If, like some of us, you happen to be fishtailing at high speeds along the graded dirt roads that thread through the private-public checkerboard quilt that is this grassland as dusk descends on another summer day, you'll notice a few things.
As the sun slants down it enlightens all the many shades of greens and golds in this savanna that seems to roll unending in all directions. Without all that harsh light and interminable heat to distract you, you'll begin to notice textures. The folds and grooves and water cuts, the undulating rhythm of hip-high grasses dancing in the winds. All of a sudden those fine dust clouds rising from your tires and those of the trucks that pass at equally high speeds with a hearty wave, are no longer brown, but pink, as the sky morphs from a faded baby blue to lavender. Then it's as if the sun is descending into a spectacular pool of hot pink light.
If you've managed to negotiate these peculiar roads just so, next you'll come upon the two towering blond, sandstone towers that are the historic and majestic Pawnee Buttes. You'll stop among the herds of cattle that wander free, and listen to the rusted water mill spin and bang its tail, and if you're lucky glimpse a white-tailed antelope bounding through the fields as the wind pours free and fast. This is the glory of the Pawnee National Grasslands, the saving grace of the entire northeastern plains.
It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to turn these cattle into bison in your mind's eye, and to envision the glint of a wolf's eye in the midnight savanna and the rolling exhale of a prairie fire somewhere in the war-dancing, earth medicine American past.
Sites at the campground cost from $10 to $14.
