Tag: missouri river

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We Winter With Eagles

By Bernie Hunhoff

Eagles were a rare sight in South Dakota just decades ago. The pesticide DDT got in their food (fish) chain and decreased the birds’ fertility. Then, 522,000 acres of their favorite habitat along the Missouri River was flooded by the Corps of Engineers’ six big dams. Eagle sightings became rare.

I was working for the Madison Daily Leader in 1975 when a bald eagle showed up on a sunny morning and perched in a tall tree near Lake Madison, just east of town. Word spread, and by midday there was a steady parade of cars to the tree, where the big baldy patiently sat tall like a kindly king on a wooden throne.

That was just a few years after DDT was banned. As the eagles repopulated they discovered that the tailwaters of those big Missouri River dams were excellent places to winter because the constant discharges kept the water open even on the coldest days of January and February.

While eagles might be seen in any of our 66 counties, as winter deepens and most rivers and lakes freeze they now concentrate along those downstream waters. They roost in the tallest cottonwood trees, sunning themselves on brisk mornings and enjoying the surroundings.

As the sun warms the air, they will leave their perches to”float” on the thermals that develop. While it may appear that they are just at play in the sunshine, it’s likely they are also keeping watch for fish doing the very same thing in the river below.

Watch as they drop into a slow and deliberate glide to the river’s surface, talons outstretched like the wheels of an airplane. Usually they grab the fish in a graceful swoop, but no species is perfect; sometimes they take on too big of a fish and the ascent is less graceful. A few years ago, some Yanktonians were confused to find a large carp lying on a sidewalk a few blocks from the river. Apparently, one of the local eagles tackled a fish bigger than he could carry and dropped it on the sidewalk.

The noble birds are adapting to living near humans. Particularly in Yankton and Pierre, they roost in cottonwoods or other large trees in parks along the river, watching parka-clad pedestrians on the paths below. Still, it’s best to keep your distance. They may be napping or fishing, and it’s not nice to interrupt in either case.

Here are tips on eagle watching along South Dakota’s four dams, from south to north.

Gavins Point at Yankton — Eagles now nest here year-around, but 100 or so”snowbirds” arrive every December. As other waters freeze, they concentrate along the river from the dam and into the city of Yankton where they can be seen on treetops in Riverside Park. Grab lunch or a hot chocolate at several diners near Levee Street and then walk along the river or across the Meridian Bridge. If the birds aren’t in town, head west on Highway 52 and take any of the roads south to the river. Sisters Grove, a nature area just below Chalkstone Hill, is a good place to see deer. The forested areas just east of the dam are particularly good spots to look.

Fort Randall Dam by Pickstown — A top spot is the campground and recreation area on the west side of the dam. A 780-acre eagle refuge, created decades ago when the birds were on the endangered species list, is closed to the public. A few years ago, a strange carp kill caused a smorgasbord of carp for the eagles (see the unique photo by Michael Zimny). Generally, the”baldies” have to work harder for their lunch. Check out the remains of the old chalkstone chapel and the historic fort cemetery, all within a mile or so of the river.

Big Bend at Fort Thompson — Visit an area locals call”the Teardrop,” a recreation and campground complex on the west side of the dam. But like other tailwaters, the birds might be found anywhere. You might also find the Crow Creek tribe’s buffalo herd grazing a few miles north of Fort Thompson on Highway 47.

Oahe Dam above Pierre — Oahe Downstream, the campground area just below our biggest dam, is an excellent spot. However, the big birds also like to visit our state capitol in winter. Take a walk in Steamboat Park, which borders the Missouri, stroll forested LaFramboise Island or cross the river to old Fort Pierre and look for the birds in Fischer’s Lily Park, at the mouth of the Bad River. The park marks the spot where explorers Lewis & Clark had their first encounter with the Lakota people.

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The Ghost Forests of LaFramboise Island

By Michael Zimny

Wildlife abounds on LaFramboise Island near Pierre, but its cottonwood forests are in jeopardy.

LaFramboise Island in Pierre is a ghost forest. South Dakota is full of ghost towns — little towns that were on the cusp of middlin’ until the railroad changed course or the county seat went elsewhere. Now they’re in transition, possibly into the absence of any sign of ever having been a town at all.

The Lewis and Clark expedition passed this island in September of 1804, calling it “Good Humored Island.” Clark wrote in his journal of seeing many elk and buffalo here. Later, the isle was named for fur trader Joseph LaFramboise, who established a trading post at the mouth of the Bad River. The sliver of forest on the Mo can be seen in artist Karl Bodmer’s 1833 depiction of Fort Pierre.

From at least the late 19th century, LaFramboise was partially cultivated. In 1962, the Army Corps of Engineers purchased all of the land in preparation for construction of the Oahe and Big Bend dams.

LaFramboise Island hosts a surprising diversity of habitat in its 580 acres, with (potentially doomed) cottonwood forests, grasslands, dense tangles of juniper forest and cattail marshes.

There are over 7 miles of trail. You can hike along the Missouri River with views of the snowy Western bluffs, great-horned owls hooting from cottonwoods overhead, then cut through dark juniper forests where, in winter, deep cracks furrow the thick sheets of ice you’re walking on. The forests open on to a central meadow where deer browse on brome while hawks and coyotes hunt for rabbit or vole. Then back through the forest to a tiny isthmus with views of the Capitol dome across the river.

According to a 2004 study by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department, the cottonwood forest is in decline, as part of a “successional sequence” on the Missouri River floodplain, that generally “begins with colonization by cattails or sandbar willow, develops through transitional phases to a plains cottonwood dominated forest, and finally, in the absence of stand replacing floods, develops into a mixed deciduous forest.” The study predicted that “junipers are clearly the future forest of LaFramboise Island.”

Walking the island, copses of downed cottonwoods do have a funerary feel, as they recede before the encroaching cedar tunnel. The ghost forest is still in mediation with the forest future on this river island that has survived a flood some did not, where change is everywhere underway.

Michael Zimny is a content producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and is based in Rapid City. He blogs for SDPB and contributes columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Catfishing With Nata

By Rebecca Johnson

Nata Jones and her husband Brad enjoy fishing at Apple Tree, a peaceful bay by the Missouri River east of Springfield.

Catfishing is a popular sport for Yankton residents because the wild Missouri River flows just south of town. There are tricks to landing the wily cats, and to cooking them. But it’s nothing you can’t learn. Ask Nata Jones.

Nata is a native of Chernivtsi, a city of some 240,000 people in the Ukraine. She met Brad Jones of Yankton while vacationing in Minneapolis, and within a year she left her chocolate store and was married at the Chapel in the Hills near Rapid City.”It was a beautiful wedding at a wooden church in the mountains,” she recalls warmly.

Nata Jones

She liked South Dakota even before she discovered the Missouri River.”I love small town people. Everybody is so friendly and smiling. You don’t need to worry about nothing,” she says with a charming European accent.”If something happened, everybody would help me.”

