Lessons from Buffalo at Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Theodore Roosevelt gives me a new insight

A bit of HOUSEKEEPING before we get into today’s PASSAGES essay: Please hit the ❤️ to tell me (and Substack!) that you’re reading. If you’re new and care to, you may want to begin with ONE LAST BIG ADVENTURE and read the other chapters to catch up!

On Mondays or Fridays you’ll also recieve a chapter of PASSAGES; on Wednesdays you’ll recieve WILD GIRL. You can opt out of one or the other by toggling them off in Settings when you hit Unsubscribe at the bottom of this post.

(The lone bison bull at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Photo by me)

I was taking a much needed break as Mike thumped and cursed inside the trailer, fixing our bed, whose platform storage lid had broken on the rough dirt road out of Hell Creek, Montana.

After leaving Hell Creek by seven a.m.—the earliest morning departure yet on this trip—we eventually rolled into Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota late in the day. Thankfully, we’d been able to nab a first-come, first serve campsite inside the boundaries of the park. 

We were lucky that the bed was all that had broken inside or outside the rig on that “Hell”-ish twenty-five miles of unpaved dirt road nightmare. 

Lying on my back on a picnic table,I stared up at cottonwood leaves high above me. Their palm-sized heart shapes spun in the wind with the fluttering action of aspens, making a remarkably accurate approximation of the sound of surf. When I shut my eyes, I could pretend I was back on a Hawaii beach—but for the smells of dust, sage, and buffalo droppings.

I turned on my side and stared out across a section of bunch grass plain toward the nearby Little Missouri River, stagnant and slow in late summer. A series of striped clay ridges, sculpted into cones and buttes by North Dakota’s intermittent, torrential rain erosion, defined the edges of the shallow valley formed by the river’s flow. 

So far, no bison were in sight but nearby, buffalo patties lay thick on the ground, along with a fresh dust-wallow area.

Koa had escaped from the car after the long drive and had already rolled in both patty and wallow. Now leashed and chastened, he sat beside me on the picnic table and dug burrs out of his fur with his teeth.

“All done.” Mike emerged from the trailer, his hair tufted and eyes alight with the victory of fixing the broken bed. “You can do your thing now.”

“Doing my thing” was my part of camp setup. Generally I swept, cleaned the floors and beat and cleaned interior rugs before replacing them. I unpacked the trash cans, tidied the linens, and set up the kitchen. Meanwhile, Mike unhitched and stabilized the rig, turning on electricity and propane, then putting out our ground mats, barbecue, and camp chairs. 

This time, I had a lot more than usual to do. The wall cabinets had flown open for a second time as we drove the rutted Hell Creek road, flinging dishes and foodstuffs around the interior of the trailer with the force of toddler on a rampage. 

In the bathroom, the lids of bottles of supplements and medications had jiggled off and their contents had flown around plastic bins intended to contain them. The screen had fallen out of the skylight and landed behind the toilet. Weirdly, the TP roll had completely unspooled, as if a cat had been playing with it.

Once the rig was tidied and our campsite set up, Mike and I drove out to get a glimpse a new National Park in the pale, diluted light of an evening overcast by smoke and/or low-hanging clouds. We were hoping to get a feel for what we’d explore in more depth the next day.