas Traveler” in Arkansas, “Rocky Mountain High” in Colorado, “Georgia On My Mind” in Georgia, “My Old Kentucky Home” in Tennessee, “Oklahoma” from the musical of the same name in Oklahoma, “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny” in Virginia and “Yankee Doodle” in Connecticut.

No doubt folks in those states are proud of their state songs (okay, we’ll forgive Connecticut). But I doubt there’s more than a handful of North Dakotans who can sing the North Dakota Hymn. Now “Dancing Dakota,” there’s a song to be proud of.

I think Connie’s going to get this done. I think she’ll find lots of co-sponsors, and lots of Senators and Representatives who like to waltz, especially to Chuck Suchy’s music. Here are the lyrics. It’s such great poetry. I hope you can hear the music soon, if you haven’t.

DANCING DAKOTA

Chuck Suchy copyright 1989

The music is calling

quiet and clear

A voice gently falling

on the listening ear

It calls from the river

the wind and the trees

It calls I know you

do you know me?

For I am a dancer

I am the dance

I am a dreamer

living romance

I am all ages

timeless I be

I am Dakota

please dance with me

Chorus:

Dance Dakota

far as you see

Dance and the

spirit renew

Dance Dakota

long may we be

Dancing Dakota

with you

I am the magic

of mid-winter night

I am the warmth

of Spring morning bright

The aura of Autumn

in quiet repose

A sunset of Summer

a wild prairie rose

I've been dancing

thousands of years

Many for partners

I dance joy and tears

Flags o'er me flown

I've given the chance

I am Dakota

may I please have this dance

Chorus

I dance with the sun

I dance with the rain

I dance with the one's

who come home again

I dance with justice

with dignity

I am Dakota

please dance with me .

Chorus

Roosevelt In The Bad Lands

A niece of mine recently sent me a text message asking what would be a good biography of Theodore Roosevelt to start learning about TR. I wrote back suggesting a couple, and then said “But if you want to know about Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota, read Herman Hagedorn’s “Roosevelt in the Badlands.” And then, just to refresh my own memory, I dragged out my copy. You could do that as well. It’s history-reading weather now. To get you started, let me share the opening of his introduction.

To write any book is an adventure, but to write this book has been the kind of gay and romantic experience that makes any man who has partaken of it a debtor forever to the Giver of Delights. Historical research, contrary to popular opinion, is one of the most thrilling of occupations, but I question whether any biographer has ever had a better time gathering his material than I have had. Amid the old scenes, the old epic life of the frontier has been re-created for me by the men who were the leading actors in it. But my contact with it has not been only vicarious. In the course of this most grateful of labors I have myself come to know something of the life that Roosevelt knew thirty-five years ago—the hot desolation of noon in the scarred butte country; the magic of dawn and dusk when the long shadows crept across the coulees and woke them to unexpected beauty; the solitude of the prairies, that have the vastness without the malignance of the sea. I have come to know the thrill and the dust and the cattle-odors of the round-up; the warm companionship of the ranchman’s dinner-table; such profanity as I never expect to hear again; singing and yarns and hints of the tragedy of prairie women; and, at the height of a barbecue, the appalling intrusion of death. I have felt in all its potency the spell which the “short-grass country” cast over Theodore Roosevelt; and I cannot hear the word Dakota without feeling a stirring in my blood.

Hagedorn spent a considerable amount of time in the North Dakota Bad Lands in the years shortly before and after Roosevelt’s death in 1919, doing research, with the former president’s blessing. Hanging on the wall in the Rough Riders Hotel in Medora is one of the president’s letters of introduction which Hagedorn carried with him when he visited here, one of those countless rare documents Harold Schafer collected as he was rebuilding Medora to share its amazing history with visitors from around the world.

Hagedorn finished his book in 1921 and it was greeted with much acclaim and enthusiasm. It begins with Roosevelt’s arrival in the Dakota Bad Lands to hunt buffalo in September of 1883. Here's Hagedorn’s description of the place Roosevelt encountered his first morning in the town of Little Missouri, Dakota Territory.

It was a world of strange and awful beauty into which Roosevelt stepped as he emerged from the dinginess of the ramshackle hotel into the crisp autumn morning. Before him lay a dusty, sagebrush flat walled in on three sides by scarred and precipitous clay buttes. A trickle of sluggish water in a wide bed, partly sand and partly baked gumbo, oozed beneath banks at his back, swung sharply westward, and gave the flat on the north a fringe of dusty-looking cottonwoods, thirstily drinking the only source of moisture the country seemed to afford. Directly across the river, beyond another oval-shaped piece of bottom-land rose a steep bluff, deeply shadowed against the east, and south of it stretched in endless succession the seamed ranges and fantastic turrets and cupolas and flying buttresses of the Bad Lands.

It was a region of weird shapes garbed in barbaric colors, gray-olive striped with brown, lavender striped with black, chalk pinnacles capped with flaming scarlet. French-Canadian voyageurs, a century previous, finding the weather-washed ravines wicked to travel through, spoke of them as mauvaises terres pour traverser, and the name clung. The whole region, it was said, had once been the bed of a great lake, holding in its lap the rich clays and loams which the rain carried down into it. The passing of ages brought vegetation, and the passing of other ages turned that vegetation into coal. At last this vast lake found an outlet in the Missouri. The wear and wash of the waters cut in time through the clay, the coal and the friable limestone of succeeding deposits, creating ten thousand water-courses bordered by precipitous bluffs and buttes, which every storm gashed and furrowed anew. On the tops of the flat buttes was rich soil and in countless pleasant valleys were green pastures, but there were regions where for miles only sagebrush and stunted cedars lived a starved existence. Bad lands they were, for man or beast, and Bad Lands they remained.

"Roosevelt in the Badlands" has gone through many printings, the most recent by the Theodore Roosevelt Nature and History Association, headquartered in Medora. You’ll find it for sale at the Visitor Center in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, The Western Edge Bookstore in Medora, and the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck, and for lending at most North Dakota libraries. It’s one of the best books ever written about a North Dakotan.