She applied for three jobs and was amazed to find herself with not one but three. She tried to balance them all for month, but eventually chose to be a certified nursing assistant at Avera Yankton Care Center, a nursing home on Eighth Street, not far from the river. She loves to visit with the residents, and she likes her co-workers.”I never have a day when I want to stay home,” she says.

Not that she doesn’t like home. She and Brad live in a wooded area near Lewis and Clark Lake.”The first year I am here we see millions of geese come by,” she exclaims, still with wonder in her eyes.”I see by the house deer, turkey, raccoon. I never see this in Ukraine.”

And then there are the catfish and walleye.”I fished in the Ukraine, too, but this is a little bit different here,” Nata says.”In the Ukraine I don’t have time and beautiful place to go. Now I just come home from work and if it’s sunny out (Brad and I will) go.”

Their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Rex, always goes along.”He is very important fisherman,” says Nata.”He likes to jump from the boat ramp and just fly into the water.” Rex is also an environmentalist; he swims below the surface to retrieve discarded plastic bottles and then deposits them on the bank.

As Brad and Nata Jones concentrate on fishing, their dog Rex enjoys chasing bull frogs and retrieving plastic bottles from the Missouri River bottom.

Nata and Brad fish for whatever finned creatures are available but Nata proclaims catfish her favorite, explaining it’s the most expensive fish in the Ukraine. Channel cats seek areas where fast water becomes slow. Brad finds the perfect, clear water channels either by boat or along shore.”He is the real professional. He knows all the secrets,” Nata says. They use stink bait from a local bait shop to lure the bottom feeding fish, because the whiskered swimmers will generally eat anything they can catch in their mouths but their strongest sense is smell.”(The stink bait) smells very, very bad but this is what catfish like,” the angler says with a laugh.

Reeling in food for dinner is the ultimate goal but that is not Nata’s definition of a successful expedition. She doesn’t care if they get a bite. They enjoy the boat ride or the time ashore. She can’t imagine ever moving from this home near all her favorite fishing spots.”When my husband retires, he wants to leave to Montana or Yellowstone,” says Jones.”I said no because we have such a beautiful place here. We cannot leave.”

Baked Catfish with Onions and Tomatoes

Here’s one of Nata’s favorite recipes for catfish, although it can be used with any white fish. Baking times vary according to the thickness of the fish.

2 lbs. catfish

1 medium onion, diced

2 large tomatoes, diced

2 tsp. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Remove all skin and cut fillets into 8 pieces. Place into lightly greased baking dish. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent. Add tomatoes and cook until soft, stirring often. Spoon mixture over fish and lightly salt and pepper. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees or until fish flakes easily with a fork. (Sometimes Nata replaces the two large tomatoes with 3 coarsely shredded carrots for a twist on this basic recipe.)

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Taming a Wild River

By Katie Hunhoff

Gen. Lewis A. Pick and Glenn Sloan’s names are forever linked as the architects behind the Missouri’s series of dams. Less known is that the men could not reach an agreement about the best way to tame the Missouri and grew to despise each other. Their fights were so well known that the Saturday Evening Post compared them to fights over prohibition and women’s suffrage.

The men actually came up with two separate plans, each designed to benefit different areas of the river. Gen. Pick, of the Army Corps of Engineers, designed the original plan, enormous in scope. His plan called for 12 multi-purpose dams including five on the Missouri with four in South Dakota. Seven more were designed for the Yellowstone and Republican rivers. Upstream states were not happy. They realized the plan’s emphasis on flood control and sustaining a 9-foot channel below Sioux City did not keep their best interests in mind.

They asked Glenn Sloan, a technocrat with the Bureau of Reclamation’s regional office in Billings, Montana, to design an alternative. His plan, without surprise, benefitted upstream states by retaining water upstream for irrigation and other purposes. With two vastly different proposals, the men began their famous quarrels.

President Franklin Roosevelt eventually grew frustrated over the men’s fighting and suggested they hand control of the project to a Missouri Valley Authority, modeled after the Tennessee Valley Authority. That sparked an attempt to work together.

“No matter how much the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation hated each other, they hated the idea of another public corporation even more,” wrote Michael Lawson. Another critic, Albert Williams, wrote that they stopped fighting after realizing “the clenched fist is not the best instrument with which to dip into the public trough.”

The two agencies created a plan that consisted of just two pages. Instead of compromising, they decided to meld their ideas together, each side agreeing to the other’s desires. That left a plan that was not based on a clear vision or purpose. “Everyone pretended there would always be enough water in the Missouri to satisfy all who made claims on her,” wrote South Dakota Magazine editor Roger Holtzmann in an article on the building of Fort Randall Dam (in our Jan/Feb 2005 edition).

The shoddily built Pick-Sloan plan transformed much for South Dakotans. We gained a small amount of power over the Mighty Mo — including flood control and hydropower. But the dams also changed the culture of South Dakota. They made possible recreational activities from fishing for walleye and salmon at Lake Oahe to manning a sailboat fit for an ocean on Lewis and Clark Lake.

Those recreational opportunities, which bring in $30 million annually to Lewis and Clark Lake alone, are in danger. Sedimentation is a growing problem — unless man intervenes (again) the entire Lewis and Clark Lake is expected to fill with sediment by the year 2175. Sedimentation issues are occurring in other areas, but are most visible at Lewis and Clark. The grass delta near Springfield advanced nearly a mile to the east during the flood year of 2011. As sediment clogs the flow of the river it affects everything from recreation to flood control to hydropower collection.

There’s no going back. And old-timers tell us we don’t want to return to a day when the river swashed and buckled back and forth between the bluffs at will. Cities, farmsteads and the land itself were fully at the mercy of Mother Nature. And there are days when she shows little mercy. We now have a mostly-managed river system along the 2,300-mile Missouri. The question is how to best manage it for future generations.

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Frontier Phantoms

By Jerry Wilson

LeBeau began as a fur trading post in 1875. When the federal government opened reservation land across the river to catle grazing, LeBeau swelled to a cattle-shipping town of 500.

When the waters of Lake Oahe recede, bits of nearly forgotten history emerge. Among the settlements and towns consigned to watery graves by Missouri River dams is the notorious town of LeBeau — the town a gunfight killed. We climb into Tom Houck’s muddy Ford pickup truck at the ranch house west of Akaska, where four generations of his family have lived, for the 4-mile pasture trip back in time.

We bounce down a well-worn trail through the Houck ranch with Tom and his wife, JoAnn, cross the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad grade through a cut, and ford Swan Creek, where killdeer and yellowlegs clatter up from the creek bed and red winged blackbirds shriek warnings from nests amongst the reeds. In the narrow skirt of brushy trees along the water, a brown thrasher sings his inimitable song to his mate.

Back up on the rolling plain, western king birds dodge for insects, and a meadowlark’s seven-note song pierces the blue from a clump of grass. Overhead, an immature bald eagle circles, chased by a red-tailed hawk. We top a hill, and Lake Oahe spreads before us, a glossy sheen. We cross from ranch to Corps of Engineers land and roll downhill toward the river.

Houck brakes the pickup to a stop well above the shore. He points to a lone elm tree near the edge.”That’s where they planned to build the school,” he says.”They got the foundation laid, but then the town began to die. They never got it built.”

We climb out and walk toward the water’s edge.”When Oahe is full, the shore is 1,618 feet above sea level, up about here,” Houck says, his arm sweeping a strip of tall, dense weeds.”Now it’s 1,580 or so, down 35 feet.” We stroll past green depressions, ringed by scattered stones.”Those are the cellar holes of homes,” he says. He points north to a cut where locomotives rounded the bend and chugged along the river shore to cattle pens.

Tom Houck stands on the sidewalk of LeBeau’s First State Bank during a year of low water on the Missouri River.

JoAnn picks her way gingerly, watching for rattlesnakes. Ahead lay remnants of main street LeBeau. Wind-driven waves lap the shore, covering, then revealing foundation stones of the First State Bank. Red bricks from the long-gone factory at Akaska are strewn about the shore. A wide concrete sidewalk slopes toward the water and disappears.

LeBeau’s disappearing act began in 1909, at the ripe old age of 34.

Antoine LeBeau, of French and Lakota parentage, opened a fur-trading post on the Missouri’s eastern bank in 1875; within a decade the frontier town grew to 200. In 1904, the government opened the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Reservations across the river for cattle grazing, and LeBeau’s future seemed secure. Cattlemen from Texas and elsewhere moved in, and in 1906 the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad arrived to haul the cows to market. Impromptu houses grew up the hill, swelling the town to 500 people.

Those were the glory years of LeBeau, 1906 to 1909. Glory years if you mean the Hotel LeBeau was heated by steam, that there were banks, cafes, general stores, doctors and lawyers, a newspaper, even a pair of churches and an opera house. Glory years if you mean that thousands of cattle grew fat on native grass, money flowed, saloons and gamblers prospered. At its peak, the Scotland-based Matador Land and Cattle Company fattened tens of thousands of steers on half a million acres of reservation land it leased from the federal government for 3.5 cents per acre. When steers were ready to travel east, cowboys drove them into giant holding pens on the west bank of the river and ferried them across on the Scotty Phillip.

LeBeau was not the kind of town where Murdo MacKenzie wanted to live, but it had been a good place to extend his cattle empire. MacKenzie could run the Matador from his mansion in Trinidad, Colorado, but he needed a manager in South Dakota. He sent David, his son.

Like many a rich man’s son, David, or Dode his friends called him, had a talent for spending his father’s money. And he had a penchant for drink. After an all-night binge, Dode MacKenzie and a drinking buddy, Ambrose Benoist, staggered into Phil DuFran’s Angel Bar the morning of Dec. 11, 1909 and ordered drinks. Nobody knows exactly what words passed between the pair and bartender Bud Stephens, but what is known is that MacKenzie crossed the street to Knoll’s hardware, picked up a .45 Colt revolver and a handful of .38 cartridges, loaded the gun and headed back across the street to confront Stephens. The bartender pulled out his own .44 and fired point blank at Dode MacKenzie’s chest.

Cattlemen conducted business by day in LeBeau, but they could grow rowdy inside the Angel Bar, where Bud Stephens killed Dode MacKenzie.

The trial was held in March of 1910, in the county seat town of Selby. The jury consisted mostly of farmers, who spared little love for big-time cattlemen and their hard-living cowpokes. The jurors bought Stephens’ claim of self-defense and found him innocent of murder or any other crime.

Dode MacKenzie may not have been popular with the men who rode the range, but he was a cowboy, like them. They blamed LeBeau for his death. The Matador moved its operation north, a blow to the town’s economy. And in September, six months after Stephens’ acquittal, LeBeau burned down. Nobody could say how the fire began, but volunteer firemen found their hoses cut. One of the few buildings to survive was Phil DuFran’s Angel Bar.

Perhaps LeBeau could have risen from the ashes, even as its foundation stones still rise on occasion from the Missouri. But other factors intervened. Pro-sodbuster President William Howard Taft had replaced the cattlemen’s friend, Theodore Roosevelt, in the White House. Homesteaders were flooding the territory, and cheap leases of Indian land were about to end. The drought of 1910 was breathing down their necks. The Minneapolis & St. Louis train even derailed east of town.

Ellsworth LeBeau grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation in the 1950s, and later served as president of the tribal college in Eagle Butte. He inherited the stories of his ancestor’s town, and as a child visited LeBeau before the waters rose. All that remained even then, he says, was sidewalks and foundations and the remnants of cattle pens.

“Antoine was my great, great, great something on my father’s side,” Ellsworth said. In the early days, Antoine and a brother also cut wood at Four Bears, south of the Moreau River, to supply fuel for steamboats that docked at LeBeau. They were paid in guns, ammunition and clothing, Ellsworth said. Antoine helped organize Walworth County, and held county offices for years. In old age he crossed the river one last time, and is buried on the reservation.

In the town’s early days, Indians crossed the river for LeBeau’s Fourth of July parade and celebration, Ellsworth said.”The cowboys were a pretty rowdy bunch.”

Today, rowdy cowboys and others still view Bud Stephens’ .44 in the Walworth County Courthouse in Selby. Crumbling bricks from the short-lived town lie on mantels and stand as bookends in area homes. JoAnn Houck treasures the photographs she took of LeBeau’s remains in 1963, and again 40 years later when water was low. Across the Missouri on the Cheyenne River Reservation, cattle still graze. Birds still nest and feed and sing. But when the waters of Lake Oahe rise once more, LeBeau will recede again into the depths of memory.

Looking for Grandpa at LeBeau

By Tom Keller

My great-grandparents, Harry and Grace Keller, had stores in Egan and Flandreau around the turn of the century. Harry heard about the booming cattle-shipping town of LeBeau, and decided to start a store there.

I’d heard the stories of the long-gone town south of Mobridge since I was a kid.

When Dad had visited LeBeau in the low river year of 1952, the front step of Harry and Grace’s store was still there, with”H.E. Keller” carved in concrete.

Tom Keller found his grandfather’s name etched in the concrete of old LeBeau.

Last fall I decided to see LeBeau for myself. I got vague directions from Akaska, and met my folks on a Saturday morning. There’d been a little snow, and the last few miles of road were dirt. Half way in, my venerable Volvo hit a rock. I got out and watched oil pour from the damaged pan onto the ground. I trudged to the top of the next hill with my cell phone to arrange a tow. The folks waited in the car while I walked west, I hoped toward LeBeau.

The trail diverged into three options, and I had no idea where I was going. I reached the edge of Oahe, but found no LeBeau. No relics. No steps. No sunken town. I hiked up and down the shoreline, and finally gave it up; of course, I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for.

