Category: columns-outdoors

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Asparagus Stalking

By Rebecca Johnson

Food foragers unite! It’s time to start scoping out wild asparagus. For spring hunting, you can start by looking for last year’s dead asparagus bush. The new green stalks should be hiding underneath. Hunting usually starts in April or May, but things are sprouting a little earlier with the unseasonably warm weather.

Debey Senska of Forestburg sent me a photo of her first find of the year. It’s not ready to pick, but she’s excited for when it is.”In my area, it seems like when the lilacs bloom it’s time to start looking,” says Senska.”In the James River Valley the growing season will be earlier than Forestburg, and up by Aberdeen it will be later.” I’m going to keep an eye out this weekend in Yankton while hunting for morels. I saw a few lilac blooms out by the lake this week.

Senska’s hunting begins by scouting in the fall. It can be hard to spot while still in edible form, but in the fall you can look for overgrown wild asparagus. It will be about four feet tall, bushy and fernlike. Its foliage is wispy with tiny green needles. It’s too late to eat, but make note of the location and come back in the spring. Senska looks in well-drained soils near rivers, lakes, and along fence lines.”When we lived on the farm, my kids and I spent many hours hunting asparagus within a two mile range of home,” says Senska.”It even grew in the fence line of the little country cemetery where my son is now buried.”

Asparagus crop varies by the amount of snow or rain.”The water content in asparagus is almost 95%, so in a wet spring the harvest is amazing,” Senska says. It hasn’t been especially rainy so far this year, so we’ll see how it goes. If you decide to venture out this season, have fun and enjoy your free food!

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Cow Pies and Wildflowers

By Christian Begeman

Time for a confession: I like flowers. Yeah that’s right…wildflowers in particular. I realize this is not a manly thing to admit. I realize that other fellas my age would laugh or at least roll their eyes if I blurted this out while watching basketball together down at the local watering hole. Most guys my age are into sports, hunting, fishing, exercising, cars and/or big farm machinery. I have no problem with any of those things, but what can I say? Photography changes a person. I’ll take a South Dakota wildflower scene at the golden hour with my camera at my side over any of those things in a heartbeat. Crazy? Probably.

This column is dedicated to my most recent obsession with the pasqueflower. Greg Latza’s cover photo of the pasque on South Dakota Magazine’s March/April 2010 issue started it. That issue came out at about the same time as I put my first macro lens on my camera. I knew the pasque was the state flower and I knew they were one of the earliest flowers to appear in early spring, but I had never seen one in the wild before. My macro and I now had a new mission.

Within a week, I found my first pasque patch. I took more close-up shots than I care to count. Not that many of them were that great, but the hunt and the newness was a rush. Last spring, it was more difficult for me to find pasques with the cool weather and late snow storms, but I found a nice patch near Lake Vermillion in McCook County and actually tried some new techniques to shoot the flower. I used my wide angle lens and shot later in the day to add the nice evening light and some of the surrounding scenery.

This year my flower fever set in early with the warm March weather and I was out checking known patches almost every evening. My goal was to photograph the flower in new and unique situations and in creative ways. I wanted to make images of the little beauty that you wouldn’t find if you searched”pasque” on a Google image search. I was lucky to find a scene that a photographer often dreams about in Hanson County on March 20th. The sky promised to be a colorful sunset. About 10 minutes before the western horizon turned golden, I drove up to a wonderful stand of pasque on the south-facing hills of a creek leading to the James River. It was a cow pasture, so the grass had been grazed short. The flowers were dancing in the easy breeze of evening. I happily joined the party. To be honest, I hope no one saw me. At one point I was literally running between my two cameras on the hillside and firing bracketed images as the setting sun lit the clouds on fire. I had to sprawl out on the ground on my belly to make sure the framing was how I wanted it. I failed to bring a steady bag so I was improvising with rocks and even dried cow pies to straighten the cameras. Does that make me crazy? Probably.

