In Trace of TR -- Dan Aadland -- Sort of Near the Bakken, North Dakota, USA

For folks who enjoy the outdoors and want to learn more about eastern Montana / western North Dakota, this is an absolutely fascinating book: In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey, by Dan Aadland.

I happened to pick up my copy at Books on Broadway in Williston, North Dakota, one of the best bookstores in the US, and certainly the best in this part of the country.

Perhaps as I go along, I will post some tidbits from the book. Here's one:

It's strange how life in the West has changed the connotation of many words. "Pasture," to the easterner, may mean a ten-acre enclosure. Here it means several sections (square miles) of sparse grass of deceptively high nutrition if only it's not abused. Roosevelt the rancher soon learned a fact that John Wesley Powell tried unsuccessfully to shove down the craws of disbelieving easterners: the lifeblood of the West is water, there's never enough of it, and all eastern agricultural truisms must be discarded. It takes vast acreage to sustain cows int his country, but the grass is high in protein, evolved for grazing by bovines and elk, and is sustainable if cared for.

I did not know this about pronghorn:

Antelope, unlike deer, are not nocturnal. They bed down at night like cattle. Across the United States, anywhere deer are abundant (and that's nearly everywhere) automobile collisions with deer are rampant. Drive through territory densely populated with antelope, however, and the sight of any killed in collisions with vehicles is relatively rare by comparison. The difference is that at night, while deer are traveling and feeding and playing chicken with oncoming headlights or, at the last moment, sprinting across the highway in front of a speeding car, antelope are bedded down. Often selecting a slight depression to protect them from the wind, pronghorns will bed in a tight group, sheep-like.

The ninety-six mile trail connecting the north unit with the south unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park:

We loaded our cantle packs with sandwiches and cameras and and prepared for a ride on the Maah Daah Hey Trail. The official National Park Service translation of the trail's Mandan name is "an area that has been or will be around for a long time." The Mandans must have been masters of linguistic economy.

 Perhaps more later. It's a great book and I highly recommend it. Maybe a nice Christmas gift.