I was almost back to the disabled car when a Corps of Engineers pickup appeared on the horizon. The government man was there to protect the shore from looters. But he had already talked with my parents, and knew my intent. He’d been to LeBeau, of course, and didn’t recall the concrete steps I sought, but he volunteered to show me what was left of the town.

We found a horseshoe-shaped sidewalk, buckling from the bed of the receding lake. We found the imprint of the concrete manufacturer, but no front step of H.E. Keller’s general store. I took a few pictures, and we speculated about life in LeBeau. We had turned to go when my companion said,”Hey, what’s this?”

And there it was.

I was like a kid who’d followed a map to treasure in a secret cave. It was just a slab of century-old concrete, but it still clearly bore my grandfather’s name. I finished off my roll of film.

Back in Sioux Falls, I dropped off the film for developing. When I told the woman my name, she asked where my family was from. She was curious, because her name was Keller too.

“My dad’s family is from Huron,” I said,”but he’s an only child and his dad was an only son, so we don’t have a lot of relatives around. Where’s your family from?”

“Up by Mobridge,” she replied.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2004 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Angels Along the River

By Jarett C. Bies

Kayakers paddling the Missouri River from source to mouth find South Dakotans willing and eager to help. Photo by Jessica Giard.

Each spring, South Dakotans who live along the Missouri River become friends to adventure hunters attempting to paddle the entire river, starting in Montana at the source and continuing to St. Louis (or sometimes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico).

The trip has allure because the Missouri is the longest river in North America at 2,341 miles. After all, would you train to scale a mountain and then fly to Alaska to climb something other than Denali?

As paddlers descend the 500 river miles in South Dakota, they experience some of the Missouri’s most dynamic contrasts. On the state’s northern border, they’re on the inland sea that is Oahe, the”Big Bear,” whose winds can make travel impossible. Lakes Sharpe, Francis Case and Lewis & Clark aren’t much easier. Luckily the state’s long river stretches provide a reprieve, since hundreds of miles still lie ahead for them.

Those who host, help or offer companionship give priceless assistance. Paddlers live off what they can haul, so restocking backpacks and recharging batteries is a necessity. When Mike Norder took ownership of Bridge City Marina near Mobridge, the former owner told him kayakers would be coming through from Montana.”Sure enough, we had folks in that spring, and you do scratch your head,” Norder says.”It’s a crazy journey. These people are taking a year, or longer for the ones doing it each summer, and it’s amazing to me. The isolation out on the river. The personal journey. It’s admirable.”

Only a handful of paddlers came through in Norder’s first year of business, then the number jumped to eight one summer.”We enjoy hosting them, and I guess it was just the way I was brought up. We’ll let them take a cabin if we have one open, just so they can unwind and refresh their batteries,” he says. “We can offer them a place to sleep and a shower. I think when you haven’t had one for a week or longer, it’s a treat.”

Janet Moreland paddled the Missouri River from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico, the first woman to complete the 3,800-mile water journey. Photo by Jessica Giard.

He says his family enjoys the newcomers. “We like to make a party of it. One time we did a walleye feed and then another time we did a steak cookout. We make a celebration out of what they’re doing. I call them river warriors, and it’s nice to pick their minds, to hear about the motivations behind their trips. Like with Janet (Moreland), she was doing it to inspire kids and to raise river awareness. We have a big family, so that’s where we connected.”

Moreland was the first woman and first American to finish the source to sea trip. She started May 1, 2012, and completed her descent to the Gulf of Mexico the following December.

Social media — especially a Facebook page called Missouri River Paddlers — has made a huge difference for water travelers and for South Dakotans willing to help them around a dam, or offer a place to sleep or a hot meal. Pat Wellner, a kayak racer from Pierre, thinks the uptick in paddlers doing the trip is noteworthy, but that the Facebook page, created by paddling enthusiast Norman Miller of Livingston, Mont., has made a big difference in spreading the word.

“The first time I met someone doing the trip was in 2009, and now you can keep track of the river travelers thanks to Norm’s page,” Wellner says.”I guess my motivation to help is our common interests: paddling and the river. It’s fun for me to see how they’ve prepared, the boats and paddles they use, the stay-dry equipment.” He also warns paddlers that the Big Bend area is tricky and that they have plenty of wind and big water yet to come.

Wellner also appreciates the motivation behind the trips. He met Dom Liboiron, a freelance writer who would paddle, stop to work, and then return to paddling. Liboiron dedicated his 2012-13 Montana to New Orleans trip to his late uncle, Mitch, and to raise awareness for heart disease. He learned to appreciate Canadian Rod Wellington’s”no mechanical assistance” approach. Wellington manhandled all his gear and kayak around each of South Dakota’s four dams.

“What they do is tough, especially in terms of time. Finding that much time off, and the money to cover such a trip, is not easy, and that’s why it seems to be college kids or retirees doing the whole stretch,” he says.”There are so many fitness levels. Some are doing it aggressively and others are going at their own pace.” Wellner says many of the paddlers are engaged in”ninja camping” where they alight along any bank or slice of shore available to them.

Shawn Hollingsworth paddled the Missouri River in a homemade pine canoe featuring pink ribbons for breast cancer research. Photo by Rod Wellington.

Journalist Jessica Giard has met a lot of river travelers in her decade-plus of living in Chamberlain. She said many of the source-down paddlers stop in Chamberlain in part because of geography.”There’s not much between Pierre and Yankton, so it’s nice to enrich their travels a bit, but they have to rely on locals, sometimes for help, sometimes for insight on local color or guidance,” she says.”It might be as simple as a meal or a ride to the store.”

Giard’s most memorable experience with source-down travelers came when she joined a group of British adventurers for several days on the water. She says river-lovers quickly find common ground.

“They want to experience more than the terrain. They want to truly know the places they stop, and how life’s lived there,” Giard says.”Each has their own journey, with unique goals and methods, but they have all kept me motivated to keep seeking more adventures and to stop imposing limits on what I do or can do.”

Cheryl Pruett of Platte read of river travelers on Facebook and that made it possible for her to spend time as a hostess for Janet Moreland. Pruett hosted her during a windy set of days near Snake Creek.”I took her shopping and gave her a way to get to town to replenish her supplies,” Pruett says.”We ended up spending a lot of time together, and she was just so warm and truly interested in South Dakota. Janet was definitely a motivator. I was amazed by her journey, a single woman on her own. But she did it, and she made me think I need to do more new things and to never quit exploring.”

A day after Moreland’s departure, Pruett climbed aboard a watercraft and went down river, hoping to see her newfound friend.”We did find her and she’d stopped because she’d broken a rudder cable, so we were able to help her out,” Pruett says.”She called us ‘river angels,’ and it felt good to hear her say that.”

While most kayakers would never dream of replicating the source-down journey, there’s a transitive property to the face-to-face experience. Wayne Nelson-Stastny is a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service scientist, a Wagner native, and a huge proponent of the source-down travelers he’s met. In Yankton, his family hosted Moreland and helped her depart onto the first truly moving water she’d paddled in months.