A Man As Big As The West

There’s a table in the dining room of Sheila Schafer’s house in Medora that has hosted many important and not-so-self important visitors to Medora in the last 45 years. It’s “a large round mahogany table with a heavy center pedestal and four supporting legs, each ending in a finely carved dolphins head.” That description is from Nellie Snyder Yost’s biography of Ralph “Doc” Hubbard, and those are Doc‘s words.

Doc was the historian Harold Schafer brought to Medora in Harold’s early days of rebuilding that town in the 1960’s. Doc served as museum curator for the Museum of the Badlands that Harold created as an attraction for visitors. The museum sat where the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame is today.

Doc, born in 1885, was a colorful character, a pretty good Indian and Old West historian, a dreamer who never prepared for old age. So it was given to Harold, the philanthropist, to take care of Doc, who lived into his early 90’s. There were some medical bills and transportation costs that Harold had his Gold Seal company pay while he just looked the other way. Not ungrateful, Doc from time to time gifted or sold items to Harold from the historical collection he had picked up along the path of his life. There wasn’t much in the way of record keeping, but Rod Tjaden, who managed the Medora operation for Gold Seal for many years, told me once that there was no doubt that Doc got the better end of the deal. Harold never took advantage of anyone in his entire life, but that was often a one-way street.

One of the items that Doc sold to Harold was the table that Doc’s mother had built for their home in East Aurora, New York, on the Roycroft campus. Now a National Historic Landmark, the Roycroft Campus was home to an artistic revolt in the late 1880’s in the United States against the societal changes and restrictions ushered in by the Victorian Age. It was founded by Doc’s father, Elbert Hubbard and it became a Mecca for master craftsmen and a gathering place for notable artists, authors, philosophers, and power brokers, according to the Roycroft website (view it here) and Yost’s book. The elder Hubbard later perished as a passenger on the Lusitania.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Sorry for the long introduction. In the last years of Doc’s life, in the 1970’s Yost, no spring chicken herself, came to Medora for months at a time and interviewed Doc. The book which resulted, Doc’s definitive biography, carries Yost’s imprimatur as author, but it is mostly a first-person narrative as recorded by Yost. It’s interesting. I have no doubt that most of it is true. Most of it. In her introduction, Yost writes:

“Doc has had a lifelong love affair with words. Frequently, during the interviews, he would use a good descriptive word, then pause to ask me how I liked it. Over the period in which we were engaged in writing the book, Doc wrote me many letters. Here, too, his pleasure in words was evident and his breezy anecdotes a delight, right down to the signatures: Old Confucius, Rocky Mountain Moses, Sagebrush Socrates.

“A sincerely modest man . . .” she continues, and she goes on telling about how she had to learn a bit of his history from others.

Okay, Okay, I’m getting there. Back to the table. I sat at the table in the Schafer home in Medora the other night and looked through the book. As I said, the Hubbard home at Roycroft became a gathering place for the famous of the last part of the 19^th century and the first part of the 20^th. Let Doc take over:

As I look back on it now, the names of some of the people who sat with us at that table come to mind as follows:

Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist leader

Carry Jacobs Bond, writer of “The End of a Perfect Day.”

Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, wife of the great American statesman

Maude Adams, fine American actress

Edwin Markham, beloved American poet, author of “The Man with the Hoe”

Edgar A. Guest, American poet, author of “The House By The Side Of The Road”

Stephen Crane, author of "The Red Badge of Courage"

John Burroughs

John Muir

Ernest Thompson Seton, writer, painter, Boy Scout leader

Rudyard Kipling

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American journalist and poet

Harriet Beecher Stowe, American writer, author of "Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

Isabell Irving, great English actress

Henry Irving, British actor

Ellen Terry, English actress

Eugene Field, American poet and journalist

Joel Chandler Harris, author, writer of Uncle Remus stories

Frank Bacon, actor and playwright

James Lane Allen, American novelist of Kentucky

George Washington Carver, American Negro botanist and chemist

Booker T. Washington, American Negro educator and author

Sherman Coolidge, Arapaho Indian, rescued from enemy tribe as a boy and named by an officer, a Coolidge relative

Joe Jefferson, famous player of Rip Van Winkle

David Bispham, fine singer

Clara Barton, organizer of the American Red Cross

Captain Jack Crawford, poet

Richard Le Gallienne

Anne Besant, famous student of Sanskrit and other eastern languages

Anna Kathryn Green, popular mystery writer of that period

Ida Tarbell, popular writer, exposed the Standard Oil scandals

Mark Twain

Eugene Debs

Margaret Sanger, famous American advocate of birth control

Judge Ben Lindsey, well-known Denver juvenile court judge

Gutzon Borglum, American Sculptor, carver of the Mount Rushmore heads

Clarence Darrow, famous American lawyer

Sir Harry Lauder, Scottish comedian, singer, and writer

Andrew Rowan

Whew! Doc later qualifies the list a bit:

“Some of these, such as Kipling and Crane, were our guests at Roycroft before Mother had the table made, and some came to visit her after she moved to Buffalo and took the table with her . . .”

Still, it’s an impressive list of guests for a table now sitting in little old Medora, North Dakota. One of these days I’m going to sit down with Sheila and have her try to remember some who have sat at it since its arrival in Medora.

Doc lived long and traveled much. Among his other acquaintances, some fleeting, some long lasting, were Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill Cody, Jim Thorpe, Gene Autry, Owen Wister, Ben American Horse, (”last chief of the Teton Sioux Dakota Nation,”) Dan Beard, illustrator of Mark Twain’s books, and Dr. Charles Eastman, who, Hubbard says, was a witness to the Custer massacre as a young Indian boy and later became a doctor and treated the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre. Doc died in Dickinson in 1980, at age 95, and is buried in the Medora cemetery.