Pasque season illustrates perfectly the reason I love photography. Number one; there is joy in the hunt of finding the right scene and subject to photograph. Number two; there is a natural high that is reached at the moment of the perfect light. This”in the moment” delight is what had me running up and down the hill and grabbing for cow pies like a lunatic. Number three; there is the fun of sharing the image after it is all said and done. Bringing a little of the beauty that I experienced to my friends and their friends makes my heart feel good. It is proof that my crazy obsession for capturing and sharing God’s infinite creativity is worth it. To me, it is a crazy good feeling.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Winter’s End

By Christian Begeman

The month of March has been strangely warm this year. As a photographer, I watch the weather closely as it determines everything from what the sky looks like at sunset to when the first flowers bloom. With that in mind, I thought it might be kind of fun to journal through the photographs I took during the last month for you.

February 16

The days are getting longer which allows me to go out and find sunset shots after I get off work. I find a lone horse in a field west of Sioux Falls against the pink light of sunset. Life is good.

February 18

I’m on a quest to find”winter” photos. Since there hasn’t been much snow all year, I figure I’ll try the ice of one of South Dakota’s biggest glacial lakes, Lake Thompson. As I drive along the eastern side of the lake, I notice the remains of old shoreline trees surrounded by ice from last year’s high water. The western sky turns yellow and orange and the icebound trees make a nice silhouette against the western sky. Very nice!

February 25

It snowed yesterday. I head out in search of interesting snow photos. As I’m driving near Parker, I see a pheasant on the shoulder of the road. His bright colors stand out nicely against the white background. I continue south to the Missouri River and Chief Standing Bear Memorial Bridge southwest of Springfield in hopes of getting a nice sunset shot over the river. The sky flares for just a few minutes at sunset and my best shots are actually looking south and east from the South Dakota side as the setting sun paints the low hanging clouds above the bridge with pinks and purples.

March 6

The internet tells me there might be northern lights out tonight so I head out of town to see if I can spot them. The internet was wrong. The weather was warm though as I’m only needing a light jacket as I shoot the sunset colors over the ice of Lake Vermillion and test out my”new to me” long lens on the nearly full moon.

March 9

There has been unseasonably warm weather the last couple of days. It is Friday and after work I can tell the sky is going to be a good one for the sunset as there are high wispy clouds in the west. I pull out the map and decide to try my luck at Mud Lake in Turner County. I get there just minutes before the sky starts to pop. The lake has no ice. I can hardly believe it.

March 10

I’m in Mitchell today for another photo project. On my way there I saw a bald eagle hanging out near a slough right off I-90. On my return trip, I decide to take some less traveled roads to see if I can spot any more. It doesn’t take long. Right above the James River off Highway 38 is a big one hanging out and watching the traffic go by. I take his portrait and keep moving east. Gross Lake south of Spencer is teaming with snow geese and Sandhill Crane. It is fun to watch them settle in for the day.

March 13

Shooting muddy roads for another project near Clear Lake north of Humboldt. I find out that only one of my good waterproof boots is still waterproof.

March 14

I heard a meadowlark in the morning, saw a robin in the afternoon so I figure I’ll hunt some pasque flowers in the evening. Sure enough, I spot two tiny flowers peaking up at me at Lake Vermillion Recreation Area. I guess spring is truly here. It is the fastest arrival I can remember!

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Wearing o’ the Green Shoes

By Rebecca Johnson

I’m German, Norwegian and Dutch, but everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. And I can’t wait to celebrate at the St. Patty’s Day Mile in Sioux Falls. I’m actually running the 5 mile race. There’s a 5k too, or if you’re really tough you do the”Irishman” and run all three courses. It’s sort of like the Ironman, but shorter, drier and with funny costumes.

Race director is Steve Kurtenbach, owner of Allsportcentral, a leading business for road race and triathlon promotion. I’ve seen Kurtenbach at a lot of the races I’ve run, but I didn’t realize that the St. Patty’s Day Mile launched his successful company.

Kurtenbach owned Bay Technology Group in 2000.”We were looking for ways to show you could do entire businesses on the web and there weren’t a lot of examples,” says Kurtenbach. Bay Technology decided to promote the Phillips Avenue Mile before Sioux Falls’ St. Patrick’s Day Parade (the name was changed to the St. Patty’s Day Mile the following year.) Internet businesses were fairly new at that time and the intent was to show clients they were safe. The event was paper-free, offering registration, payment transactions and results entirely online.