“Both of my kids had a million questions for her and we had her over, let her get some laundry done. What she’s doing is amazing,” he says.”She’s enhancing the understanding we all have for this river system, but she’s also showing women that great things are possible.”

Nelson-Stastny says he and his family were out on Lake Yankton the weekend after their experience with Moreland.”I’ve been on the river since I was a kid, and I was out there almost every day in the 1990s when I was in graduate school, and you never saw people doing this trip,” he said.”Now you’ll find a dozen or more each spring. It’s inspiring people, and I know it’s inspired my kids. All we did was give her [Moreland] a little rest and a meal. She gave us a lot more.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2014 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Navigating the Wild Missouri

By Jim Peterson

Although dams are scattered along the upper reaches of the Missouri River, the stretch from Yankton to Ponca, Nebraska remains wild.

For 53 swirling, twirling miles south of Yankton, the Missouri River still runs wild and free. Navigable waters begin at the bend by Ponca, Nebraska, and continue tamely to the Gulf of Mexico.

Explorers Lewis and Clark and all the other brave souls who traveled the Missouri in the 19th century would best recognize the river today from Yankton to Ponca. Cottonwood trees still line the shoreline and forested creeks wind their way down from hilly grasslands. The same chalkstone bluffs that provided a yellow spectacle to fur traders of yesteryear still stand sentinel to passers-by on the road of water.

Navigating the Missouri was difficult in the 1800s and, at least in that particular stretch, it remains a challenge today. I compare it to an exercise in locating crossings, those areas where the channel crosses from one side of the river to the other. Just as a river snakes down a valley, the channel snakes down the river.

So the art lies in locating the crossings. Probably about 25 crossings lay between the cities of Yankton and Ponca; 25 unavoidable opportunities to ground a big boat.

My river rat friends and I have boated the river on many occasions. So in 1994, when some Floridians bought the Far West riverboat, which had cruised the calmer waters of the Missouri near Yankton as a tourist vessel for several years, they came to us to help them navigate from Yankton to Ponca.

Denny Martens and I thought it would be a challenge and quickly agreed to sign on as guides. Max Brown, a former professional motorboat operator for the Corps of Engineers at Yankton, also came aboard.

The groundings, of course, are what concerned our friends from Englewood, Florida. They were accustomed to sailing such a boat on deep waters — and wise enough to know that the wild Missouri was out of their territory.

Grounding is always troublesome; grounding while down-bound can be catastrophic.

The difference? Bars generally are shaped like sand dunes or snowdrifts; they slant upward to their apex. Once the down-bound rig grounds, its momentum carries it uphill on the bar into shallowing water — and the river’s current relentlessly pushes it on. (On a short bar with a low profile, a lucky operator’s rig may slide over the bar into deeper water.) Grounding as a hazard is matched by another of the Missouri’s infamous hazards: snags — snags in profusion, ranging from twigs to trees, litter the river. The former are of little consequence; the latter may sink a victim. While the steel hull of the Far West was unlikely to be holed, snags were surely a danger to the wooden blades of the paddlewheels as well as to the rudders. Snags and shallows aside, the Missouri harbors many a trap; the grand old stream has a mind of her own and is never to be treated with anything but undiluted respect.

What, then, of the run to Ponca and deep water? A look at some of the truly hazardous passages on the 53-mile run will give the reader a view of running the wild Missouri. From experience, we identified three truly treacherous crossings between Yankton and Ponca. Down bound, in order, lay the upper reaches of the Audubon Bend, the turbulent, severely eroding North Alabama Bend and the infamous Elk Point Bend, just above Ponca’s channelized river. The Far West‘s passage through these potential traps was our main focus.

The Far West eased away from Yankton’s Riverside Park near Mile 806 on June 25 to begin her 2,500-mile run to Florida. One of the Vermillion river rats was stationed in the pilot house, the other ahead in an outboard-powered 15-footer. Three passengers, observers and potential pushers were aboard in addition to one of the Vermillion river rats and the Floridians. The day was clear and bright, the wind light. A fine cruising day though it were, the Missouri soon reminded the voyagers that running the Missouri with a craft of this size was a chancy undertaking. Midway down the Yankton Reach an invisible, deep-lying snag raked the Far West‘s bottom, jolting and tilting her to one side. No damage was ascertainable, and the run proceeded on east, the channel more or less hugging the Nebraska shore. Running slowly and cautiously, the Far West slipped effortlessly downstream, her crew developing a feel for the craft and the river. The day was perfect for running, and the handsome Far West was a spectacular sight on the storied Missouri. An uneventful run through Jacques Bend and the braided St. Helena Bend led to one of the Missouri’s most spectacular sights — the delightful Audubon Bend, Mile 787, west of Vermillion. Here, precipitous bluffs of exposed shale and chalk, capped by a layer of darker loess, rise abruptly above the river. Oak trees cloak the bluffs, while Bow Creek laps their base as its waters languorously merge with the Missouri’s.

The day was clear and bright as the Far West eased away from Yankton’s Riverside Park bound for Florida. With help from local river rats and a dollop of good luck, the Far West made its way through seen and unseen snags and sandbars. After Ponca, the crew faced a clear run down the Mississippi to the Gulf.

Shunted eastward by the unyielding bluffs, the Missouri sweeps down the 7-mile-long Sandhill Reach, one of the longest relatively straight reaches on the river. (The longest is the 16-mile Steamboat Reach, near Pierre.) Here, at Mile 785R, the Far West tied up for the night. With some 32 miles to go and the most hazardous crossings yet to be traversed, caution dictated a stop while the day’s experience was evaluated and the plan for the remainder of the voyage was reviewed. The Far West‘s presence brought people streaming to see the largest sternwheeler to sail this area for decades.

Sunday, June 26, was bright and clear, with a light to moderate northwest wind; a beautiful summer day. Ominously, the river had fallen during the night, a fact starkly announced by the glistening patches of wet bar exposed by the falling river, as well as by a dark, wetted band of shoreline at the water’s edge. The 2-inch or so drop could well be the cause of real problems. Bottom clearance on the Missouri is as often measured in inches as in feel. Encouraged by the ease and success of the previous day’s run, well aware of the cost of delay and now possessed of a better understanding as to how to run this river, the owner said, “Go.”

Aided now by a pair of knowledgeable river rats from Ponca — Bill Conrad and Tim Armstrong (accompanied by a yellow lab named Oatmeal) — the Far West resumed her search for salt water. Crossing to the Dakota shore near the east tip of Goat Island, she skirted the watery grave of the Missouri River Queen, a private ferry that fell victim to the river some two months earlier. Other than an area of turbulence on the Missouri’s surface, there was no sign of the sunken 12-ton Queen. Paddling steadily down the Clay County Park Chute, the skipper acknowledged an assemblage of startled onlookers with a blast of the horn.

