Author's Note:
The Black Hills are one of those often-overlooked spots that people drive by on their way to somewhere else. Go and see them. Start in Sundance or Newcastle or Hulett. See Devil’s Tower. See the Grand Canyon of the Moskee. Get off the highway and explore. And remember, the Black Hills National Forest is yours — your land, your heritage and the inheritance you will pass on to your children. Scheming politicians stole this land from the Lakota people once. Let’s not let them steal it again.
Orval came into our family back in the late 1970s when he married Kim’s mom. We loved him pretty much right out of the chute. He was calm and kind, a wonderful husband for my mother-in-law. He had a unique backstory. Born in the depths of the Great Depression, his Native family simply couldn’t afford to raise him in South Dakota, so he came to Wyoming to live with a family in the tiny town of Upton and later in Sundance. But the transplant didn’t change his identity. You knew at first glance that he was Lakota, of the Hunkpapa — the people of Sitting Bull.
Opinion
He looked the part. Barrel-chested and a little bit bowlegged, with curly salt and pepper hair, he looked like he belonged on a horse. His body, and even more so his spirit, came to us direct from generations of buffalo hunters and warriors. He was as much a part of the Black Hills as they were of him. And in his sweet, gentle way, he taught our family to love both the people and the land of northeast Wyoming. His people loved the Black Hills long before our people ever left Europe. And like generations before him, Orval knew them in a way we never could. So he taught us.
He taught us from the classroom of his ancestors — from the Missouri Buttes in the northwest to Beaver Creek in the southeast, he knew it all. So we’d pack up the trucks with lots of snacks and soda and just go see the country. Sometimes we had a destination in mind, sometimes not. But we always learned something about the Black Hills when we were with Orv. And I, for one, had so much to learn.
It was an unimaginably rich and gentle landscape for a kid from the mountains and deserts of southwest Wyoming. The lowest elevation in Wyoming is only 3,100 feet above sea level, where the Belle Fourche River leaves the state near the eastern edge of the Black Hills. Low elevations and ample rainfall make for a landscape rich in plant and animal life. Snow falls vertically here. There’s a real spring, with flowers and wild turkeys gobbling and ruffed grouse drumming in the forest. The summers are warm and the fall is technicolor glorious. Our family reveled in it. We hunted turkeys in the spring, fished all summer long, picked wild chokecherries and plums when the nights began to turn cool. And we hunted deer when the snow came in late fall, an experience like no other.
Hunting whitetails with Orv was like having Stephen Hawking check your math homework. By the time I knew him, he was getting a little long in the tooth. Never much enamored of killing a big buck, Orv had advanced to a point where he hunted not to kill, but to love. He loved crafty old whitetails. He laughed when they outwitted him, and he was deeply grateful when he outwitted them.
We were together one afternoon when I saw him do something I will always remember. There was fresh snow that day when we hunted over in the Moskee country. We parked the truck at the end of an old logging road and began to work our way slowly down through the aspens. I was a few yards to Orv’s right when the buck stood up out of his bed. It was late in the season, and the deer were spooky, quick to bolt. But this one didn’t. He stood up, saw Orv and took two or three steps right toward him. He couldn’t have been more than 30 yards away. Then he turned broadside and looked directly at Orv again. Orv calmly shot him, then bowed his head in thanks before he walked to the deer. I felt like an interloper witnessing something I didn’t fully understand, so I stayed put. When I finally approached, Orv looked up at me with his gentle smile and said quietly, “Sometimes they just do that.”
I will never understand that moment completely, but I look back on it with gratitude. Thatsense of gratitude characterizes many of our family experiences in the Black Hills. You can see why the Lakota people came here for spiritual reasons. There is a stillness of the spirit here that is unlike anyplace else I know in Wyoming. People drive by on I-90 and they never feel that stillness. They might see a deer or some antelope, they might even sense something special if they take the time to get off the asphalt and feel the ground beneath their feet. But to get to know the Black Hills and to experience their magic, you must slow down. You must sit quietly and listen. Smell the warm grass, watch the turkey vultures riding the updrafts above the canyons. Let the 21st century drain out of you like used oil and let it be replaced with something older and dearer and infinitely more valuable. Peace.
