Dan's Writings
Sharing Our Solitude
I’ve always been pretty good at social distancing. Hell, I’ve been practicing it for sixty years. Writing and ranching are both solitary pursuits, so since college days, I have pretty much lived alone. It has never been unusual to go for days without coming in contact with another human being. But, until the last few weeks, it has mostly been my choice to be alone.
At the Heart of It
February always make me think of hearts. Originally, because of Valentine’s Day, but in recent years, I’m reminded by the anniversary of the surgery that fixed my own heart. On February 2, 2018, the doctors at Mayo Clinic replaced the faulty valve that had kept me out of the Vietnam War. For 45 winters, I’ve spent at least a week or two on the NM/TX border, usually ending in February, which has become the heart of my year.
Too Much on Our Plates
Is it our 21st Century lives or is it human nature that makes us pile too much on our plates, especially over the holidays? Or maybe it is me?
Wildness Retained
For fifty years my days and dreams have been haunted by falcons, eagles, and hawks.
I've Been Feeling Mortal
In the past two years, I have spent more than my fair share of time at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The clinic is a fine hospital with hundreds of fine, young doctors and thankfully I’m all right, it’s just that hospitals in general make me feel sadly mortal.
The Case for Eating Buffalo Meat
The Great Plains are enormous – about 32 million acres – but they are not limitless. In fact, the vast majority of the land that was once a healthy, bio-diverse buffalo range is now taken up by industrial agriculture – crop production, feedlots, and cattle grazing.
Healthy Prairie Pasture
A healthy pasture on the Northern mixed-grass prairie is not just a homogeneous expanse of grass. In our country, a healthy pasture is not smooth, flat or small.
What Goes Around, Comes Around
When my hunting dogs are working, I feed them raw dog food from Wild Idea Buffalo Company. In the summertime, when they are off duty, I buy fifty-pound bags of prepared dog food from a farm supply store that carries at least twenty different brands.
Dreaming Like A Buffalo
I watched my paint horse, Winchester, stretch his nose out and sniff the nose of a young bull buffalo. They sniffed deeply and then, in unison, turned to look across the Cheyenne River and into infinity.
End of an Era
I hardly ever watch television but for the last couple decades I’ve been paying a monthly Direct TV bill. I do that because my best, old friend, Erney, had been reduced to watching television most of the time. He was not always that stationary. In fact, when I first met him, back in 1971, he was active in a 100 different pursuits. He was a trap shooter, a fly tier, a gardener, an authority on cactus and bromeliads, a hunter, and a voracious reader. He was also a falconer and that is how we met.
A New Kind of Christmas
I am not a Christmas kind of guy. I suspect that there is a touch of the Grinch in my DNA because all the Christmas carols and the commercial frenzy has driven me crazy enough to sit out a few Christmases entirely.
A Prairie Thanksgiving
I am not a golfer. I’ve never owned a set of clubs, never belonged to a country club, never paid a greens fee, or waited in line to tee off. In November, I hope for frosty mornings and a smart northwest wind. I want sand hill cranes and Canada geese riding that wind high above my head. I want cold finger tips and long stretches of prairie surrounding me to the horizons. I need a horse and a pair of English setters casting back and forth a hundred yards ahead.