Ahead lay the oddly configured crossing at the North Alabama Bend and all attention was focused on that fearsome obstacle. At the outlet of the park chute the Missouri graphically displays one of its seemingly perverse characteristics: it spreads and shallows. The deep, chute-confined waters, which had provided a good, easily seen channel, now fan outward, slowing as the bottom drag increases, and endlessly precipitate much of their sandy load. The neat, comfortably deep channel quickly disappears, replaced by a perplexing maze of shallows, bars and stranded snags. The precipitated sand almost always diverts the spreading waters; the “hose” of the channel becomes the “spray” of a sprinkler. (One could say the waters have been “un-funneled.”)

A crossing is mandated by the delta-like accumulation of sand below the outlet of the park chute. In effect, the river dams its own channel and must then find a way around its own handiwork. The lead boat crept through the braided waters, “dip sticking” constantly to determine if the channel (if it can be so described) still flowed as expected. At one point the crossing’s channel actually curved upstream a bit before being diverted sharply downstream by a submerged bar. The lead boat found an “iffy” 3 feet of water, and the Far West, running as slowly as the need for steerage would permit, crept through the shoal-speckled crossing, the wind and current combining to force her into a crabbing configuration as she fought to follow the slight upstream curvature of the channel.

The tortuous crossing completed, the Far West made a hard left turn as she warily traversed the North Alabama Bend. Immediately she encountered another of the Missouri’s infamous array of snags. On the inner aspect of the bend, the Missouri in recent years has eaten well over a quarter of a mile south into the Nebraska bottomlands, devouring many acres of huge cottonwoods and a country schoolhouse. The remnants litter the river below the cut; the schoolhouse was broken up and only an occasional bit of siding can be found. The cottonwoods often lie where they fell, creating an awesome tangle of massive snags. The Missouri continues its savage assault on the sandy banks, and the sand-laden waters froth as they surge by the bottom-trapped snags. Trees thus snagged are usually trained in the direction of the river’s flow, an advantage for the down-bound craft since, rather than being impaled, it is likely to ride onto and over such snags should one be hit. Occasionally a limber snag will seesaw in the turbulent current: these are the “now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t” sawyers dreaded by the wooden-hulled steamboat captains.

Assiduously tracking the lead boat, the Far West avoided the snags, both the seen and unseen, her crew hoping no deep-lying snag would spear the hull, splinter a paddlewheel blade or shear off a rudder. Emerging from the successful negotiation of this snag field, a course was set into the pooled river above the pinch at Mulberry Bend. Some weeks earlier an up bound towboat and barge grounded in these shallows, spending a day or so struggling to freedom. The Far West did not ground here, but a wake of sandy water graphically underscored just how limited the depth was.

Deeper water and good running lay below the bend, and the Far West methodically swept on down the liquid slope. Crossing to the Nebraska shore at the mouth of the Vermillion, we travelers viewed the shoreline erosion caused by the massive jet of floodwater spurting from the Vermillion during the 1993 flood. The Vermillion’s waters, then 50-feet deep at the mouth, swept the Missouri’s waters aside and slammed headlong into the sandy Nebraska shore. The landowner claims a loss of some 100 acres.

Clearing the newly cut Curry Chute, then easing through the Ionia Bend, the Far West proceeded on, slowing as she approached the long infamous Elk Point Bend. This bend, lying just above the navigation channel at Ponca, is a sprawling, braided, perplexing confusion of low bars and flat water. Here, within sight of Ponca State Park and deep water, lay the Far West‘s major obstacle on the run to Ponca. Slowing as much as she could without turning upstream, the pilot awaited word from the lead boat. A scattering of pleasure boats was clustered nearby, attracted by news of the unusual traveler. Later it was learned most of the viewers expected to find the Far West hard aground, well upstream. The betting was she couldn’t make it to Ponca.

Two hundred yards ahead, a highly visible crescent-shaped reef line marked the downstream edge of a submerged bar. To either side lay bars exposed or barely awash. There being no way around the reef, it was necessary to cross it. The outlook didn’t appear promising. The lead boat, moving slowly, dip sticked what appeared to be the deepest route. Seeking the likeliest route over the bar, the dip sticker scanned the surface for clues as to the depth. What to look for? Sand-laden water, small, up-welling boils, a faint break or irregularity in the ripple delineating the reef line — features a novice would likely never heed. A combination of reading the river, “dip sticking,” and river sense — plus a welcome dollop of good luck — lay back of the successful search for adequate water. At the reef line, dip sticking revealed about 40 inches of water; the Far West‘s draft was 36. This pass — really only an indentation — in the reef appeared wide enough to admit the oncoming Far West, and the signal to come on through was made.

Proceeding as slowly as she could without reversing her paddlewheels, the Far West aimed for the designated pass in the reef. Moving with the current, her rudders had little bite and the paddlewheels were of little value in steering; essentially she was coasting. The Far West‘s windage presented a defenseless target for the northwest wind, and the craft was nudged to her right. This resulted in her almost missing the pass. Her forward third cleared the reef line, but the rearward portion of the hull gently grounded on the submerged bar. Slowly the Far West slid to a halt. Fortunately, she grounded with part of her hull again in deep water, and the Missouri sluicing by the hull soon washed her on over the bar, aided by the flailing paddlewheels — and a most helpful push by the lead boat. Pushing the stern a bit to the right exposed more of the hull to the current and the wind, helping the Far West to slide off the bar to continue her run. Subsequent investigation of the entire Elk Point Bend by the Vermillion river rats revealed that there was then no really deep channel through the bend; the river simply spreads out and filters through a maze of bars chaotically interspersed in a sprawling sheet of shallow water.

Once free of the sandy grip of the bar, a short crossing in good water put the Far West into 20-foot depths hard along the Dakota shore, now heading south to Ponca, Mile 753. Deep water — and a clear run to Florida! Sunday throngs at the Ponca State Park swarmed to ogle the unannounced visitor. No sternwheeler of this size had docked at Ponca since a visit by the Corps’ Patrick Gass in 1936. What a sight under the chalk bluff!

With a navigable channel now at hand, the need for the Vermillion river rats ceased, and we took leave of our charge to start the hill climb to our base at Black Acre on the Sandhill Reach, 30 miles upriver. The Far West did not tarry long at Ponca. With the Ponca river rats (and Oatmeal) aboard, she ran downriver to South Sioux City where she overnighted near the Marina Inn.

The running time from Yankton to Ponca State Park was about eight hours; the river mileage 53 and the speed down the wild river averaged some seven miles an hour (the current is about four miles per hour.) Other than a bit of a tipping by an unseen snag on the Yankton Reach and the skidding over the bar above Ponca, the run was pretty much uneventful. Thirty-one days after leaving Yankton the Far West reached her new homeport at Englewood, Florida. (Near St. Charles, Missouri, she passed near the site where her namesake, Capt. Grant Marsh’s Far West, sank, some years after he brought the news — and the survivors — of the Little Bighorn battle to Bismarck.) Heavy rain closed the Tenn-Tom Waterway, so the Far West ran the Mississippi to the Gulf. Now in salt water, she ran the Intercoastal Waterway where possible. Her luck held, enabling her open gulf run to be made in calm seas without incident. With dry-docking for a repainting, a remodeling for her new role and a change of name, the Lantern Queen served as a dinner boat in the Englewood area.

