Two summers ago, while participating in the annual bike trip Ride Across South Dakota (RASDAK), I spent long minutes looking at fences. South Dakota fences. Which are sometimes different from and sometimes similar to the lodgepole pine fences I helped build in my youth in Montana. Those fences were made of trees we found up…
“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things–trout as well as eternal salvation–come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.” Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It “Get brave,” Sheila said. “It’s only paint.” I’m sure that my grandfather practiced…
The Hereford’s eyes, dark with thick lashes, get to me every time. Why do I eat some animals and not others? If I believe cattle are created in the image of God, what does that mean when I eat a steak? I look again into the Hereford’s eyes which look back at me. I’m consumer,…
When they run and play, the three dogs know exactly how to move in a synchronized dance of delight. Brindle, a gray Standard Poodle, leaps with a lightness to her being as she bounds across the field. As the youngest of the dogs, she can outrun and outplay both of her senior male dog friends….
Winter: Turbulent northwest winds usher in blizzard conditions, leaving Dakota buried under ice and snow that piles along the roads, crusting into white and black. In 2013, winter arrived prematurely when a blizzard blanketed western South Dakota, killing tens of thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep. In one day, the West River rains switched to…
What I long for most these busy December days is the horizon of Dakota skies at sunset when the sun’s dying blaze meets the dark edge of the earth. As the sun travels through veils of thin clouds, a cool dim palette of blue peaks through. These days from Advent to Epiphany are my spiritual…