The book is “A Man as Big as the West” by Nellie Snyder Yost, published in 1979 by Pruett Publishing Company of Boulder, Co. It’s not one of the best books ever written about North Dakota, but it’s an interesting read. It’s out of print now, but still available from time to time from used booksellers. Doug Ellison at Western Edge Books in Medora says he still gets requests for it and has been thinking about having it reprinted. Ellison, also Medora’s mayor and a fine historian in his own right, was instrumental in 2009 in officially getting the street on which Hubbard lived in Medora renamed as “Doc Hubbard Drive.”

According to a story printed earlier this year by Kurt Eriksmoen in some North Daktoa newspapers, on May 14, 1983, astronomer Norman G. Thomas discovered a new asteroid in space that he named “Hubbard” in honor of Doc Hubbard. Doc would have liked that.

Ranching With Roosevelt: Part I

One of my favorite books (and a favorite of a couple historians I know as well) is Lincoln Lang’s “Ranching With Roosevelt.” Lincoln Lang was a boy when Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Bad Lands in the early fall of 1883, living with his father (his mother had remained behind in Scotland until father and son had established a ranch) in a cabin at the mouth of Little Cannonball Creek on the Little Missouri River south of Medora.

Our copy of the book, published in 1926, came from an online bookseller some years ago, and we were delighted to discover when it arrived in the mail that the bookplate on the inside cover said it was a discarded copy from, of all places, the Panama Canal Library, book # 27678 (How about the irony in that?). A second plate carried the Panama Canal Library rules, which said, among other things, that it could be kept 14 days and if it was not returned in 14 days, the borrower faced a fine of 2 cents a day. It also still had the original library card pocket on the facing page, and it showed that its first return date was Nov. 9, 1926, and its last Nov. 24, 1958.

Lang’s descriptions of the Bad Lands, where he grew up, and life there, and anecdotes about the people who lived there, are among the most vivid I have found. I’m going to excerpt from his book a few times in the next few months, because they are Some Of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota. To start, here’s his account of Theodore Roosevelt arriving at the Lang cabin in September 1883, Roosevelt's first trip to the Badlands, seeking to shoot a buffalo.

Temperate September days were now upon us. More and more acceptable were we finding the shelter of the cabin as the chill breath of the Arctic began to manifest itself in the increasing crispness of the lengthening nights.

Assembled in the cabin one evening, when about to sit down to supper, father having returned from town, we heard a rig drive up to the door. In the weirdly characteristic manner common to the region, already the looming, ascensional shadows of the night arising softly, stealthily, as if from their couches in the depths of a myriad labyrinthian water-ways, had merged into the single somber shadow of gray gloaming, paling to the westward in the wake of departing day.

Upon stepping to the door, I was enabled to distinguish the outline of a light wagon and team, together with a driver of bulky build sitting in the seat. To the rear, sitting on a pony with a rifle laying across the saddle in front of him, was a second individual of lighter build. Even before the booming hail “Hello Link” of the driver reached me, I had recognized him as “the power end of the pile driver,” my erstwhile boss, “Joe Ferris.” Just who his mounted companion might be, I could not tell. Evidently a stranger, but aided by the beam of light showing through the cabin door, I could make out that he was a young man, who wore large conspicuous-looking glasses, through which I was being regarded with interest by a pair of bright twinkling eyes. Amply supporting them was the expansive grin overspreading his prominent, forceful looking lower face, revealing a set of large white teeth. Smiling teeth, yet withal conveying a strong suggestion of hang-and-rattle. The kind of teeth that are made to hold anything they once close upon.

Father had stepped out past me to welcome our guests; whereupon, with my responsibilities to cook in mind, I re-entered and proceeded to include the newcomers in my supper preparations.

A few minutes later, father ushered the stranger into the shack.

“This is my son Lincoln, Mr. Roosevelt,” he said.

Then, somehow or other, I found both my hands in the double solid grip of our guest. Heard him saying clearly and forcefully, in the manner conveying the instant impression that he meant exactly what he said. That he was not merely passing out the ordinary stereotyped society phrase, which so frequently fails to ring true, I felt sure.

“Dee-lighted to meet you, Lincoln.”

I do not know if it was the direct, forceful manner of his speech, his sincere hearty grip, the open friendly gaze with which he regarded me, or something of all combined, that instantly reached for and numbered me among his friends. I did not know then, of course, that I was meeting one of the world’s greatest men; the man of destiny; a future and great President of the United States. But I didn’t need to. Young and all, as I was, the consciousness was instantly borne in upon me of meeting a man different from any I had ever met before. Just where the difference lay, I could not have told although in good time I would learn, but certain it is, right there and then, I fell for him strong.

More from this wonderful book at another time. I wish I could put the entire 367 pages in front of you. If you have taken a liking to Roosevelt, or the Badlands, or even just North Dakota history, buy this book for yourself for Christmas. Even if it is the only book you buy this year. You can buy it here. Or here. Or here.

Note: The exact location of Lang’s cabin, where Roosevelt headquartered in the days before he finally shot his buffalo that fall of 1883, is known today (although,unfortunately the exact location of where he finally shot the buffalo is somewhat a mystery--Roosevelt historian Clay Jenkinson is working on it). The Lang cabin was at the mouth of the Little Cannonball River due north of Marmarth, in the Limber Pine area of the Badlands. It’s on public land owned by the U.S. Forest Service and hard to get to by car (I’ve done it-I can admit it now-the statute of limitations has run out) but it’s a great stopover if you’re canoeing the Little Missouri north from Marmarth, and I’ve done that a couple of times. The cabin was a semi-dugout structure with a log front and sides and dirt floors, and the depression where the earth was dug out is still discernible. It’s a marvelous location. From what was likely the front stoop, you can throw a stone into either the Little Missouri or the Little Cannonball. You can feel the history there.

