On the windswept prairie of southeast Montana, 35 miles north of the Wyoming line, is a US military cemetery, a well-manicured patch of green standing out from the golden sea of grassland around it. Nearly 5,000 white marble headstones are arranged in perfect rows, marking final resting places of American warriors from conflicts as recent as World War II.
A quarter-mile away are more than 200 other headstones. The markers aren’t carefully arranged, however — they’re scattered across the untended, rolling terrain, as if at random. It’s hard not to notice that 42 of them are clustered on one hillside.
Those stones were set where soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the US Army fell during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which took place on June 25th, 1876 — exactly 150 years ago today.
I visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in August of 2021. I stood on Last Stand Hill and saw the markers honoring not only George Armstrong Custer, but also his two brothers, his brother-in-law and his 18-year-old nephew.
The experience was profoundly humbling. I resisted the temptation to process it from only one perspective — this is a place, an event and a time in American history that rejects simple explanations.
Honestly, no one alive today is capable of coming to a tidy understanding of, as Lakota and Crow still call it, the “Battle of the Greasy Grass.”
I mean, we live in a time when a so-called “magic kingdom” draws over 50 million visitors to Florida every year. Little Bighorn attracts barely 40,000 to the Montana prairie.
If you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Crow Agency and Garryowen, I encourage you to exit Interstate 90 and visit this place. Don’t expect the extravagance of Gettysburg, though — this is a very different kind of site.
Leave your preconceived notions at the gate. Listen to the stories. Feel the wind. You won’t regret it.
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My ritual lopping of limbs and whacking of weeds are tasks carried out with intent. I encourage species that I want to keep and do my best to eradicate what I don’t. At times, I’ll spare otherwise undesirable growth if it helps preserve what pleases me.
I may not be crazy about cultivating sumac, for example, but I’ve allowed a small stand to thrive across the driveway from the cabin. It serves as a sort of natural trellis for a vine that makes me smile every time I see it.
I’ll cut it all back over the winter. The sumac trellis and the purple passionflower vines will return next spring and summer.
I went to war with handful of damnable invasives last year and fought them to a draw. This go-’round, and for the most part, I’m winning — I’ve relegated Chinese bushclover pretty much to the roadside, and the lower level is all but free of pokeweed.
Neither will ever be gone completely, but I’m staying ahead of both so far.
Much more stubborn is the princess tree I cut down last July. In just two years, it had become cartoonishly enormous, so I sawed it off at the ground. While I expected the stump to put out new growth, this season it’s doing so with prehistoric vigor.
I’ve cut it back repeatedly. I did that again yesterday. I know it’ll make no difference.
I’m gonna have to kill it. I’ll try drilling and burning the stump first. Only if that doesn’t work will I resort to pouring salt water into it.
All in all, I’m pleased with how this is turning out. It’s green and it’s vibrant, with blooms everywhere. And I’ve seen more wildlife on the lower level this year than ever before.
Wild. That’s what I intended all along.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable