It is early in the morning of November 5, 2008. Yesterday at this time I was driving to my polling place to vote in what the entire world has called an historic election. The trip took me about an hour each way and cost me about fifteen bucks. Most of the road is gravel and I had to be careful not to hit a deer because the nights have begun to freeze, the pastures have turned brown, and the only green grass is in the road ditches where moisture has collected over the summer. The deer pile into those ditches this time of year, trying their best to lay on an extra layer of fat before the really cold days begin.
Barack Obama won big. The press says it all has to do with world finance, which I do not understand, and wars in distant lands. I might be able to figure out what a derivative, or a sub-prim loan is if I had a dog in the fight. But I don’t own any stocks and my loan at the bank is the same one I have had for forty years. I know enough about wars in distant lands to know that I don’t like them and that’s a big reason I voted for Obama.
I was not alone. I actually voted for a winner this year. It’s great to be part of history and I really am feeling a lot better about being an American. But I’m not sure that actually makes me a winner. For tomorrow they are predicting snow and enough wind to close the road. Today might be the last really gorgeous day we have for a while. Jill is working in Florida and I watched the celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park on TV last night by myself. I guess I’m feeling a little bit lonely.
Obama seems like a nice guy and, even though he is probably real busy this afternoon, I wish he was here so I could grill him a buffalo steak out on our deck that overlooks the Cheyenne River. He would probably be pretty interesting to talk to even though John McCain might feel more at home. I believe that if Barack Obama were to be transported to our deck he might think he had been drafted and shipped off to one of those distant lands. I’m glad he’s our president, but I wonder how much he knows about my life. I wonder what he knows about the public lands in the west, The Endangered Species Act, the effects of global warming in an already dry land, livestock prices, grazing strategies, the relationship between prairie species. I even wonder how much he really knows about the destructiveness or farm subsidies, the devastating effects of industrial farming, or the inability of our current capital markets to honestly account for the complete cost of agricultural production. I wonder if he has any idea how little I care about Wall Street – how unimportant I know it is in the long view.
But it would still be good to have him to dinner. Sit him down, turn off the phones, look out across the heart of America, eat a little buffalo, and just not say much for a while. I’d tell him we were out of wine and that Black Velvet would have to do. I’d watch his eyes and see if he even noticed the antelope moving on the bottom of the valley, see if he rubbed his chin as the light changed on the distant bluffs. I’d set it up as a sort of test; if he could actually be quiet and pensive and notice a few things without me calling them to his attention. I’d get a hold of the whiskey bottle when I went in to get a couple pieces of Jill’s apple pie made from the apples off the tree right there beside the deck. I’d freshen’ his glass and sit back down and whistle to Henry, my English setter.
Barack wouldn’t know that Henry and I had gone grouse hunting on our way home from voting. He was playing basketball when Henry and I were hunting. I picture him pounding up and down an asphalt urbane court, while I walked a couple miles through fenceless pastures and Henry ran twenty or thirty miles – up and down rolling hills, through hundreds of native species of grass, sedges, and forbs. When Henry bounded up on the deck and over to check out the President, I’d talk about all those miles of grasses that Henry had run through, the birds and animals he’d run into, smelled, barely escaped. I wouldn’t tell Barack that I believe his urbane basketball court is a poor and temporary substitute for the real thing or that I believe that encouraging a vision of the future world as necessarily urban and crowded is a mistake. Like I said, he seems like a nice guy and I’d like him to figure that out for himself. I’d just introduce him to Henry. It would be good to see a little dog hair and slobber on Barack’s slacks. Henry is a non-hypo-allergenic dog so there is no chance Barack would want to take him to the White House, but Henry knows a lot that the president needs to know. He has seen it from ground level.
When Henry puts his paws into the Presidents lap I would do one small, weird thing: I’d ask the President to smell his paws. I wouldn’t tell him that what he smelled was a primal trace of those miles and miles of grasslands. I wouldn’t even try to tell him what it was like when Henry and I went grouse hinting after I voted for him. I wouldn’t press the fact that he had landed in a place where animals and humans conversed. That would be a little too much for a first meeting.
But maybe I could get Barack Obama to lay his elegant hands on Henry’s sweet, silky head, look into the soft brown eyes, and consider something he might never have thought of before. Maybe he’d come away knowing a little more about my life and a little more about the real, bed-rock of America and indeed the world. Maybe it would make him curious and a year or so into his presidency, when he found himself board stiff in a meeting of powerful people, he’d suddenly look at them as they prattled on about GNP, subsidy caps, bail outs, and balancing world trade and feel something unexpected. Maybe he’d have to repress a smile as a stray thought came to him, “These silly bastards have never seen the Cheyenne River,” he might think.
I really don’t think Barack Obama knows much about what’s important in my life. But he’s a smart guy and capable of sorting the real stuff from sound and fury. If I had a couple hours with him on our deck that overlooks the Cheyenne River it would not surprise me if some evening, a couple years into his first term, to get a call from Washington. I’d answer the phone and it would not be the President’s secretary because Barack would not want anyone to know what he’d been thinking, that his curiosity had finally gotten the best of him. It would be the man himself, and in his beautiful baritone voice he would say,
“Dan?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Let me speak to Henry.”
Comments 23
Like this very much, Dan.
I like your positive thoughts, and I myself would like to know the wisdom of Henry!! Love reading your blog.
Dan, I loved this writing. I voted for Obama too. I think the president elect would be a much more educated president if he visted Cheyenne River. He could then govern better with a clear mind on what life is really about. What our ancestors were about of which he speaks of. Keep up the good work.
