Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land by Dan O’Brien

Just as the Great Plains is sometimes perceived in terms of absence—no trees, no mountains, no bright, bustling cities—Dan O’Brien’s new book is at first striking for what it is not: Wild Idea is not a call to arms for corporate and consumer responsibility, a how-to manual for starting a buffalo ranch, or a case study on landscape restoration. It is not a rousing collection of cowboy-life anecdotes, a romantic celebration of the prairie aesthetic, and definitely not an academic inquiry into socioeconomic and demographic trends in South Dakota. While it does have elements of each of those, it is, at heart (and with heart), a memoir—a frank, moving recounting of the perennial hopes, fears, challenges, disappointments, and joys O’Brien and his family and friends face while trying to live and live with purpose “in a Difficult Land.”

“Difficult Land”—the harsh, beautiful mixed-grass prairie of western South Dakota—is both backdrop to and driving force behind the book. Readers of O’Brien’s earlier work, particularly Buffalo for the Broken Heart, will be familiar with his efforts to heal historically mismanaged grasslands by bringing back the keystone species, bison. In Wild Idea, he realizes that his plan to establish an ecologically sustainable and economically successful buffalo ranch must expand in acreage, involvement, and investment in order to “equal the scope of the landscape” (33). Beyond the challenges of growing a business (most of which are dealt with by O’Brien’s partner, Jill) and the hard and sometimes dangerous work of operating a sizeable ranch, O’Brien also struggles with personal matters—caring for his friend Erney after a stroke; figuring out how to help raise Jill’s daughter, Jilian; reconciling his long-term, large-scale vision for healthy grasslands with more immediate financial concerns. As the human stories unfurl, the prairie is ever underfoot and overhead, swirling with snowstorms, withering with drought, and breathing with buffalo herds that “seem to disappear into [its] folds” (262).

O’Brien’s writing is rich with detail, humor, and insight. He is especially gifted at characterizing people in just a few lines of description and dialogue. (In fact, many ancillary characters are introduced with more vivacity than central figures.) He is even more skilled at evoking the feeling of being out on the land—standing on a riverbank as “hundreds of buffalo slipped into the icy water and moved across as if they had been swimming frigid rivers every day of their lives” (170) and driving home through a night in which “the road ditches were iridescent white with snow and the sky was as black as a falcon’s eye” (164). While the narrative sometimes skips confusingly around in time and space, that makes it feel more authentic—snippets of life, vividly remembered, gradually build into a larger story.

Writers interested in the art of creative nonfiction can learn from this book, as can Great Plains scholars studying sense of place, sustainable agriculture, and/or manifestations of Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic. More broadly, anyone who wants to understand the real stories behind ecological restoration, spend time with South Dakotans who define “success” as “the ability to move from one disappointment to the next without losing your enthusiasm” (242), and/or savor a memoir that brims with fierce, subtle joy will want to read Wild Idea. Then read it again, to appreciate all of the elements—the call to arms; the case study; the hardship, hard work, and celebration of contemporary life on the Great Plains.