HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
FEBRUARY 2013
77
INTO THEWILD
Opposite, Sheep
Mountain Table, located where the
North and South units of Badlands
National Park meet; above, Red Shirt
Table Overlook, in the South Unit;
left, a Badlands bison and coyote
AN ELECTRICAL STORM
is brewing as Trudy Ecoffey and I barrel across the
short-grass prairie of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I expected a
rough ride—in addition to being hard country generally, some of this land once
served as a bombing range and is to this day li ered with unexploded ordnance—
but Ecoffey, a wildlife biologist with the Oglala Lakota tribe, failed to warn me
about our cargo. Which stinks like you can’t imagine. When I look to her uncom-
prehendingly, with pleading eyes,
she apologizes. “I didn’t think about
that last night. I had to put the stink
sticks in the vehicle with us.”
Stink sticks, Ecoffey tells me as I
thrust my head out the passenger-
side window and gasp for air, are
wooden stakes dipped in a vile
concoction that a ract swi foxes
