This cool little fella was stuffing his mouth in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. The prairie dog colony was just inside the border of the Badlands Wilderness, a 64,000 acre wilderness area that almost no one knows about. It’s a fascinating land of rolling hills and juniper with bison hidden behind little dips and old skeletal looking tree trunks . It’s quite a strange site when you can see remnants of the American prairie and then cacti popping up out of the ground. As I filmed the prairie dog colony, 40 mph wind gusts came from the west, cooling off the Badlands and giving the feeling of approaching winter. A couple large hawks circled the colony looking for meals. I was all alone, but the prairie dogs had each other, often calling out warning cries because of the circling hawks. I could see how well they communicated, a very close knit unit that did not hesitate to alert others to danger. If this was simply a survival trait rather than an animal caring for another animal, why wouldn’t the prairie dog just hide in its hole rather than alerting the others? I wondered about that, and still do.

People often think of wilderness as snow capped peaks, deep pine forests and rushing mountain rivers. Usually, that is the correct visual placement. However, there exist a few last places of wilderness that used to be – of wilderness that no one expects. The Badlands wilderness is one of those places. I spent the day hiking it, immersed in the beauty of the lost prairie. It felt like home.

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