“Once we started doing that and putting on the race we decided this is actually a pretty fun thing to do,” says Kurtenbach. Allsportcentral’s official launch was in July of 2000 with the”No Rest till Jazzfest” race. Kurtenbach closed Bay Technologies eight years ago to focus on Allsportcentral due to what I like to call the”fun factor.” The company now has clients worldwide and race organizers have the opportunity to hire Allsportcentral for onsite services like race timing and photography.”The majority of the events we travel to are in the five state area and a lot in the Caribbean,” he says.

But Kurtenbach will be close to home for Saturday’s race. Allsportcentral’s new offices are located at the 8th and Railroad Center in downtown Sioux Falls and all of Saturday’s races end nearby at 5th and Phillips Avenue. The post-race party is just across the street from the company’s new digs held at Monks House of Ale Repute.

You might make some money at the party if you are speedy. Anyone who breaks a course record or Irishman record is awarded at least $100. The mile’s course record is 4 minutes and 34 seconds. This year if a man finishes the mile in under four minutes, they’ll receive $100 for breaking the course record and an additional $500 for running the mile under four minutes. Women get the same opportunity for running it under 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Overall race, age division, and costume contest winners are sure to by delighted by their leprechaun shoe trophies. Kurtenbach says they are made by a leprechaun cobbler that Allsportcentral pays with a pot of gold. Keep this on the down low, but Kurtenbach really makes the trophies with one of his good friends. They order the green shoes from suppliers and mount them on homemade bases. A participant who won two trophies was actually seen wearing them later on in the evening. The costume contest winners are chosen by loudest applause.”We’ve had people dressed up like life-sized Guinness bottles and hundreds of people dressed up like leprechauns,” says Kurtenbach. One year a guy dressed up as a green running shoe. I hope he comes back. I would like to see that.

And lest you think this event is just about silly debauchery, I should tell you that it also raises money for charity. Teams can fundraise in advance, and the team with the most participants gets $200 to donate to a charity of their choice. The charity is then added as one of the official event charities. Last year’s was Helping Hands for Haiti. Funds raised also go to the SDSU Nursing Student Association, and Augustana Athletic Training Students Association.

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Terry Peak: A South Dakota Skiing Tradition

By Lee Schoenbeck

Terry Peak is a special mountain. It is where South Dakotans, and a whole lot of other Midwesterners, go to cut their teeth on skiing. Terry Peak’s 1150 feet of vertical are the most between the Rockies and the Alleghenies, but there’s a lot more magic going on there than just the high speed quads and over 100 days of skiing per year. With annual snowfall of over 180 inches and a ski season that runs until the end of March, this mountain has creds. But you can read Ski Magazine until your AARP application arrives and you’ll find no mention of this Black Hills gem, which is ok with the Midwesterners that occupy these slopes. There’s no Gucci on this mountain — this is denim and Carhartt country.

Terry Peak is designed for casual fun. The ranchers you meet on the slopes may well own a set of Rossies or a Burton board, but they’re just as likely to be newbies with rentals having a great time with their kids. There are a lot more vans, pickups and Suburbans than Beamers or Escalades at the Stewart Lodge parking lot, and you won’t need to float a bank loan for a family three-day ski trip. In fact, if you buy your season pass before October 31, they give it to you for half price — and kids under 5 get free passes.

Terry Peak is in the Northern Black Hills, just up the road from Lead, South Dakota, and the famous but dormant Homestake Open Pit Mine. From the top of Terry your inspiring views include a look down on Bear Butte, which is pretty skyline-dominating in its own right from the flatland perspective.

At Terry Peak, and at the Dark Horse, everybody was family…


After law school, while interning at a Rapid City law firm, I took up snow skiing — South Dakota style. With friends from home that were more likely to be dressed in snowmobile suits or just blue jeans than the latest rage in apr’s-ski, we turned and burned from first run until last call. When you only had a couple of days to try and break all your bones, you needed to get after it.

In the old days, Terry Peak’s ambiance was driven by the Dark House Lounge, which was kind of a converted, over-blown fish shack. It had a bar, with about 4 seats and 6 drinkers at it at all times. The center of the Dark Horse was occupied by a pot-belly stove, surrounded by the prized seats — converted, removed bus seats. At Terry Peak, and at the Dark Horse, everybody on that piece of South Dakota was family, and your best friend.

When gold mining of the heap-leach variety found the Black Hills, and specifically the base of the red chair at Terry, things changed. Golden Reward made the smart political move of buying into the always financially struggling operation, and infusing real cash. The chair lifts were replaced (except the red chair) with high speed quads, and fancy new base lodges were built. One sad aspect to the domestication of Terry is that the Dark Horse — the real one — was torn down (which probably took about 5 minutes and one good push).

