Buffalo love at Theodore Roosevelt NP

Big, fuzzy throwbacks remind us of how much things have changed

Lying on my back on a picnic table in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota, I stared up at cottonwood leaves high above me, their heart-shapes spinning in the wind with the fluttering action of aspens—and a remarkably accurate approximation of the sound of surf on a beach. 

After leaving Hell Creek, Montana, by 7 a.m.—the earliest morning departure yet on this trip—we eventually rolled into Theodore Roosevelt, late in the day.

Thankfully, we’d been able to nab a first-come, first serve campsite inside the park, and now I was taking a much needed break as Mike thumped and cursed inside the trailer, fixing our bed, whose storage lid had broken on the rough dirt road out of Hell Creek.

Frankly, we were lucky that was all that had broken on that “Hell”-ish 25 miles of unpaved nightmare. 

I turned on my side and stared out across a grassy plain toward the…