Murie In The Bad Lands

Do you know the name Olaus Murie? If not, don’t feel bad. Neither did I ten years ago. Then I underwent a Lillian Crook education, and now I can tell you he is widely acknowledged as the Father of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and an early and long-serving director of the Wilderness Society. He was one of America's leading mammalogists. Prior to joining the Wilderness Society, he served twenty-five years as a field biologist with the U.S. Biological Survey, now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He lived in Moose, Wyoming, near Jackson Hole, where he helped established the National Elk Range. He spent much time in Alaska. He was the author of “The Elk of North America” and many articles on natural history.

So it’s fitting to read some of the best words ever written about North Dakota, written by Murie, right now, as we finally begin the process of reducing the elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which starts Monday. I’ll give you that connection in a minute.

Murie was almost a native North Dakotan. He grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, so he knew this part of the country well. To read a short NPS website biography, go here. To learn more about this remarkable man, and his equally remarkable wife Mardy, read her book “Two in the Far North.” Anyway, sometime in the early 1950’s, shortly after the creation of Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park (later to become Theodore Roosevelt National Park), Murie was assigned to come to western North Dakota to study the wildlife of the newly created Park, and to make recommendations on what the wildlife population ought to be that would most resemble the period Roosevelt had spent here 50 years earlier. That was important because this was a memorial park, not a true national park.

A few months ago, when I started putting into this space some of The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota, Lillian shared with me a copy of an 8-page document – a handwritten account of Murie’s visit to western North Dakota. In Murie’s own hand. It is the draft of a report he wrote as he considered making recommendations about wildlife in the newly created park. It’s a marvelous little bundle of paper, complete with words and lines crossed out, handwritten edits and corrections, and blanks where he was going to check a fact and insert it later in his final report (I've done that for him here). I don’t know this for sure, and Valerie Naylor, the current TRNP superintendent, can correct me if I am wrong, but it is likely upon Murie’s team's recommendation that elk were reintroduced into the park. He was, after all, one of the premier elk experts in America at the time. But it was not without some trepidation that he made this recommendation. Read Murie’s words of caution carefully below. I’ve highlighted them like this, because this is a timely issue. The elk numbers have now gotten way out of hand, and they’re going to start killing those elk next week. Stay out of Theodore Roosevelt National Park for a couple months. There are going to be bullets flying.

So here’s a transcription of Murie’s handwritten essay-like notes. Surely, these are some of the best words ever written about Theodore Roosevelt National Park, western North Dakota, and the entire state of North Dakota. By a truly remarkable man.

Olaus J. Murie

The Little Missouri had been to me a legendary stream. I think I could hardly have described my vicarious impression of the river, so vague can a purely imaginary picture be. Now, here before me, was reality.

It was the 4^th of November, when winter should have settled with snow flurries, somber skies and threat of more to come. But we were enjoying a remarkably pleasant week of clear blue skies.

Allyn had driven us through the badlands of North Dakota, our crude roads leading north from National Park Headquarters. Eventually he had pulled off the road. Nic, Jim and I had followed him as he pushed his way through weeds and rose bushes among the gray cottonwoods, until we assembled at the river bank. Over there, across the river, somewhere back in those cottonwoods, was the site of Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch.

It was hard for me to comprehend all that our guide was telling us, for my thoughts went back to boyhood days, when I had sought adventure in “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” and ______________ (likely he later filled in “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail”—Jim). I recalled the virile writings of our hunter-naturalist President, how they had pictured in the boyhood mind the antelope and bison, the calling of geese, the sage grouse – the appeal of far places – the boyhood yearning for adventure in wilderness. With a sort of wonder at the chain of events, I reviewed more recent sequences. North Dakota now had a national park. Congress had created the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. I understood it was to commemorate the wilderness life of an outstanding President. And here we were, a group of us, with an assignment to study the wildlife of this new park, its historic and wilderness aspects, and to make recommendations on what might be done to restore the animal life that was part of the scene in Roosevelt’s day.

We looked about us on the river bank. Several cottonwoods had been cut up by beavers years ago, and we looked at the gnawed lengths. There were the tracks of a white-tailed deer in the mud near the water. The muddy river, flowing silently by, was at low stage this time of year, but we could see the high scars in the cottonwoods, where ice in spring flood had cut and bruised them. And over across there was the historic site. What a memorial – the muddy banks and muddy water of a small river and a line of twisted leafless cottonwoods! Behind them rose a low bluff, rising to the upland beyond.

But its very simplicity was eloquent. There at one time had stood a significant log cabin. By recognizing this humble spot on the bank of the Little Missouri we do more than establish a reminder of a prominent national political figure. It pleased me that this was not a mountain spire, a figure carved in a cliff, or some other obtruding picture. By selecting this spot where had once stood a cabin, representative of the bigger scene, a spot no different from the rest of it up and down the river (rather less striking, in fact, than the rest of it), we effectively recognize an adventurous era, a significant experience of mankind, a stretch of country that is capable of instilling in us something that can hardly be named in ordinary prose, but may only be guessed by the poet.

A bald eagle appeared and settled for a moment in a big cottonwood. Then he rose in the air and we ourselves seemed to feel a lift as we watched him soar upward on the air currents near the bluff. He swerved downward again and we watched his shadows moving across the cliff—then up again, and he slanted off behind the hill.

Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. That is the imposing title bestowed by Congress. I don’t know who drew the boundaries, or why they were drawn as they are. The park is made up of three distinct pieces. The south area, containing park headquarters, abuts on Highway 10 at Medora. It comprises a picturesque section of the badlands, with the Little Missouri running through it, and consists of ____ acres (46,178.57 – Jim). Northward, down the river, is the site of the Elk Horn Ranch, a small acreage dedicated to preserve that historic location. Still farther down river is the north area, another rugged section of the badlands, containing ___ acres (24,070.32 – Jim).