Somehow, it seems a craft that bore a legendary name and herself mastered the Mighty Mo deserved a better fate.

About the author: Jim Peterson has lived along the Missouri River all his life. He taught business at the University of South Dakota and is now retired in Vermillion.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Our Water Stories

By Katie Hunhoff

The Muskegon was once hailed as the handsomest boat on Big Stone Lake. It capsized in 1917 with nine passengers aboard.

For a state once considered a desert, South Dakota has a lot of water, thousands of feet of shoreline and a veritable treasure chest of lake and river adventure stories — some dating back a century and more.

The Kampeska Monster is among the wackiest. Boat-builders at Lake Kampeska were building a steamer in 1886 when they reported seeing a”20-foot long snake-like creature.” They were not taken seriously until several days later when four prominent Watertown area businessmen claimed they also saw it.

The foursome said it swam for quite a distance before disappearing into the depths. Perhaps worried about their reputations, they admitted it might have been an unusually large lake sturgeon. Big-city journalists came to see for themselves. Some poked fun at the very idea of a Loch Ness on the prairie, but one writer concluded that,”sturdy, virile Dakotans were not given to superstitious fears.”

Some of our water stories are fun, but others end in tragedy. At Big Stone Lake on July 10, 1917, nine people stepped aboard an excursion boat called The Muskegon. They never reached the other shore. Heavy rain fell and then, said a survivor, it seemed that two storms met in the middle of the lake, capsizing the 60-foot boat.

A heart-wrenching struggle ensued, as passengers and crew tried to save themselves and one another. In the end, the captain and six passengers drowned, including two young sisters. A poet memorialized the dead with a long piece that included these lines:

Those were the ties severed

In those seven peoples’ lives

Lost on this boat Muskegon

Sinking to rise no more.

But the Muskegon did rise; it was pulled from the water and restored 10 years later by a wealthy businessman who renamed it the Golden Bantam. Today it is docked at a museum just across the South Dakota border in Ortonville, Minnesota, along with memorabilia and news clippings.

Not many South Dakotans have prospered as professional fishermen, but there was a time when you could make a living by clamming on the James, Big Sioux and Vermillion rivers. Button-makers wanted the shells in the early 20th century. Clams were so abundant in the James that a particular spot called Tuscan in Hutchinson County was dubbed the”Mother of Pearl Capital of the World.”

The clam industry dwindled in the 1940s due to over-harvesting, environmental changes in the rivers and, of course, the invention of plastic buttons.

Despite the placidity of today’s tamed Missouri, adventures still occur on its waters. In 1992 a young Yankton couple saw a small object with a yellow flag on top being pulled upstream by a nylon rope. The object kept disappearing and surfacing around their boat, until the rope got tangled in the propeller and killed the engine.

They began to be pulled upstream, backwards, and to the husband’s horror the boat was slowly being pulled down into the water. They traveled about 300 yards, with their transom only inches above the water’s surface before he was able to cut the rope.

Their experience was witnessed by other fishermen and was soon published in the Yankton paper. The city was abuzz with news of the river monster. Writer Marilyn Kratz concluded that a sturgeon, which can grow to 1,000 pounds, could have been the culprit.”Their slender body and long snout, covered with bony plates, would be a terrifying sight at that size,” she wrote.”They certainly would be large and powerful enough to pull a boat about their same size.”

Huge fish were also reported by dam-builders when the reservoirs were built along the Missouri. Some divers saw fish 15 feet long floating at the bottom of the muddy river. Mysteries are still unfolding on land and in the waters of South Dakota.

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Autumn Mysteries

By Katie Hunhoff

Visitors have long reported strange occurrences at Sica Hollow in Roberts County. Photo by Chad Coppess/S.D. Tourism

South Dakotans are no-nonsense folks, so we always struggle to find supernatural tales for our October issues, but we have heard a few through the years. One of my favorite spooky stories, published in our September/October 2014 issue, is about a mysterious bright, white light in Miner County that appears out of nowhere. Locals call it the spooklight. It can be seen along a particular stretch of dirt road between Carthage and Fedora. The story’s author, Donna Palmlund, talked to family and neighbors to get their spooklight accounts.

Palmlund’s father grew up on a farm west of Spooklight Road. His grandfather would say that sometimes the spooklight was so bright they could sit inside and read by it. After the Hass family moved off the farm, a man named Joe Spader lived there. “After I moved to that farm it wasn’t long before I was aware of this light that was very peculiar,” Spader said. He described the light as looking like a bright spotlight cresting a hill and then going down the hill, but a car would never materialize. Before he heard about the spooklight, he was worried someone was trying to steal something.

Another mysterious light has been seen in southeast South Dakota, looking over Nebraska’s Crazy Peak, which rises above the chalkstone bluffs on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. Sometimes the view gives South Dakotans an unexplainable light show. “I’ve seen all sorts of UFOs there in the past,” said Carvel Cooley, a longtime local historian. “It’s just lights. They don’t make any noise and they can stop, start, zap out of sight, disappear and reappear.” Although a lot of locals have seen the lights, most don’t talk about it. Some give credit for the lights to swamp gas. Others bring up the Santee Sioux legends of seeing “little people” in the neighborhood of Crazy Peak.

Another well-known eerie South Dakota spot is Sica Hollow in Roberts County. Reports of strange voices, lights flashing in creek bottoms and bubbling red bogs along the Trail of Spirits make Sica Hollow a spooky place to visit any time of year. Its first Indian inhabitants dubbed the forested area”sica,” meaning bad or evil.

We visited with Chris Hull several years ago. Six generations of Hull’s family have lived near Sica Hollow. He has spent countless hours hunting or camping in the forest and has seen the glowing lights. Once he also had a more mysterious experience while camping with friends. They realized they had forgotten supplies, so one friend drove home to get them.

“We were hiking and heard him yell from down in the hollow,” Hull told us. “He must have yelled five or six times. We wondered if his truck had gotten stuck and he had started walking. So we walked for a mile and got down to the bottom, but there was nothing there. We climbed a hill to search for lights and found nothing. Finally we went back to the campsite and he pulled in at the same time. He said he was at home and he had all the sleeping bags and things he’d gone to get. But all five of us heard him yelling that night.”

When the leaves fall and Halloween is close at hand, we all like a good South Dakota ghost story. If you have one to share, let us know in the comments below or email editor@southdakotamagazine.com.

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The Birdwatcher’s Wings

By Juli Wilcox

Willis Hall used a trip wire to photograph himself with a trio of red-tailed hawk fledglings.

I sat in the hospital room, watching my friend breathe. He was 86. I felt a little guilty watching him, because he was the most private person I ever knew, and I’m not sure he would have approved; yet it is hard to look away when you love someone. Sometimes we think if we do just a little more, it will be all right. Of course it is not our decision. Willis would have us know that.

