Barred Owls

This pair of owls are cared for at the Chet Ager Nature Center. Unfortunately due to injury they are unreturnable back to the wild. But as a tradeoff they will not fall victim to the many possible depredations of the wild. They will never go hungry or fall victim to disease in their new home.

Crazy Horse

What do you do in your sleeping bag at late at night when you can't get to sleep? The same thing you'd do at home. Bring along a book to read!

I like to read something about the place I may be travelling through. And whenever I travel up through the northwestern Nebraska - Wyoming - South Dakota region, I bring along this worn, dog-eared book by Nebraska author Mari Sandoz: Crazy Horse, The Strange Man of the Ogalalas, given to me long ago by my Grandma E.

Mari Sandoz didn't just pen her work, she researched this biographical novel thoroughly, interviewing the actual eye witnesses of the events. She never fell into the stiff confines of depicting a romantic West. And part of her writing process was to locate herself in the actual locations and reading the manuscripts to herself. She did not take the easy road to her writing.

Crazy Horse was written as from the Native perspective (even mimicing the Lakota style speech) and published in the 1940's, when such personal accounts were unheard of. I've read many of Mari's books such as Old Jules, These Were the Sioux, Cheyenne Autumn... This one without a doubt is the absolute best.

Snapping Turtle

The Modern Tipi

Though I grew up devouring everything I could about Native culture and am fairly familiar with tipi construction, I still like seeing the various solutions that others have come up with for the construction of a modern canvas tipi.

• The Plains Indian Tipi from Mother Earth News
• Instructions for Setting Up a Sioux Tipi
• tipis.org/Articles and Books
• TIPI PAINTING & CONSTRUCTION

Time to Cool Off

A beautiful Summer day! Will post some more pics from today...

Wild Blazing Star

This native wildflower originated from a rocky little cedar-lined canyon off the North Platte River in western Nebraska. It's not big or as showy as the garden variety, but it has staying power - this example has been with us for 25 years.

Paracord Bracelet

One of the better "How To" tutorials I've been able to find regarding the making of the serpentine knot paracord bracelet, posted by Stormdrane.

Paracord Bracelet @ Instructables.com

Be prepared! You just never know when you might need 10 feet of cord handy for those rare occasions when you need to tie-up a stray steer or Tarzan swing from tree to tree.

Great Plains Toad

Meet the pet toad! Handsome, isn't he???

A Tale of Some Tipi Poles

A couple of days ago I gathered together some of my old makeshift poles I used to have for my tipi building as a kid. They weren't made from lodgepole pine, like authentic tipi lodge poles should be. I gathered mine from what was available from my yard and the then nearby railroad right-of-way. Elm, maple or any dead stand that was tall and fairly straight was used. Maybe not things of beauty, but with a covering made from any cloth I could beg from Mom, for us kids they did the job just fine.

Many years later, after Junior was old enough I'd show him how to build a makeshift tipi just like I used to make. And this past summer, while expressing my utter admiration for one particular tipi camper we passed by during our travels, Junior asked me "Why don't we do that?" "Can't we make our own real lodge?"...

And that's what got me thinking. I didn't honestly have a good answer "why not?", but instead every excuse why I should actually do it. Tipis have always been in the back of my head since kidhood. I'd even gone so far as to price out canvas covers seen on Ebay. But buying one isn't nearly so appealing to me as making one myself, only this time making it the way I'd always dreamed of, done the right way, the authentic way. I always knew how to make one correctly - a half disc at least 10' tall, with smoke flaps, pin hole strips and a central tie - but never did I have the resources to make one like I do now.

But first - a lodge has to have some poles to start with. It's the framework to build on.

What I have - it's not alot, they aren't perfect, but it's a beginning...

Screech Owls in the Backyard

I had some visitors tonight while I was peeling poles in the backyard. A pair of Screech Owls right after dusk lit on the back fence and sat watching me. It was dark enough to throw my camera's auto focus off, but you can pretend that you can clearly see in my shot above that the light smudge on the blurry fence (especially if you squint just right?) is one of the pair just before she floated down to perch on one of my lodge poles, before eventually flying off.

Some tribes considered the Owl to be something akin to a bad omen, others took it just the opposite. I prefer to see my visitation as the later.

Backcountry Backyard

Roasty

A Day at the Park

Porchlight Visitor

We had a Sphinx Moth visitor tonight :)

Prairie Natives

Purple Coneflower

Black-eyed Susan

Great Plains Prickly Pear

Hairy Goldaster

Upright Prairie Coneflower

Missouri Goldenrod

Butter & Eggs

???

The Great Plains Toad

Look at the colors on this guy! The Great Plains variety is very similar to the Woodhouse's toad except he has brightly colored "warts" inside his black-edged spots. This little fellow actually found us rather than the other way around, trying to climb his way into our tent one morning near Grand Island, Nebraska.

Valentine Wildlife Refuge

The legendary Niobrara River

The watchful eyes of the prairie dog town