Bullion Butte Hike: Twice in Six Days

By Beckie Crook Walby

I recently had the pleasure of scaling the grandeur of Bullion Butte twice in six days.

First, with a wonderful group of BCA members, whose passion for western North Dakota compares to my own. The second was at the request of my twenty-seven-year-old son and some of his compadres. None of them had climbed Bullion but had been eager to do so for some time.

It was a perfect late spring day. We have had some blessed rain, the grass was long and green, prairie wildflowers everywhere, and only two ticks all day. As anyone that spends time in the outdoors in the spring knows, that is a victory! The youngest in our group was only eighteen months. She was bound and determined to walk with us and only rode in her backpack when the going got steep from time to time.

It was a day of simple pleasures. To watch a toddler giggle and be joyful from blowing dandelion fluff in the North Dakota wind. To millennials take time out from their busy lives to appreciate the expansive beauty of the Badlands. A young father encouraging his tiny daughter to “look at this amazing place baby girl, isn’t it beautiful!” There is nothing better in this crazy time we are living in now.

At the end of our day, I expressed to them the importance of their generation to take on the challenge of protecting these North Dakota places from those that wish to exploit them. We have so little left and if they want to continue to bring their children and future generations here, they need to have a voice.

My favorite part of the trip may have been at our cars when my future daughter-in-law (a Dickinson native) thanked me with a hug and confessed how much she had been needing a day like this in western North Dakota. We all do. Nature restores our sense of peace, our souls, our equilibrium, and our faith in something bigger than ourselves. I humbly thank you Bullion, for providing for us all we needed that lovely day.