As Terry Peak was transforming, so was our life. My wife really disliked skiing while pregnant — there’s just some of this stuff that is hard for a guy to wrap his head around. Ski trips became the annual Iron Man Ski Day, which was a 350-mile drive after work, one night of sleep, one night of skiing and 350 miles home. The group included some configuration of a priest, a doctor, a lawyer, a soldier and patrolman. That sounds like the set up for a good joke, but that’s how young guys with young families feed a skiing addiction out on the prairie. One of those years the temperature was fifty below wind-chill, but when you’re doing the iron man deal, it’s no wimps allowed and you keep turning and burning. One year we even let a group of similarly situated buddies from Sisseton join us, but if you’ve ever socialized with those”hill folks” from the Coteau you can appreciate why once is enough — unless the opportunity to post bail at the Lawrence County jail excites you.

Boarders are to skiing what penance is to Lent — a sadly predictable and necessary part of the experience.

Finally, when our youngest child was four, we headed back to the slopes like so many Midwestern families. The parent pattern on the slopes is amazingly predictable. First, put the little tyke in a ski school, ostensibly to learn to ski. But, for two hours mom and dad get to ski together — snuggling on the chair lift with your snow bunny. After ski school, mom and dad pull the split shift routine. One skis the bunny hill at a half hour a run, while the other takes the older kids to more challenging runs on the rest of the mountain. In hindsight, either shift is a good gig.

At some point the kids get good enough to leave the skis behind and migrate to the devil’s spawn — the dreaded snowboard. Every good skier can recount the agony of watching the”boarders” riding those things sideways down the slope — scrapping and mounding all the snow they encounter. Boarders are to skiing what penance is to Lent — a sadly predictable and necessary part of the experience.

Terry has two base areas. Since all the rentals and the bunny slope are at the Stewart Lodge, this is ground zero for family camping. The Occupy folk got nuth’n on the families and groups that roll into this Lodge. Parents move onto tables laden with coolers of trail mix, fruit drinks and the most passable healthy looking food they feel has some chance of being consumed by the kids. These treats will of course be going head to head against the local fare of nachos soaked in cheese and chili, chicken noodle soup, assorted power drinks — and of course, hot chocolate. The chances that parents on a health kick are going to prevail during this trip are pretty much nil. Ski breaks at Terry are a kid’s party at a surprisingly affordable price — for a ski area.

The family encampment program is fun to watch. The key is to get there early and dump as many bags as possible on a corner table, which makes it look like somebody would have to be very rude to move your gear or camp over it. Many groups come equipped with a”Lodge Mom”. The Lodge Mom (dads can do this too — my friend Mitch does) is invaluable. They read their book while saving the encampment. As chilled little ones come in, they blow noses, find change for hot chocolate, and bundle and unbundle youngsters heading for the facilities.

Ski breaks at Terry are a kid’s party at a surprisingly affordable price.


At Terry Peak, parents never feel like their kids are going to be nabbed by some ne’er-do-well. This is a safe place designed for kids to rule. It’s Midwestern friendly. Whether they brought one or not, any kid in the lodge in need of a couple of parenting hands will likely find them available. How can you not be smiling and friendly when the newbie antics are your panoramic view all day out the massive slope-side windows of Stewart Lodge?

For many years a collection of families from Watertown, loosely organized under the title of Snow Drifters, spent spring break at Terry Peak. When about 20 or 25 families converge on a mountain for three days, a lifetime of friendships and memories are created. One non-skier, Jan, raised a couple of Junior Miss South Dakotans and a US Naval Academy grad, but will still remain most famous for her work as the”Lodge Mom” to several hundred kids through those years. Those families would like to think our experience was unique, but the church busses in the parking lot are a testimony to groups creating those experiences all season long.