As we looked over the area during these autumn days and contemplated the grasslands, the supply of browse, the thin line of trees, the forage resources contained within the park boundaries, we could have wished the area was a little bigger, that these two areas were somehow connected. We discussed such concepts as biological units. We scrutinized the species of brushes present and judged their palatability for various “big game” species. We gratefully estimated the carrying capacity of some remnants of original grama grass prairie which had been included within the boundary. Bison? Mountain sheep? Elk? What would they do to the limited supply of red ozier dogwood, plum cherry? They would have to be fenced in, and stray cattle fenced out, for farms adjoin the park on all sides and we can’t have bison and elk running loose on the country side.

We were thrilled to find flocks of sharp-tailed grouse, apparently thriving. What would reintroduced grazing and browsing animals (do) to the security for grouse? I was acutely conscious of the small population of such grouse on the National Elk Refuge in Wyoming some years ago, and how they dwindled year by year until they disappeared. Had the intensive winter feeding of elk on this refuge, over a long period of years, affected the food supply of those grouse by destroying the willow growth?

Such are the considerations. Such is the problem in trying to keep some sort of biological balance in a national park of limited area. (Are you finally listening, National Park Service?—Jim) The natural vegetation is also part of the biological assets. These bits of short grass prairie, for instance, in a land that is steadily going under the plow. Where prairie has given way to plowed fields elsewhere, and has become but a memory in the minds of men, how precious then must be these fragments.

I pictured in my mind the future visitor to the badlands, we’ll say the visitor who is attuned to the message (of) wild open country. I pictured him climbing up to a grassy plateau, and sitting there on a knoll to contemplate the scene. There would be the scent of sod at his feet. He would look with interest at the curled heads of the grama grass, the grama grass of Roosevelt’s day, the grama grass of the tumultuous days when this country was formed.

Here is history! Our visitor looks across the badlands—the broken, tumbled badlands—domes and bluffs and color-banded rims. Traces of lignite coal are there, speaking of ages still farther back in time. And the colored ________, (scoria, he would have added later—Jim) the product of native clay baked by burning coal seams. Traces of petrified forest. A landscape of clay and sandstone, persistently, patiently carved by muddy water, through infinite ages, until these rugged land forms took shape. Our visitor will visualize the broad undulating North Dakota plains, here in the west broken open and dissected to reveal the long, long Nature’s history of the state, which is elsewhere hidden beneath plowed fields and dwellings of the state’s homeland.

The first morning we had gone up Munsen Creek, and came to a prairie dog town. At the far edge we saw two coyotes trotting about, and examination of some droppings we found revealed that they had previously fed on prairie dogs and wild plums. A few days later we saw a badger and a coyote in another “dog town,” and they had apparently nearly depopulated this prairie dog village. The badger glared at us before he disappeared down the enlarged burrow he had taken from a prairie dog. In the stream bottom nearby we found the tracks of a bobcat.

A guide in the north area told us of seeing a badger, a coyote and a bobcat in a prairie dog town. The bobcat had a prairie dog in its mouth. The acquisitive coyote made a run at him, but the bobcat ran up a tree a little way and calmly devoured his game. When he came down, the coyote again made a run at him, and they disappeared in the woods. The badger had been nosing about at the far edge of the “town.”

These are the experiences this new park holds for the appreciative visitor who will quietly seek them out. These are the thoughts we had in mind as we went over the country day after day, sizing up range land, seeking proper habitat for mountain sheep in case they should be brought back, trying to anticipate the impact of one animal population on another, the impact of both of them on plant life, and the impact of hordes of people on all of it. We tried to visualize as much of the historic animal life, restored as nearly as practicable, on a sustained basis, all within the boundary of land allowed by the act of Congress.

We were continually intrigued by the prairie dogs. We visualized mountain sheep restored to the area, at home once more on the pinnacles and bluffs overlooking grassy bottom domain of the prairie dogs; bison lazily moving about on the adjacent bits of prairie. In short, our study was a mixture of routine biological study and intense personal enjoyment of what we found. After all, in a national park the end product is the enjoyment of the natural scene by people. Our studies and recommendations should necessarily contribute to those ends.

To me one of the most enjoyable experiences occurred on the last day of our stay. The superintendent had invited a group of people from the state, representatives of various organizations—State Historical Society, Soil Conservation Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and particularly the North Dakota Game and Fish Commission. They were most enthusiastic about the prospects for the National Park. Heartening, indeed, was the assurance from the head of the Game and Fish Commission: “We are all for it. When you need help, just call on us.” (Are you listening, Terry Steinwand?—Jim)

I remembered what I had been told about the dedication on ___ ___ ___ (June 4, 1949 – Jim). The people of North Dakota had turned out 30,000 strong, and the parking problem was something to be concerned about. Evidently North Dakota appreciates its National Park. When a people understands and cherishes a natural treasure, I believe they are in the frame of mind to get the most out of it in historical significance, enjoyment and inspiration.

I like to remember one evening on the rim of the deeply chiseled valley in the north area. We had been looking down on the winding course of the Little Missouri far below us, with its typical line of cottonwoods, and bordered by the typical badlands formations. I had thought of those high school days in Minnesota, when I had borrowed Roosevelt’s books from the library. I remembered Frederic Remington’s drawings, remembered the burning desire to find this western scene. Will the people of today, the people of tomorrow, continue to feel the pull of land that beckons to a sample of our country as it was, a country of space and beauty and a sense of freedom?

The sun went low and dusk was creeping over the valley below us. We watched that poetic quality of light envelop the cliffs and rims about us, and settle over the river bottom where we glimpsed the gleam of water in the bends.

Not a serrated mountain range here, not a mossy forest, nor a lake-studded paradise. Rather an open country; its trees are twisted and storm worn, and grow sparingly along the river banks. A raw country, a country in the making, perhaps. This very fact, this character, the attributes of chiseled buttes and domes, the clay and the prairie grass, the eagle, the prairie dogs, deer, coyote; the flocks of grouse at the heads of the wooded draws—all of these spell one phase of our west—not to be compared with different ones—to be taken and enjoyed for its own singular beauty and character. Ordinary country, but with an aura of the west—something that drew Roosevelt, the adventurous ones.

How about that? Some of the best words ever written about North Dakota? I think so, too. And you can't imagine the intense pleasure I got reading them in Olaus Murie's own handwriting.

Let's Go Hunting

Okay, here’s what happened.

1. Duck season opened.

2. The walleye bite started on the Missouri.

3. Pheasant season opened.

4. I have totally disengaged from the 2010 campaign. It is ugly. I don’t like it. I don’t do things I don’t like. Instead, I hunt ducks, fish for walleyes and chase pheasants.

That’s why no blog posts here for most of the last month.

However, I am reading a lot of North Dakota literature and will comment on some of the best things I have read, as part of my ongoing series, The Best Things Ever Written About North Dakota.

I’ll say this much about the coming election: The Republicans peaked early. That happens in a media-mad society like ours. It’s two weeks to go, and all the stories have been written. What’s more, most of what has been written is negative, so most of us don’t care any more. I expect the backlash will be in the form of a very low voter turnout. “They’re all assholes, so I ain’t voting,” is a common refrain right now.

So far, the only politician who has my respect this year is Byron Dorgan. Because he quit. At exactly the right time. He’s among the first. But he won’t be among the last. To participate in this kind of election, you have to really want power. I don’t want anyone representing me who wants power that badly.

There are exceptions. Earl Pomeroy is one. He’s pretty sure that America doesn’t need a Republican majority in Congress, He’s pretty sure that is a really bad thing. I’m pretty sure he’s right. So Earl is doing what he has to do to win. This year. Don’t look for him to do it many more times. It’s too high a price to pay.

And so for the next two weeks, the TV and radio in my house will be tuned to Prairie Public, where there are no nasty commercials (although I might sneak in a baseball game or two, and get up for a drink of water between innings).

And yes, I am going to vote. On Tuesday, November 3. Until then, I am going hunting. And fishing. And hunting some more.

You should too.

A Really Bad Case Of Mistaken Identity

This is a message to all my Republican friends (if I have any left—I’ve been kind of hard on some of your candidates lately), so all you Democrats can quit reading now and go do something else—there’s nothing in this for you.

Okay, Republicans. One of you needs to ‘fess up. One of you gave my name to Sharron Angle and told her I was a Republican. You know Sharron Angle. She’s the Tea-Partier who won the Nevada Republican Primary to run against Harry Reid for the U.S. Senate, making her the de facto head of the Committee to Guarantee Harry Reid’s Re-Election.

I got a letter from Sharon yesterday. The letterhead said

Sharron Angle

Official Republican Nominee

For U.S. Senate Against Harry Reid

Kind of like “I still can’t believe it, but it is “official.” Here’s how the letter started:

Dear James Fuglie,

If you’re the Republican I’ve been told you are, then I need you to find your checkbook right now.

See? I told you, one of you gave her my name and told her I was a Republican. Well, for the record, I am not. Oh, I've voted for a few Republicans--the good ones--like Bob Martinson. I've lived in Bob's district much of my political life, and he's been in the Legislature all of my political life. I jut tell my Democrat friends he's the son of Henry Martinson, the old Socialist organizer, but he has to run as a Republican to get elected in his district, and none of them ever check to see if that's true or not.

But now I've been labeled a Republican, and now I’m going to get all kinds of mail from Sharron Angle and other Republicans and Tea Partiers, because I know these people share their lists. And I don’t want to get those letters, because if they’re all as mean as this one, they’ll just ruin my day. I gotta tell you, this Angle woman is one mean, angry lady.

About four paragraphs in, she launches an attack on President Obama, and it goes on throughout the letter:

Not only is this the #1 race in America this year, it is nothing less than a referendum on the far left policies of Barack Obama and Harry Reid . . .

Obama and Reid are joined at the hip in forcing this radical expansion of government . . .

Nothing, and I mean nothing, would be a bigger blow to Obama’s agenda than for me to defeat Harry Reid . . .

Defeating Reid will spell doom for Obama’s agenda!

The whole letter is like that. Obama’s bad. Reid’s worse. Send me money. Not once in the letter does Sharron (what’s up with that extra “r” anyway?) say anything about what she stands for, or why she wants to be a U.S. Senator, or what she will do when she gets there. No, “stopping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is Republicans’ #1 priority right now,” Sharron says in her letter a few times.

So I’m writing to you, my Republican friends, to ask you if you agree? Is that your #1 priority? Fixing the economy doesn’t matter? Stopping the war in Afghanistan? Balancing the budget? Putting people back to work? Those are down the list, behind killing the President’s agenda?

Y’know what? I don’t think so. Not the Republicans I know, here in North Dakota, like my friend Bob. But I think it just might be the #1 priority for Sharron Angle and even Mitch McConnell and the national Republican leadership. And that is sad.

But, back to matters at hand. One of you gave Sharron my name. She sent me a letter. She called me a Republican. A cruel hoax. So I’m going to use her return envelope. I’m writing her a note:

Dear Sharron,

I will send $25 to your campaign if you will tell me who gave you my name.

Sincerely,

James Fuglie

I don’t doubt for a minute she’s going to rat you out, whoever you are. So you might just as well come forward now and confess.

Still Drilling, Just A Bit Farther Away

The Weather.com forecast for the Bad Lands on Monday showed a couple of days of mostly sunny skies with possible showers, so we loaded up the tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, food and hiking boots and headed west. We settled in about supper time on a Little Missouri River gravel bar a mile or so from the Elkhorn Ranch site, on some Forest Service land near the ranch owned by a friend of ours.

Tuesday was a grand hiking day. Mid-afternoon found us at the Elkhorn Ranch site, and as we walked down the mowed trail, we heard, behind us, a steady cadence: thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . We paused to listen, and then Lillian said “It’s that oil well, up on the ridge.”

