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 Our campsite at Theodore Roosevelt Grasslands.  Thanks Maureen for the bumper sticker.  See how dirty the RV is from travelling down Scenic Byways.  We have seen bison up TOO close, prairie dogs and bighorn sheep.

We left the Oxhead Daisies, Lupines and Orange Hawkweed behind in Minnesota for flowing fields of Yellow Rape Seed (Canola), Blue Linseed and tall majestic White Wind Turbine farms in the first part of North Dakota. And then we traveled along the Byways 22 and 85 (Once two of the 275 Best Scenic Drives in the US near where Theodore Roosevelt hunted buffalo and elk from his Elkhorn Ranch, cowboys herded cattle across the Long X Little Missouri Trail and the Assinibone, Crow, Blackfeet, Cree, Ojibway and the Hidatsa traded buffalo robes and other furs for guns, blankets, knives cookware and beads at Fort Union Trading Post.  Theodore Roosevelt founded the National Park Systems through the Antiquities Act as I recall but maybe I am wrong.  Here is what we found and I call it Coyote’s Story. It might rain tears tomorrow.

Prairie Dog was the lookout for the day.  He listened as Coyote sat on the Windy rainbow colored Butte and howled a warning:  “Big Animal Coming, it has many legs and glides on the land like Gold Eagle flies in the air, it will destroy your Village.” But Prairie Dog did not listen because Coyote was known as a trickster and he did not warn the others.  And so, very few escaped the Big Animal as it glided over the village, not only burying homes of Prairie Dog relatives, but also collapsing those of Rattlesnake and Badger.  Over the next few months 2000 Big Animals, called Trucks by humans, invaded all of the Land around Prairie Dog’s town.  They destroyed all the Land around Prairie Dog’s Village, bringing in a drill rig, well pad, pumpjacks, debris pits, storage tanks, and disposal areas for the “salt water”. The water was once beautiful when it was taken from the Little Missouri River and Lake Sakakawea, but had been pumped down into the Earth to “hydraulically fracture” the Land in order to extract oil and now was contaminated.  

Coyote went to warn Buffalo, Pronghorn Antelope and Cougar that more TRUCKS would be coming. They had their ancestor’s memory and recalled the first warning from the past over 200 years ago when humans had herded wagons, cattle and horses. The Land shook and cried more this time; the rumbling was louder. So Buffalo, Pronghorn Antelope and Cougar fled once again further across what humans call the North Dakota Badlands to a small oasis by the Little Missouri River. In the distance at night where only stars could once be seen now flares are seen and during the day a haze covers the once blue skies.  Coyote is not the trickster anymore, humans are…but they are only tricking, deceiving themselves. The Wind knows this and also that soon humans will have taken all they can from 2 miles below the surface of the Land and then The Wind will rejoice as these Badlands are reclaimed, made quiet and beautiful Goodlands once again, because Everything is Holy Now and … (Music to follow)

For every new well drilled 2000 TRUCK “events” occur, this is a fact and new wells are being developed every day.  We had to stop and move off the road at times when wide loads pass us going to a site no doubt to house workers.  In old cowboy towns one bedroom apartments are said to cost as much as $3200 a month.  We saw trucks carrying pipes and water tanks and others to bring in lights for night time work. 10,000 jobs have been made with the industry but what has been taken away? We saw “For Sale” signs on farmlands saying commercial or industrial site vs farmland.  We saw very few “homesteads” enriched by this “fracturing” of the Earth. Last night at one of the Sakakawea Lake campgrounds the docent purposely told Pat they did not allow oil industry workers to camp there. The Theodore Roosevelt National Grassland where we are camping for the next two days is the oasis I wrote about in the story.  It is Incredibly Sacred and Holy.  Only 1% of this Land is protected in North Dakota from our greed and yes it makes me cry tears so there will be rain tomorrow. I understand there is a new film called “Gasland 2” being distributed. When we get back from this Wayfarin Journey I will get it for all of us to review for the sake of this Good and Sacred Earth. The Wind blows here almost all the time.  Why not build them? The scaring of the land will be less and we can still have our energy.

 

The trail to the Prairie Dog Town

Yu can't see all the wells in the background, but this is what we saw over and over.