Terry Peak is a South Dakota reunion. Unless your visit to Terry was your first time out of a cloistered community, if you are a South Dakotan, you have friends at Terry Peak. Personally, since I’ve been wearing the same bright red ski pants, with a purple windbreaker for a shell, for 25 years, I have an easy time being recognized by my friends. My kids claim that the uniqueness of the attire lacks any redeeming social value, and that fashion has moved past me in the last few decades. I think they are jealous, and that eventually bright red and purple will make a comeback.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Governor’s Snowmobile Ride

By Rebecca Johnson

I spoke to Diane Hiles of De Smet yesterday while she and her husband, Greg, headed to the Hills for the 32nd annual Governor’s Snowmobile Ride. Hiles is the secretary of the Town and Country Snowdrifters Snowmobile Club, hosts of this year’s ride. The event takes place at Hardy Camp, a Forest Service station in Lead. Winter weather has been unseasonably warm but Hiles says the trails are in excellent condition for the 200 people expected to attend. She and Greg were able to snowmobile the Black Hills trails last week to test them.

The ride starts at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday with brunch, registration and introduction of special guests. Hiles says Governor Dennis Daugaard and his advisory council are expected to attend, as well as U.S. House Representative Kristi Noem. Invitations are extended to all state legislators and at least 12 plan to participate from Sioux Falls, Baltic, Mitchell, Big Stone City, Rapid City, Spearfish and Lead. SDSA provides snowmobiles for the invited guests with help from Yamaha Motor Corporation and Arctic Cat.

The large crew of snowmobilers will split up with experienced riders designated as group leaders through the Black Hills trails maintained by Hardy Camp. The day culminates with a meal and social gathering for riders to visit about their experiences of the day. “The ride was started by the South Dakota Snowmobile Association (SDSA) as a way to showcase the trail system in the Black Hills,” says Hiles. “SDSA works for the good of the snowmobiling sport, trying to make sure the trail system continues to operate both East River and West River.”

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The Guyshed: A South Dakota Institution

By Lee Schoenbeck

Since South Dakota’s earliest days there has been The Guyshed. It used to be painted red, filled with cattle, and provided the cover of appearing work related. As South Dakota became less agrarian, the modern South Dakota guy had to find some way and place to bond — outside of the confines of a well-cleaned home. Claiming to need a barn and wanting three token cows probably wasn’t going to cut it for the average South Dakota guy on a half-acre. He had to be innovative.

He needed to educate on the role of the guyshed as the modern monastery. It is a place where guys go to think, to pray, to ponder the great questions of the day. As guyshed dwellers can attest to, the guyshed dialogue is very cerebral. It may range from the meaning of life, touch on quantum physics, and rest at whether the Twins really have five good arms in the rotation this season.

It’s not clear what the early South Dakota man did for cerebral space. A large number joined the army, and the stoic life of a military barracks probably provided similar fulfillment. In winter months, when the South Dakota guy prides himself on the near-biblical nature of his ability to walk on water, the ice shack sufficed. But over the last twenty years there has evolved an idea of that stand-alone shelter for the nurturing of civilization — the modern guyshed. On the half section where we live there are 27 clearly discernible guysheds, and a couple of lesser temples (garages pretending to be guysheds). In fact, more properties HAVE guysheds than don’t.

Guysheds come in many forms. One neighbor, in keeping with his South Dakota roots, has a guyshed that is a miniature barn — red paint and all. Another neighbor, being a guy amongst guys, built a guyshed with a house attached on top. And above all, true to their roots, the guyshed remains a critical shelter for prized livestock — the hunting dogs.

In South Dakota, getting the guyshed is pretty much a prerequisite for getting your mancard punched. It’s sort of a shedmitzvah.

Guysheds come in many functional designs. Some are equipped with tools and power saws, but those remain optional. The problem with loading up on Black and Decker is that somebody up at the house is going to expect the guy to use his time in the shed building something. These chores would be fine if they were limited to that part of February between the Super Bowl and when pitchers and catchers report, but the other gender may find those dates too confining.

Above-average guysheds need a couple of things. Insulated walls — sprayed foam preferably — are a must. A guy has got to be able to get cerebral during those six months when the temperatures are hovering below freezing, and an insulated guyshed facilitates that activity.

Cement floors are something the frugal guy has to include. The contractor (a loyal and dependable guy-voucher) will explain to the Mrs. that if you add cement later, it takes a cement pump and a lot more labor costs. Therefore, to save the family money by incurring this seemingly not insubstantial cost during the initial construction, the dedicated guy will relent and accept a cement floor.

When you put in cement, the guyshed has to have a drain, with a septic tank and a drain field. You can’t wash the Mrs.’ car for her in the winter without a drain, and during deer season it’s important to be able to properly clean the family’s winter meat after you’ve dragged it back to the guyshed — this all requires a nicely tapered cement floor with a good size drain and pit. With what the family will save in car washes and not buying meat, this is a solid investment in the family’s future.

College is expensive, so including a pool table so your young scholars can learn to hustle a few bucks when they are away at school is a good idea.

If a guy is going to spend a lot of time thinking and working in the guyshed, the Mrs. is not going to want him tracking into the house to use those nice facilities. Since the place is insulated and has a drain field and all anyway — obvious components of a simple guyshed should be running water and a bathroom.

Every guyshed has electricity — I think it is required in the guyshed code the county adopted a few years ago. So as long as you have electricity, and the guy will be watching the kids a lot out there to give the Mrs. a break, it’s a good idea to have something to keep their fruit drinks cold in — I’d recommend a fridge with an ice maker. It’s also not a bad idea to include a padlock on that fridge — just to keep the kids from getting at the fruit drinks when dad isn’t around.

The possibilities for completing the interior of the guyshed are endless. For example, college is expensive, so including a pool table so your young scholars can learn how to hustle a few bucks on evenings and weekends when they are away at school is a good idea.

If you follow professional golf, those guys are making some serious jingle. Why not give your kids a head start in life — put a golf net in the guyshed and the kids will use it to hone those future PGA skills all winter long (and maybe the guy gets to take a few swings when the kids are tucked in for the night).

On those pretty summer nights when the Mrs. wants to join you on the little patio you poured on the west side of the guyshed for enjoying those waning hours of sunlight, what could be more romantic for her than a little James Taylor’s Greatest Hits, or anything by the Red Willow Band? So, you probably should add a stereo system, with surround sound, and zones. These days they only come — pretty much — with a cd player and an iPod docking station and a few other remote controlled devices — but nothing’s too good for the Mrs.

After doing all that work for the family and the Mrs., I’d suggest the guy indulge himself just a little and panel off a corner of the guyshed. The technical name for these little spaces is mancave. In that little mancave corner it would be a good idea to put up a flat screen TV. Then, if any caveless guys happen to stop by to watch a game, they don’t make all that noise and mess in the house. Again, you can’t be too considerate where the Mrs. is concerned. The one thing you don’t need to splurge on is furniture — any old lazy boy and a couple of couches will do. This meager mancave space, if the ceilings are high enough, also saves the Mrs. from needing to dust your animal mounts — even if that elk head would have looked pretty special in the family room or over the stove in the kitchen.

Personally, I didn’t get my guyshed until after twenty years of marriage. When we built our house we faced the moral and economic dilemma of a guyshed, versus finishing the kids’ bedrooms in the lower level. The answer seemed obvious to me, but apparently I was a little too guy cerebral in the whole analysis. Anyway, the kids liked their new bedrooms, even if it deprived them of my suggested bonding experience of sharing a wide open, cement floor basement as a bedroom through their teen years.

There are many types of guysheds, and several factors affect what kind a guy should build. Some are purely looking for a place to clean game, and you can admire that meat gathering motive. Other guys are bigger-picture thinkers. My friend Scott is kind of the Mother Teresa of guysheds. He built a guyshed that can take in and provide shelter and nourishment for all the shedless guys in the neighborhood. Also, since his Taj makes all the rest of our plans look modest by comparison, Scott has assured that any guy that takes the time to show his wife the Taj will not be denied the simple amenities of his own guyshed design. But that’s what real guys do — sacrifice for each other.

Finally, a little personal advice for the new guyshed owner. I would really suggest against (unless you have very good major medical insurance) asking the Mrs. to clean up after the buddies in the guyshed. Besides, if you buy a powerful enough leaf blower, it doesn’t take that long to dust anyway.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Beresford’s Chilly Race

By Rebecca Johnson

Winter road races are few and far between in South Dakota, but runners have been able to count on the Beresford Frostbite Four since 1999. The fundraiser for the Beresford Booster Club, featuring a four-mile run and a two-mile run/walk, starts tomorrow at 11 a.m. Unofficial race director, Kevin Nelson, says this is a record year for participants.”As of today we have 370 pre-registered in the two races,” says Nelson.”That is a far cry from our first year with about 70 total.”