There are, in fact, three oil pumpers about a mile and a half, maybe two miles, from the Elkhorn site, high on a ridge overlooking the Buckhorn ranch, just upriver from the Elkhorn. You can see one of them from the ranch site (oil companies love busting the skyline instead of tucking their well pumpers down in a draw where you can’t see—or hear—them).

And what had happened as we hiked was that the wind was behind us, blowing maybe 15 or 20 miles per hour (a gentle zephyr by North Dakota standards), and carrying the sound of that well over that distance. Once we realized what it was, of course, it sounded even louder. THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP.

Now this was not one of those old 20th century one-lung pumps you could hear for miles and miles. No, this was a modern, 21^st century, state-of-the-art pump, and we could hear it – and see it – distinctly, from almost two miles away.

That’s what’s so troubling about Rick Berg’s statements that he thinks we should allow horizontal drilling under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I don’t want to see or hear any more oil development from Buck Hill or the Oxbow Overlook. I don’t think most North Dakotans, or most Americans, for that matter, do either.

But mostly there are two things about Rick Berg, and this whole issue he brought up a week or so ago, that really trouble me. The first is that I’m not sure Rick really knows much about western North Dakota. The second is he is running for an office that could affect policy about how we deal with western North Dakota, and if he should win, he could prove to be a big embarrassment to us as a state.

Let’s deal with these one at a time. We have oil under most of western North Dakota. Probably 15 million acres of land in western North Dakota have some oil under them. The Bakken alone, currently our most productive field, is under, from what I can tell, at least 3 million acres of North Dakota, probably more. The federal government owns more than a million acres in the western North Dakota. New wells are being drilled as fast as we can get drilling rigs to North Dakota. As I stated in an earlier column, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is just 70,000 acres out of the 15 million acres with oil under them. The National Park is less than one tenth of one per cent of the land in North Dakota with oil under it. It is less than 4 per cent of the land owned by the federal government with oil under it. So why in the world would we even be talking about drilling there? When we’ve drilled every other federal acre, the other 96 per cent, perhaps, 20, 40 or 100 years from now, we can discuss it. Maybe.

The second point is that people with screwed up priorities who get elected to office can do real damage, and so we need to try to be a little careful about who we elect. Case in point:

In its final days, the Bush administration issued new management plans for the spectacular red rocks area of southern Utah, and announced they would begin leasing on the fringes of places like Arches National Monument for drilling for oil and natural gas. Sure enough, in December 2008, the Bureau of Land Management went ahead and held a lease sale for mineral acres just outside a number of national parks and proposed wilderness areas in Utah. Just days after the sale, wilderness organizations filed a lawsuit, and in January a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the BLM, halting the issuance of the leases. In early February, just two weeks after President Obama took office, his new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, ordered the BLM (often called the Bureau of Leasing and Mining by people like us) to cancel the sales. Secretary Salazar explained that his actions were necessary because “[i]n its last weeks in office, the Bush Administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes in Utah.” Thank you, Secretary Salazar, for proving, once again, that elections have consequences.

Now, back to matters at hand. Rick Berg screwed up. No question about that. Desperation often flows through political candidates, and they say dumb things. For Berg, this one was a doozy. But it says something about how he thinks, and how he might act as a Congressman. He’s desperate as a candidate right now to throw out big ideas. He’s also smart enough to try to back off, as he did in a Grand Forks Herald submission this week: “I would consider national park resources only if there was a way to do so without entering the park, by using technology such as horizontal drilling to go under the park from well outside the park boundaries, and then only if it would in no way affect the park or view shed.”

But the thing is, Rick, there are some things you can’t control. The government doesn’t drill for oil. Private companies do. All the government does is lease the land and the minerals to the oil companies. There’s no way to know, when the leases are issued, where the oil company will put the well and the tanks, which way the sound will drift, where the road will go for the service vehicles, how far the smell of the natural gas will drift, how bright the flare will be, and a whole bunch of other things that could affect the quality of the park experience. How far can that horizontal pipe go? A mile? Two miles? How far is far enough? There’s just a lot you don’t know about the oil industry, and about western North Dakota, Rick. We can forgive your Red River Valley naivete about this part of your state. Except that you could be the Congressman for the whole state. You need to do your homework.

One thing is pretty sure. This dumb idea is going nowhere fast. There’s no need to panic. A friend of mine has already said this is the time she will lay down in front of a drilling rig. I hope that won’t be necessary. Another friend said recently, as we were canoeing through the Bad Lands, and rounded a bend in the Little Missouri River to encounter an oil well almost on the river bank, “If there was a God, HHe would have put the oil under Iowa.” Well, I’m not so sure. We DO kind of like the taxes the state is collecting. But Richland, Cass, Traill, Grand Forks and Pembina Counties might have been a nice place for it.

Drill, Rick, Drill

One of my friends put a note on his Facebook page today with a link to a Grand Forks Herald story in which North Dakota Republican Congressional Candidate Rick Berg says we should begin drilling for oil under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. He said “and now for an incredibly stupid idea . . . “ Boy was he right. Let me reprint the first few paragraphs from the Herald’s story:

Drilling for oil underneath western North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other federal lands nationwide could be a way to ensure Social Security funding for the long haul, Republican U.S. House challenger Rick Berg said.

During a meeting with The Forum’s editorial board Wednesday, Berg discussed his ideas for how to make the Social Security system viable for future generations. He said one option is drilling for oil and other mineral resources on federal government land.

“There’s a huge opportunity right now to take those mineral assets that are on the federal government’s balance sheet and shift them to Social Security,” Berg told the editorial board.

He said the national economy also needs to improve so more Americans will have jobs and pay into the system.

Money gained from more drilling on federal land would amount to “billions of dollars” from North Dakota resources alone, Berg said. He did not have specific data available on Wednesday.

The federal government already allows drilling on some public land, including the national grasslands in western North Dakota.

But drilling is banned in national parks with only a few exceptions — and Theodore Roosevelt National Park isn’t among them, park Superintendent Valerie Naylor said.

