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Postcard from Thunder Hawk, South Dakota |
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6/1/04 from Christina Barr
 Thunder Hawk, South Dakota This morning I drove south towards Elizabeth and S.J. Ebert's place in Thunder Hawk, SD. I passed several prairie dog colonies - golden, small-eared animals popping up and down and running for holes as I drove past. I stopped and watched for a while as they wrestled with curiosity and fear, and then drove into South Dakota through the North Dakota grasslands. This is a land without edges, everything is smoothed over and covered with furred greenery.
 I arrived at Elizabeth's house late this morning and we spent a few hours doing an interview, talking about her poetry and her memories about the early days of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Elizabeth is strong and clear about her purpose as a poet. She is prairie steady.
When we finished our interview Elizabeth and S.J. took me out onto the prairie around their ranch. They needed to vote in their local elections and they wanted to show me where they lived. Their ranch is a conglomeration of old homesteading sections that were once divided into 160 acre allotments.
 Around the turn of the century all of the allotments were settled by families, and then many were later abandoned during the Depression. The remains of left behind homesteads dot the grassy fields, and bright red rock roads divide the landscape into tidy square mile sections. As we drove Elizabeth told me about the falling down one-room schoolhouses and the people who used to live in the bare board claim shanties with missing windows and caved in roofs.
It was a joy to be given a tour of the history and community surrounding Lemmon, SD, by Elizabeth and S.J., who have generations of memory lodged in their experiences here. |