Three potential courses are marked in advance. Weather and wind direction on race day determines which one is used. Runners are bussed to whichever start gives the best chance of wind at your back. When I ran the four-mile race in 2009 I bundled up expecting the weather to live up to the race’s name, but it was practically balmy with temps in the high forties. Last year’s participants were treated to rain and ice, but the unpredictable conditions are part of the fun.

After the race is over, red-faced runners and walkers gather for a free chili and soup feed at the Bridges at Beresford golf course. The ceramic figurines of snowmen, penguins, polar bears and moose presented to the winners are highly coveted. But many participants are just as delighted to hear their name called for a door prize like a free t-shirt or box of golf balls. There’s still time to register at allsportcentral.com if you want to get in on the fun.

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We Don’t Need No Zamboni

By Lee Schoenbeck


When your little princess looks at you with big eyes and says she wants you to flood an area for her to skate, what South Dakota dad is going to say no? It’s important to remember that heart-warming smile she gave you when you assured her you would build that ice rink. It is one of the few things that will warm your heart as you stand in the cold at midnight, wrapped like an Eskimo, spraying your yard with a garden hose.

That’s how it starts. Dad will say yes, because we all know ice grows wild in South Dakota. It grows on our sidewalk, on our driveway, in our eaves troughs and in front of every stop sign we plan to stop at. It just can’t be that hard to make a little patch of the shiny stuff to skate on. But wild ice and skating ice are two very different animals.

Wild ice can have ruts in it, and be patch-marked with dirt. Tame ice, the kind you skate on, needs to be as smooth as a baby’s bottom — and that, my friends, does not happen by accident. In fact, it takes an obsessive-compulsive disorder to make good tame ice.

I am fortunate to have a couple of buddies that have flooded their yards. They are puck heads. Unlike our neighbors in the states to the north and east, hockey really isn’t much of a winter deal here in the 5-7 zip codes, so they are unique and handy resources for creating tame ice.

Vince lives for ice, so I started there and got this wisdom:”You think you’re going to turn on a garden hose and drink a beer while your pasture floods, don’t you?” Of course, that was my plan. He sagely warned:”It doesn’t work that way.” Now into my second season of making ice, I concur. Growing tame ice in South Dakota is much harder than most would imagine. You can safely expect to spend 20 to 30 hours in single-digit temperatures, holding a garden hose, to make your promise a reality.

First, you aren’t making ice when it is nice out, and generally not when the sun is shining. The temperature has to dip below twenty degrees to really get the ice program going, and that’s going to happen at night. So after dinner, while most people are curling up by the fire, you don the Eskimo gear and unwind the garden hose. Pretty much the best ice-making time is when it gets down in the zero range, and that means you’ll be the only person in the neighborhood standing in your yard with a garden hose around midnight, stamping your feet to keep warm, and spraying water to make that perfect ice sheet.

Between last year, with its snowfall rhythm of early and often, and this year’s desert look, we have had two very different environments for this project.

If you can wait for a snow base, life is better. Trying to create ice by spraying water on bare ground doesn’t work. (I called my consultants this year to check again what I was doing wrong — turns out that even in the winter the ground is warm enough to soak up all the water you want to give it.) You need a little snow pack to build on.

The easiest way to get a base is to take your snow blower out and use its weight to pack the snow. This year that meant walking it backwards around the rink so you didn’t blow away any of the meager snow fall.

Once you have a base, the second big issue is: hot or cold — that would be the water, because there’s no question about what the outside air temperature has to be for this project to work. According to my consultants (for this I expanded the list to include a cousin that used to run the skating rink), warm is generally better. But, if you don’t want to lose your meager snow base (this year) I suggest you start with cold water — lots of it. The ice needs to layer on about 3 or 4 inches deep, and it won’t come out smooth. You’ll get pits, holes, bumps, mounds, runs and variations that you couldn’t have imagined — all of which must be removed for that OCD quality of tame ice, which is where the warm water comes in. Like the Gallo Brothers, you can’t really finish ice before its time. That time will be when you have a base, and a night that it is so cold your eyes hurt. Then, finally, with a generous supply of shaping warm water from your garden hose, you can smooth the highs and lows, and finally produce that perfect sheet of ice.

But it won’t last. The sun will become your enemy. Every morning when your family cheers the forecast of weather peaking over 35 degrees, you will mutter unkind words under your breath. You will understand the damage that sun plans to wreak upon your ice while you are away at work. Any place where a clump of grass or a speck of dirt left some darkness in your ice, the sun will focus on it like a laser — burning a hole in your perfect sheen. After work, even though your kids may not be using it until the weekend, you’ll need to go back out in the dark with your trusted garden hose and touch up your Rembrandt.

There are a few tools I have experimented with. First, the sprinkler sounds like a reasonable option for spraying the yard that you want to magically become a skating rink. I would advise against this tool. It won’t freeze up, like most people think. No, it’s worse. It will produce ice clumps that will be embedded in your otherwise perfect ice, adding hours to the time you will stand in zero temps with hot water trying to smooth them down.

Second, the snow blower is a must. After every snow, go once around with this tool to chip off the bumps and pack in the holes, so the whole surface is again ready for some warm shaping water.

Third, white paint. This is for the advanced course, and I’m not there yet, but they tell me that there is some kind of white paint you can put on your ice so that you don’t have to curse the sun each day. Next week I plan to learn how to ice paint.

Finally, the snow rake, which is a pricy miracle wand made by some company in Canada that spreads your hot water out in lines that makes your ice look like you raked it.

There are probably fancier tools and techniques, but this is one dad’s view about how to fill your pasture or yard with winter fun. Our rink is circular, built around the fire pit like a donut, so you can skate with a bonfire. It’s also next to the guy shed which is equipped with outdoor speakers so you can skate to James Taylor’s Christmas tunes, or the entire Jimmy Buffet collection. We don’t have a Zamboni, because on this project, Dad is all the Zambalogni my little princess needs.


Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Butte Country

By Christian Begeman

There is something poetic about a lone butte rising from western South Dakota’s grassy seas of rolling plains. These lonely landforms not only break up the horizon, but are important landmarks and points of reference to local residents. Often a person will tell you where his ranch or land is based on the proximity of the nearest butte.

Buttes also play an interesting role in the history of the area. Bear Butte, near Sturgis, is still considered a sacred religious site for both the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes. Thunder Butte was famously used as a landmark for mountain man Hugh Glass on his crawl across the prairies after being mauled by a grizzly bear on the Grand River. The Slim Buttes bear sad memory of a brutal battle fought a few months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

Besides the history, I also find the names of the buttes quite interesting. To me they have a touch of romanticism to them. For example, it doesn’t take much to imagine riding herd at Blackhorse Butte or surveying the plains with the keen eye of a majestic Golden Eagle perched on Eagle Butte. Many times, the names of buttes were derived by what the butte looks like. Haystack Butte and Castle Rock Butte along Highway 79 north of Newell are good examples of this. Other buttes have interesting stories and legends that the names come from. In a history of Ziebach County, the Native American name for Thunder Butte is given as “Wakanganhotan.” The meaning is said to be “place of holy thunder.” I’ve heard people say that the Lakota thought that all thunder or thunderstorms originated from Thunder Butte. However I’m pretty sure that this hand-me-down story is more legend and corrupted speculation than the real origin of the name. Regardless, the butte holds a lot of meaning to me as I grew up within sight of it on the western horizon.

One of my favorite older photos is of the sun setting on top of Thunder Butte on a late August day in 1994. It was a high overcast afternoon, and I could tell it was going to be a good sunset. I grabbed my camera and hurriedly got into my dad’s old blue Chevy work pick-up and headed west. As I was driving I got the idea to line up the photo so the sun would appear to set on the butte. In order to do this, I had to cover a lot of ground in a short time as well as veer off the trail. I’m sure my dad would not have approved if he saw me cruising over the open prairie at a speed that caused the toolboxes and fencing gear to bounce quite vigorously. The good news is that he never knew — well that is, until he reads this article. I think the photo was worth it though.

This December, I finally really saw the”bear” in Bear Butte. I was shooting an old barn and sunset just southwest of the butte and in the fading light I began to make out the slumbering bear. It was actually quite a magical moment. Someday I plan to climb that butte. When I do, I’m sure I’ll feel very small in a very large world. I’ve felt it before while on the top of Thunder Butte. To be on a high place looking down on the beauty of creation is a humbling yet wonderful thing. I suppose”sacred” is another very good word for it.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.