Solitude of Thunder Basin NG
“Pushing cows ain’t easy like the movies said” from Garth Brooks’ songThe first thing is the topography of Thunder Basin National Grassland. It has a rolling landscape with huge grass covered swells and an occasional cluster of trees, mainly cottonwoods. The Black Hills NF is almost all vertical with pines and spruce growing out of the most impractical places. You can hear the wind coming in the Black Hills but on the grassland it is so quiet you can hear cars and trucks miles away and long before you see them. (One morning I thought I heard the Man-on-the-moon sneeze, it was that quiet!)
Thunder Basin is a grassland (actually composed of “mixed short grasses”) so you expect to see grass but there is so much and so tall. The cows could hide in it. Wonder if that’s why the cattle we saw was either black or chestnut brown – so the rancher/cowboy could see them in the tall golden grass.
Management of the grasslands is much younger than management of the forests and I think they have used “lessons learned” from the forest to the grasslands. The Black Hills National Forest was original designated a “timber reserve” early in the 20th century. National grasslands were acquired after the Dust Bowl days from farmers and ranchers who couldn’t survive on the damaged land. Now those same lands are healthy and productive, as is evident from the lush vegetation and devise ways the land is being used.
The Black Hills National Forest enjoys tons visitors from across the country and the world. Thunder Basin National Grasslands, like most grasslands, isn’t well-known to most people beyond the grasslands borders and offers campers much of what a disperse camper might want in a national forest, just without as many trees and far fewer visitors.