Hi,
Thanks for this website and Wild Idea Buffalo Co. I just want to tell you about an amazing book I read this weekend “A Language Older Than Words” and I wanted to send a copy to President Elect Obama just to make sure he knows how nature; being in it, observing and its preservation is essential to our well being. This book is amazing, poignant and compelling. Alot of discussion about multinationals/conglomerates ruining the earth. But, your idea is better, he needs to be there, sittin’on the porch. Just so you know, I found your web site after reading “Buffalo For The Broken Heart, after reading “Grassland” by Richard Manning. And so it goes……….Thanks for all you do by bringing buffalo back to the plains. I get tearful whenever I read your newsletters. I’m stuck in Phoenix and dream about the mountains and rivers. And the buffalo.
Barb Rice
I like the way you think!
The spirit of which you speak is moving through america,and for those who could see, it was present in Grant Park on election eve.
Dan, we shall see what we shall see! Your thinking,writing and contributions to the American plains and culture are part of our National Treasure, the human kind.We all need to do our parts, work and pray they are preserved. I only hope Obama appoints you Secy of the Interior! BTW Where’s more of that book on the back burner??….I believe you left off with the Fathers leaving for the winter??
It might do the City-boy President Elect and the Country the world of good to spend some time on your ranch. And after a year in office, heaven knows the man could use the peace. Who knows he might even change his view about guns. He is a bright man and a good talker but his views are city-bred and born. Some time on a ranch would be good. Thanks for your writing.
Perfect! Thanks, Bill
Glad to hear you voted for Obama. As always, I enjoy your writing. Keep it up. Thanks
Dear Dan, Please, please send President-elect Obama a copy of Buffalo for the Broken Heart. Perhaps he’ll share it with the White House chef, and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will taste the prairie and appreciate what Henry knows.
This waas really awesome. I would also like to invite him to my school and the the west end of the Cheyenne River Reservation on the day after your evening with him on your deck.
Dan, not only are you so wise, but you can express it to us so that we also can be wise.I wish our president elect could pay attention to your country, the heartland, but am afraid he’s too mired down in “big” concerns: the economy, the wars, medical coverage, etc. We need a candidate from “out west”. Let’s work on it!
Dan, having sat on your deck (albeit with 28 high schoolers) eating a little buffalo, I can’t think of a better way for President-Elect Obama to gain some perspective. Thanks for sharing this here, and thanks again for a great afternoon this past summer there.
With tears on my cheeks, I reply. I hope this piece reaches Obama’s eyes. I believe he has the heart of a person who will accept your invitation to visit your heartland when he can.
nice piece of work Dan. I had the same thoughts as I took the deer of the year the day after voting for our newest buffalo soldier. If we could just talk to him. maybe your friend Tom D. could make it happen. I got 30 cents a pound for a bred heifer last week, things are really looking up around here.
I am sure that Barack Obama would sit quietly on your deck and “get it”. I have put my faith in that.
Dick Cheney spent countless hours on the Great Plains and never “got it”. That makes all the difference!
Excellent musings. . .
Wonderful read, thank you. LOVE Henry.
Come back to St. Helena one of these days…and bring the buffalo meat and your fascinating stories. You will remember that we had some pretty beautiful views here too!
Calling from the Bavarian Alps. May I speak to Henry?
I have had my head in the sand (or some other dark place) for a few weeks. It just came to my attentin that folks have been responding to my last monthly musing and that the atmosphere of even the Cheyenne River botton is getting bloggy. This is all new to me and I’m not sure if it’s good or bad but I thought I might see if there really is someone out there.
Dan, it’s been a long time since our paths crossed. Fee Jacobsen from Pierre just forwarded my some info on your buffalo meat, which led me to your blog, and this article on Obama and more importantly, to the pad-scent of Henry’s paws. You and I scent the world with word tracks; Henry’s mark on the world is a bit more organic. You get to know a dog a little better when you know him as the earth does, just like getting to know a horse a little better by the smell of buffalo grass on his breath. But what I really wanted to write to you about was basketball. I don’t play it. Never have. I,too, would much rather be hiking the deer trails than pounding the court. I never understood the draw of basketball until I saw it through the tribal eyes of my Cherokee partner, John Gritts. He plays in an “old man” league with his friends Rick Williams (Oglala Lakota) and Rick Waters (Kiowa/Cherokee). It’s a Rez thing. It’s about strength in numbers and a common goal and the immediacy of community. John knows he’s an urban Indian but he’s getting to feel at home in the mountain community where we live, where I was raised as a little girl. He loves the Black Hills too, where he raised his sons, and where I raised my children (on a small ranch not so far from you). John’s sons play basketball but they’re also studying forestry at Salish-Kootenai, a tribal college in Polson, Montana.
I wish Barrack were out hiking the woods in between meetings with advisors. I, too, want him to understand the issues affecting the landscapes we love, and why they’re important to the American consciousness. I want him to understand why my daughter is studying the relationship between range and ungulate and how that is tied to our spirituality and survival, and even to the allergies that more than half of America’s children now suffer from.
Maybe you can invite Barrack to use your place as a retreat, kind of like Camp David. It could be Camp Wild Idea. You could serve him a good slab of bison, and let him chew on the world’s problems for a few quiet moments while Henry napped at his feet. Maybe you could even plant a few wild ideas that would take root.
Meantime, thanks for sending thoughtful these great missives out into the world. You cut a good trail.
Page Lambert http://www.pagelambert.blogspot.com
A beautiful piece,
How do you feel about him, Today?
My vision is not what it used to be
and have noticed that I say what, repeatedly; Howsomever, I can still smell the prairie.