Dan's Writings
We Live in a Land…
We live in a land of accidental monuments. Mostly they were erected in the beginning of the last century and were not intended to mark the passage of great events.
Standing with Standing Rock
The Dakota Access Pipeline is just one of many pipelines coming out of the oil fields of western North Dakota. There are at least fifteen major pipelines across the Dakotas, so what is all the whoopla about? Why should we care about the standoff?
Teach Something, Learn Something
I got a note from Yvon Chouinard who doesn’t use email and is notorious for brief messages. This one arrived on the back of a card with the word Patagonia on the front, via snail mail. The note read, “Come fishing. I’ll be in Montana 7/20 -8/12.” I really appreciated the invitation and it sounded like I could come about any time around the end of July. But still, I had a pretty full schedule and Montana is very big place.
The Freedom Walk
The Fourth of July is the time to think about freedom. Of course, the holiday is about declaring independence from the tyranny of monarchs, but all the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights are implied in that Declaration of Independence. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, long after the Declaration of Independence was signed, but that list of rights to freedom of religion, assembly, press, speech, bearing arms, etc., has come to define the United States and is celebrated on the Fourth of July.
Respecting Our National Mammal
Some groups and recent media coverage claim that the National Bison Legacy Act, declaring the Bison as America’s National Mammal that was signed into law last week, is more greenwashing than conservation. It is hard to argue that there is no greenwashing involved in the legislation that was backed by an array of commercial interests. But arguing that there is no conservation value in bringing national attention to the plight of the bison, who were reduced from tens of millions in the days before Europeans moved onto the continent to perhaps a few hundred at the turn of the twentieth century, is equally difficult to defend.
A Mother's Day Tribute
A curious feature of Mother’s Day is the way it is spelled. The commercial forces that help drive the popularity of the holiday sometimes spell it Mothers Day. When advertising greeting cards, flowers, and candy it is probably productive to give the impression that this is a day to celebrate all mothers. But the originator of Mother’s Day (Anna Jarvis in 1908) was quite insistent that it should be spelled as a singular possessive because she wanted people to celebrate a single person - their own mother – “the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world.”
Dan O'Brien Remembers Jim Harrison
I spent all of Easter Day on an ATV to bring buffalo in from the east side of the Cheyenne River where they had spent the winter. It was a long day but not terribly strenuous. How tiring can it be to be miles from any other human being, in a piece of the Great Plains that could serve as a time machine, complete with antelope, deer, buffalo, migrating sand hill cranes, and waves of other birds heading north to begin the world over again?
Ghost
The first time the peregrine falcon shot past the window I didn’t move a muscle. It could have been my imagination. Maybe my eyes were crossing from boredom.
A Tip of the Hat to the Spirit of America
I’m sitting in a room on the ground-level of a brownstone in Brooklyn. It is night and I’m wondering how I got here. The room is filled with books manuscripts, and galley proofs that are staked on every horizontal surface. It is the home of my long-time friend and literary agent. My body is surrounded by perhaps the greatest city in the world. But my heart is on the Great Plains.
