Dan's Writings
The Meaning of a Name
Many of the fathers in my family have been saddled with the deceptively simple, yet unusual, middle name of Hosler. It was my great grandfather’s last name, and though he blinked out of our scraggly family tree with an awkward Catholic divorce, the name lived on as the middle name of uncles, cousins and nephews.
Nit Wits in the Sagebrush
My passing interest in what is going on at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch is fueled mostly by the fact that, like Old Clive and thousands of other ranchers, the economic health of my ranching operation depends to a large extent on inexpensive federal government land leases.
Celebrating The Earth From The Ground Up
Spring is the easiest time of year to celebrate the earth because burgeoning beauty is everywhere. Our connection to our environment is heightened. For the first time in many months there is color in our gardens and in the trees.
Thinking Like A Mountain
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, just as the sun was lightening the sky, I sat in my pickup truck on an enormous flatland above the Cheyenne River. I had just finished flying my gyrfalcon, Sally, and she was happily having her breakfast on the ground beside the truck where I could keep an eye on her and frighten off predators that might see her and move in for an easy meal.
Basing Decisions On The Unknown
I am imagining a call to the United States Park Service where the phone simply rings and rings: nobody home at one of our countries premier land-managing agencies! How can this be? What could bring us to such a state of affairs?
Conversations with the Vegetable Guy
A dozen years ago, during a semester when I was teaching at Carleton College, I wandered down to the Co-op to see what it was all about. I had never been inside a food co-op and I was curious to know what drove the people who worked there.
Waiting for Summer Rain
Last night, the wind woke me about 12:30. It whipped the cottonwoods and I lay there hoping to hear it mix with the eerie, welcome lashing of rain against the roof. It has been a good summer, but if we could just get another couple decent rains - just another inch or two while the days were still sweltering - there would be grass as the ranch moved into autumn.
The Strenuous Life
We harvested buffalo just north of the small southwestern North Dakota town of Bowman. It was our first time harvesting in North Dakota, and we drove up the night before to meet the Director of North Dakota’s Meat Inspection Program and her Senior Inspector.
The Displaced Bison
Last winter, I wrote a monthly musing that talked about a group of buffalo that had recently been gathered on a cattle ranch in south Florida.
Frog Symphony
I have heard Chorus Frogs every spring for my entire life, but I never saw one until May of 2008. I was following Mike Forsberg around southeastern Montana in search of stories and photographs for Mike’s book, Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild.
April Can Break Your Heart
The month of April always gets me thinking about T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land. Well, not the whole poem. All I can ever remember of The Waste Land is the first four lines.
Reminiscing the Redwing's Cottonwood and a Grand Buffalo Ranch Wedding
It has been a whole year since we began getting the ranch ready for our daughter’s wedding. The reason that this came to mind is that we heard our first redwing blackbird this morning and I remembered that last year, when the tree trimmers came, a redwing sang proudly from the first cottonwood snag I pointed out for trimming.