Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch

Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch
ISBN-10
0375503250
ISBN-13
9780375503252
Category
Nature / General
Pages
254
Language
English
Published
2001
Publisher
Random House
Author
Dan O'Brien

Description

For twenty years, Dan O'Brien battled drought, overgrazed pastures, and falling cattle prices as he struggled to maintain his cattle ranch, The Broken Heart, nestled at the foot of South Dakota's Black Hills. Having to take stints as an endangered species biologist, English teacher, and handyman to help pay off his accumulating debts, he questioned the logic of this losing enterprise, but never lost his fierce love of the Great Plains. So when a neighboring buffalo rancher invites him to lend a hand at the annual buffalo roundup, O'Brien comes face to face with these mammoth, impressive creatures, and the seeds are planted for converting his own ranch from cattle to buffalo. Starting with thirteen calves, "short-necked, golden balls of wool," O'Brien embarks on a journey that returns buffalo to his land for the first time in more than a century and a half.
In BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART, Dan O'Brien, a writer possessed of "a keen and poetic eye" ("The New York Times Book Review"), ranges freely under the big western sky, bringing the Great Plains to life in clear and vibrant prose. Whether he's describing the grazing pattern of the buffalo (moving quickly from one pasture to another, thereby maintaining the diversity of the grasses), the ancient thrill of watching a falcon hone in on its prey, or the comical spectacle of a buffalo bull wallowing in the mud, O'Brien brings together a novelist's eye for detail with an ecologist's understanding to create an entertaining and enriching narrative.
At once a heartfelt account of his struggles at the Broken Heart, a short history of the buffalo and its near extinction, and an engaging lesson in wildlife ecology, BUFFALO FOR THE BROKENHEART illustrates the power of a dream and how life becomes infinitely richer when we dare to follow one. This is Dan O'Brien's greatest achievement to date, placing him firmly in the canon of other great writers on nature such as Annie Dillard and Peter Matthiessen.

Get the book

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Search the book
eBay.com
eBay.com
Search the book

Other editions

Similar books

  • Miracle Under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America
    Miracle Under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America
    By William K. Stevens

    This compelling story of heroism and tenacious human spirit— the first book to look at this momentous new movement—brings alive one of its most astonishing victories.

  • Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, and Natural Resources
    Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, and Natural Resources
    By John Tillman Lyle

    The designer was Major John Wesley Powell , a man Any number of levels of scale might emerge in the future , whom one does not usually think of as a shaper of landscapes but for the present , all we can do is group the possible or even ...

  • A Traveler's Guide to 116 Michigan Lighthouses
    A Traveler's Guide to 116 Michigan Lighthouses
    By Laurie Penrose

    The lighthouse is tucked snugly between the channel on the north , the nearby Lake Michigan shore on the west , and towering hills on the south . An expansive , shade - dappled lawn sprawls to a wood fence that serves as a divider ...

  • African American Firsts in Science & Technology
    African American Firsts in Science & Technology
    By Raymond B. Webster

    ... George W. 318 Neal , Lonnie G. 126 , 312 Nickerson , William J. 11 Nokes , Clarence 121 Page , Lionel F. 356 ... Wanda Anne A. 150 Small , Isadore , III 135 Smart , Brinay 106 Smith , Jonathan S. , II 312 Smith , Morris Leslie 312 ...

  • The Guinness Guide to Nature in Danger
    The Guinness Guide to Nature in Danger
    By Noel Simon

    SCHALLER , George B. ( 1972 ) The Serengeti Lion : a Study of Predator - Prey Relationships . University of Chicago Press , Chicago & London . SCHALLER , George B. ( 1973 ) Serengeti : a Kingdom of Predators . Collins , London .

  • The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures
    The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures
    By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jean Ferguson Carr, Alfred Riggs Ferguson

    Records the creative and intellectual development of Emerson as a man of letters through a collection of his writings

  • The Clean Water Act 20 Years Later
    The Clean Water Act 20 Years Later
    By Robert W. Adler, Jessica C. Landman, Diane M. Cameron

    Robert W. Adler, Jessica C. Landman, Diane M. Cameron. 32 33 35 37 39 41 42 43 45 47 48 Chesapeake Executive Council, The Chesapeake Bay... A Progress Report 1990–1991 (1991), 5, 12. Tom Horton and William M. Eichbaum, Turning the Tide, ...

  • Wild and Scenic Rivers of America
    Wild and Scenic Rivers of America
    By Tim Palmer

    A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension-the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and...

  • An Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States: Ophioglossaceae to Aristolochiaceae, ferns to birthworts
    An Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States: Ophioglossaceae to Aristolochiaceae, ferns to birthworts
    By Le Roy Abrams, Roxana Stinchfield Ferris

    Type locality : Duffield's Ranch , Sierra Nevada , California . 2 음 6. Phoradendron coloradense Trel . Colorado Desert Mistletoe . Fig . 1293 . Phoradendron coloradense Trel . Monogr . Phora . dendron 39. 1916 .

  • 可不可以不變老？: 喚醒長壽基因的科學革命
    可不可以不變老？: 喚醒長壽基因的科學革命
    By 辛克萊David A. Sinclair, 拉普蘭提Matthew D. LaPlante

    (不過,某些情況下,有人可能會因為太過激進而丟了老命,正如我的匈牙利劇作家曾祖父維特茲〔Miklós Vitéz〕一樣,他在新婚之夜太努力想向小自己四十五歲的新娘證明自己。)多子多孫與短命的關係如果我們的基因不想死,那為何人類無法長生不老?