Crossing Nebraska

Not knowing can be one of the most difficult things we humans ever experience. Whether we’re awaiting the results of a serious medical test, a college acceptance letter, or news of a possible layoff at our place of employment, we’ve likely all experienced some potentially life-changing form of it. And what could be worse than a loved one going missing during a natural disaster or because of possible foul play? Not knowing can be utterly traumatic. Much more innocuous forms of not knowing can be pretty uncomfortable as well. We’ve all been in situations at work, school, or out in the community where we’re expected to have something approximating “expert level” knowledge about whatever it is we happen to be working on. How do you feel when asked a good, pertinent, and perhaps even obvious question to which you do not know the answer? Personally, my gut tightens up just a little bit. I start feeling like a schoolboy once again, sitting uncomfortably as the teacher looks past all the rai...

Bear Butte rises from the prairie north and east of the Black Hills like an island rising out of the ocean. Even at 1,400 feet tall, however, most modern Black Hills visitors will miss it – lying, as it does, away from the “destination ” arteries. Native Americans didn’t miss it, though. For the Cheyenne and Sioux migrating out of the Northeast and the Great Lakes region, respectively, Bear Butte would have been their first glimpse of what the Black Hills had in store. Likewise the Mandan, in the course of their navigation of the Missouri River watershed, would have happened upon Bear Butte due to its close proximity to the Belle Fourche River (Odell, 1942). Bear Butte has long been considered a spiritual place. The Sutaio, an early immigrant tribe related to the Cheyenne, are storied to have received their sacred Buffalo cap from the spirits dwelling inside a cave therein. The Sun Dance, as well, is thought by some to have originated there (Odell, 1942). Story and conjectur...

Poetry doesn’t have to be good to save your life; it just has to be your own. This is a truth that I learned during my turbulent teen years – years during which the only thing keeping me from losing my mind, so to speak, was the fact that I was writing about it! Alright, perhaps I exaggerate just a little bit – we are talking about dreaded adolescence, after all – but it is true that poetry provided meaning for me at a time when I really needed it. You see, I fancied myself something of a rebel poet back then, skipping out of the classes that I didn’t like in order to steal my way down to the darkened high school auditorium – there to sit alone in the yawning silence, plumbing the depths of my being. Sure, I’d started reading about Eastern religions and philosophy by then, but I’d not yet begun to meditate. Poetry was my meditation, and it held me in good stead throughout those turbulent years. I strongly recommend it to anyone grappling with life-changing issues. And it doesn’t even ...