“Drilling is not allowed in national parks, as a general rule,” she said. “It’s important that we preserve the land for future generations.”

But Berg said he would include national parks — and specifically, Theodore Roosevelt National Park — when discussing areas of untapped mineral resources the U.S. government could use.

I’m disappointed in Rick on this one. He shows a basic lack of understanding of a very important part of North Dakota here.

There are a million acres of federally-owned national grasslands in western North Dakota’s badlands. Virtually all of it is open to drilling for oil. The federal government already rakes in millions and millions of dollars annually from leasing it to the oil companies. It rakes in millions and millions more, and will get to the billions Rick is talking about, in royalty payments from the oil the oil companies are taking out. That has been going on for years, since oil was first discovered in 1954 in western North Dakota.

Thanks to the efforts over many years of one of our state’s most conservative and irascible Congressmen ever, William Lemke, we managed, in 1947, to set aside about 70,000 acres—just a couple of per cent of our state’s spectacular Bad Lands—as a National Park honoring Theodore Roosevelt.

As a National Park, it enjoys the protection from development that has turned, not just the million acres of federal land out west, but the several million acres of private and state land as well, into one of the country’s major oil fields. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a tiny island in a sea of scoria roads and sand colored tanks.

So Rick, listen up: Not only is the National Park sacrosanct, but it is insignificant compared to the million acres of federally-owned land already being drilled. This is not news to most North Dakotans, and you, of all people, should know better. The federal government is already reaping huge royalty and leasing checks from its federal lands in western North Dakota.

If what you meant to tell the Forum editorial board is you want to shift that revenue away from helping to finance general government and put it into Social Security, then tell us what taxes you want to increase to replace that revenue. But keep your drilling rigs away from the National Park. Good God, man, are you that desperate? That greedy? Is nothing sacred? Drill, baby, drill. National Parks be damned. That thinking makes me sad. And angry.

Adding A Barn Owl To Our Life List

Eight years ago, when I first met Lillian I asked her to teach me all the things she knows about birds and plants. She is as good a North Dakotan as there is. The perfect North Dakotan, I have always said, is one who, to borrow a phrase, can see both the landscape’s sweep and the flower’s petal. That’s Lillian. She can identify almost all of the native prairie plants on our frequent hikes, and, in fact, her love of the prairie is often the reason for our hikes. She is an excellent birder with a long Life List, and can identify most species by their song or call, not just by sight. I told her early on in our relationship that if I had not learned plants and birds well in a year, she could push me off the edge of Bullion Butte.

For the record, she is a patient woman. She has not pushed me off the butte, but I have a long learning curve yet. And I work at it. Like this week. Her birding ListServ message this week said:

“There currently is a family group of five barn owls in Petersburg. I have permission from Joe and Lorie who live at ____ (yellow house) to post this information. Birders should check in with them or their next door neighbor to the west, who was also very helpful in showing us where two of the owls were roosting yesterday afternoon in a tree in her back yard. These two owls use this tree a lot as a roost spot, but of course no guarantee can be made that they will be there on a given day. And it should be added that since the young are flying well, the whole group could leave the area at any time.

“If not found in that tree, try walking the streets and alleys to the east and south of Joe and Laurie’s residence and looking carefully through every tree. Petersburg has many large, mature trees so finding one of the five owls can be a challenge . . . “

Isn’t North Dakota a wonderful place to live and know people? And meet new people? We met Lorie yesterday.

Monday, when we read this note on Lillian’s ListServ, we thought we ought to take a drive to Petersburg. Barn owls are a rare find in North Dakota. Not many people who have lived here all their lives have seen one. This would be a rare opportunity. Petersburg’s only about 3½ hours away. And the timing was good. I have an uncle about 40 miles up the road at Edmore who was having an 83rd birthday, and I don’t see him often enough, and he’s not in great health, and his youngest daughter, my cousin, was home from California, and I have not seen her in along while, so we could make it a twofur day by driving up and having birthday cake in the afternoon and looking for barn owls in the evening. Which is what we did.

We got an hour and a half with my relatives before they had to leave for Grand Forks, where my uncle today is seeing specialists for a “problem in his belly.” I’m pretty worried about that. He is a man of few words. I will talk to him, or more likely my cousin, tonight, to see what the diagnosis is.

We arrived in Petersburg about 5:30. Met Lorie. Owls have flown the coop but are still hanging out around town, best she knew. We went for a walk. Turns out we were not the only ones there for that reason. We were spotted by two young women in a tan sedan as we were walking down the street with our noses in the air, looking at the trees. No, they hadn’t spotted the owls yet, but were optimistic. We covered the less heavily forested west side of town on foot, then got into the car and started cruising the small streets and alleys, and sure enough, Lillian, she of the keen eye, stopped the car beside a copse of ash and elm trees and said quietly “There’s one.” He/she looked exactly as Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds described him/her: “Our only owl with a white heart-shaped face. A long-legged, knock-kneed, pale, monkey-faced owl. Dark eyes, no ear tufts . . .”

We were about 50 feet from the owl. We watched it carefully for a few minutes, and I got out my camera, and tried taking a picture through the sun roof of the Jeep. But there was a branch in the way. I asked Lillian if I could get out and get a picture. She said sure, so I crept around the back of the Jeep and walked toward it slowly. It was dozing, and did not seem afraid, and let me get within 25 feet for this photo.

To say it was a spectacular bird is understating it. I’m just going to stick with “very, very cool.” Then, deciding we had bothered it enough, and knowing there were others prowling about town, we let our stomachs lead us south on North Dakota State Highways 32, 45, 65 and 20, through the Sheyenne and James River Valleys in the golden glowing light of an early North Dakota fall evening, to the Buffalo City Grill in Jamestown where we celebrated with a fine meal of bison.

An addition to Lillian’s Life List (I say Lillian’s because she started it long before she met me, but I am claiming joint custody). One step further back from the edge of the butte for me. As fine a day as you could have in North Dakota. And there are a lot of fine ones.