Dear Little Missouri State Park,

Every year that I see you, somehow feels like it has only been a few days and a lifetime all at once. My most formative moments have taken place up and down your switchback trails and between your narrow ledges. As I have adapted through adolescence, college, marriage and now parenthood. You too have been forced to adapt to droughts, floods, tornados, oil drilling and the steady erosion of time. You change your paths to keep up with the changes, but your integrity and character has thankfully suffered little for it. You are still the place that I look forward to every year. Your lush green plateaus juxtaposed against the striped dusty layers of the badlands. The winding trails that go deep into the forested valleys that offer cool shade on a rough horseback ride, but still terrify me because I am one bad step away from a broken bone. A person can watch the people ahead of them appear as though they are dropping off the face of the planet. Nothing gets my heart to race faster. And yet, nothing can calm down faster than watching a sunset over your hills and make me feel at complete peace.

I’ve tried, but I can’t think of only one story that defines you to me. There’s the time I almost got bit by a rattler. It was coiled just a few inches behind my left foot in the tall grass. I told myself I wasn’t going to move, but then I decided to sprint up a hill to get away. But that story is such a small part of my time there it barely warrants an honorable mention. I can recall several nights of staying up way past park curfew to do stargazing or laugh and tell stories around the campfires, much to the chagrin of the park rangers but that just makes me sound irresponsible or disrespectful and I have the utmost respect for the camp and those who take care of it. There’s the time I went on a trail ride when I was seven and I got split up from my brother who was supposed to be responsible for me. The group split up into two and my horse went one direction and my brother went the other. It was a bigger deal for my parents who were pretty concerned since it was my first solo ride, but truth be told, the horse I was riding should’ve been named “Ol’ Reliable”. I was in good hands(or rather, hooves) that day. Between several galloping adventures and witnessing daredevil stunts, and a handful of close calls with spooked horses or horses dropping dead of heart attacks on the trails, there’s enough reason to have a healthy respect for what can happen out there in the badlands of North Dakota. But none of those reasons prevent me from going or wanting to go back year after year.

Your lack of cell service and wi-fi forces me to take in all of the sights, sounds and smells whether I want to or not. And I am ultimately better for it, even if your vault toilets make me want to puke sometimes. I have faced my greatest fears while being your captive audience, but I have also laughed the hardest I ever have in my life, and I have come away with the greatest stories of love and redemption this side of heaven. My family who gathers there every July are a love letter to me from God, and the savagely beautiful badlands are the envelope that letter is carried in. Delivered at times through sweat and tears yet received with gratitude all the same. I wouldn’t change any of it, yet you have definitely changed me, and I thank you for it.

Sincerely,
Amy Holmquist

p.s- except the rattlesnakes, I would change those, I hate snakes.