I knew Willis Hall for 25 years. He was my mentor and my friend. That he and Rosamond let me be with them was a gift.

I met Willis for the first time when they came to our house to show a group of Yankton College teachers some bird slides. It was love at first sight. He, his Rosamond, and their incredible photographs are the things on which I imprinted as fast as a gosling on the goose. I was cooked. At 7 the very next morning, the three of us began our first of hundreds of birding trips. We three, and sometimes my husband too, eventually would cross what seemed like every prairie pothole and dusty back road in the six-state region. We never took the main road except to get to another dirt road. My gift to Willis was to find a back road he hadn’t traveled before.

By canoe in the summer, he introduced me to least terns and piping plovers on Missouri River sandbars. Above the river, in the low oak hills and on grass-covered bentonite clay cliffs, we found Dutchman’s breeches and the pasqueflower in the spring and buffaloberries and LeConte’s sparrows in the fall. We hiked the hills, checking wild plum bushes for Bell’s vireo and spotted towhee nests and scouting for deer, turkeys, prairie ring-necked snakes and his favorite, great horned owls.

In the winter, we kicked the soccer ball over the park trails or skied the woods in search of red-bellied woodpeckers and bluebirds.

And in the last two years, I played my first tennis ever, with a man who had played for 70 years. Ever patient, he never gave up on me; he just kept putting the ball over the net. If we were distracted by nighthawks and nuthatches at his favorite park counter, so much the better.

In the early days we spotted and counted birds, and he photographed. Rosamond judiciously jotted their numbers and exact locations on the back of recycled envelopes in writing so small a magnifying glass was required to read it. From him I first heard very patient answers to my questions about bird identification, photography and all things having to do with the natural world. If I spotted a bird, impulsively calling it out, Rosamond would always say,”Willis?” and only when he confirmed a sighting, would she add it to the list. I think it was five years before they accepted my birds.

His friend Phil Hall from North Dakota, who explores and writes on the natural history of the Badlands, also writes of Willis’ patience. “One spring, I believe it was in 1982, I noticed that a golden eagle had reclaimed its nest high up in the wall that defines the east side of Red Canyon. I phoned Willis, and 36 hours later he and Rosamond appeared in the pasture by my cabin. After the obligatory tea for an Englishman, we set out for the eagle’s nest, which was about 10 miles down the canyon. While the nest looked close to the road, it was a deceivingly long hike, and just short of vertical. Willis led the way, hauling a camera, a big lens, binoculars, and a heavy camera bag. At the time, I was 39 and he was 69. I struggled to keep up with him.

“We advanced as far up the canyon wall as possible. There, we ducked behind a scrubby cedar tree. Out of his bag, Willis produced a small piece of camouflage cloth, which he draped around us. We sat like rocks for two hours. However, I twice shifted my weight and once had to scratch an itchy nose. We waited without breathing.

“The eagle never came, and Willis finally announced that we should hike back to the pickup. I was chagrined at not being able to show him the eagle. As we gathered up the equipment, I asked, ‘Willis, why do you think the eagle never came to its nest?’

“‘We moved too much,’ he replied.”

At home he was constantly on the move. If Rosamond was his ears, he was her legs. She might say, “Willis, get me the bird notes from the kitchen.”

He would respond, “Where are they?”

“In the pea bag on the counter.” He would go, and return empty handed and baffled. She would carefully repeat, “Pea bag!”

“Oh!” he said, “I thought you said tea bag.”

And they both would exchange glances that said, “Pay attention, dear. Speak more clearly, dear.” But they were smiling at each other.

Their relationship was a curious delight to the college students. She regarded her students highly and held extra classes at their home. One of her former French students wrote, “I remember one time Miss Burgi called to Willis to please bring that cereal box to her. When she had it she reached in and pulled out my homework. Of course! Homework in a cereal box. He was dear and I knew there was some serious devotion going on in that house. “

Theirs was indeed the language of serious devotion. They chose their cadences carefully. She may have been the professor of Latin, but he was the poet. He spoke plain English.

From her I first heard exotic bird terms. “Is that a bird or an excrescence?”

I asked for translation, and Willis, in all seriousness, answered, “Excrescence — a bump on a log — excrescence.” And looked at her. And she smiled.

Rosamond once told me she would rather be struck from a mountain than linger aimlessly. In 1992 she suffered a stroke and passed from her mountain. He believed he would be with her again. In 1998 he wrote the poem Almighty God.

A few leaves flutter in the breeze.

These too shall all be gone.

Almighty God shall bring them

back again.

Each one, its perfect self, shall be

A part of me, as it has been.

She too, My Rosamond,

shall be again.

Willis never wanted to impose. Waiting at the doctor’ s office, he had a sniffle. I told him I had taken a zinc lozenge for my sniffles. He seemed absolutely mystified. He looked at me, and rather than have me repeat, an imposition, he tried to further the conversation by eliciting more information. He questioned, “Where does one get such a substance?”

“Oh, probably from chewing rocks,” I replied.

Somewhat alarmed, Willis said, “From chewing rats?”

Now this was a man who rescued bats and carried indoor insects outside so they’d have a fighting chance. “No,” I said, “from chewing rocks, r-o-c-k-s.” Concerned that I had confused rather than amused him I said, ”I’m only kidding, Willis. It’s a joke.” He, waiting for me to breathe as I watched his face, looked me straight in the eye and said the only zinc he knew was the kitchen zinc.

With deep relief for the moment and for so much else, I laughed. I detected a sly smile on his face. I knew that once again — I’d been cooked.

We moved Willis from the protected environment of his hospital room to an adjoining nursing home where we hoped he could convalesce from the pneumonia for which he’d been hospitalized. His beloved brother, Winston, had died six weeks before, and he was greatly saddened.

Several times over those weeks in the hospital, health care workers asked me if he was my father. One day, through deafened ears, he responded , “Daughter … and mother.”

I combed his gray hair and said he looked like a tufted puffin, the longhaired seabird whose wings are better suited for diving for fish than for flying. He said he had never had a higher compliment. Two weeks later he said he felt he had come to the end of a long race. The next week he said he wished he could start over. When I asked if he wanted anything he replied, “What I want is unobtainable.” Three days later he had a small stroke. He did not recognize the oak bough I brought. For another day he said nothing.

And then he revived.

A long time ago, trying to keep up with him, I had asked Willis if he could live without walking. He said he guessed on his deathbed he’d get up and take a walk. And he did. At sunset, we went outside and walked the half block to the edge of the bluff. In silence we looked down at ducks silhouetted on a silver bend in the river.

I told him I had spoken with his oldest friend, Wes Cook, who now lives in New Mexico. His eyes widened. “Is he well?” Willis asked. Those were his last words.

I had brought him a gift, a large photo I’d taken in Alaska, a single tufted puffin facing the sea. He looked at the bird. He smiled at me and nodded. This time he would have to fly.

Editorís Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2000 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.