Issuu

Ashley Beguin

Ponder Magazine is printed bi-annually, produced by students at Black Hills State University and is distributed free of charge all over South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. © 2024 Ponder Magazine . All rights reserved. Content in this magazine should not be copied in any way without written permission from the publisher. Content in articles, editorial material, and advertisements are not necessarily endorsed by Ponder Magazine or Black Hills State University

Cover Image by Ashley Beguin

Editor in Chief

Ashley Beguin

Managing editor

Nathan Feller

Lead Graphic Designer

Noah Westergaard

Graphic Designers

Ashley Beguin

Hunter Davis

Chief Photographer

Alec Butterfield

Photographers

Ashley Beguin

Caleb Minor

Taylor SanFilippo

Carly Smith

Noah Westergaard

Artists

DJ Little Bull

Rae Hanzlik

Annalina Scalise

Journalists

Alec Butterfield

Austin Graft

Taylor SanFilippo

Julia Wilson

Ad Sales Manager

Tia Epley

Advisers

Justin Bergh, PhD

Skott Chandler, MFA

Allen Morris, MFA

Desy Schoenewies, MFA

Erin Sedra, MFA

Correspondence

BHSU Media

1200 University St. Unit 9003 Spearfish, SD 57799

Advertising Inquiries

Email us Ponder@BHSU.edu

“I feel if you want to be successful, whatever it is, you have to become a subject matter expert,” said Chris Hanmer, a pastry chef and co-owner of CH Patisserie. “You have to live it, breathe it, work it, and then start it.”

Success in any field requires a deep commitment to mastering what you do. To truly excel, you must immerse yourself fully— living, breathing, and working tirelessly. This dedication involves more than surface-level knowledge; it’s about understanding every nuance and detail of your career and wanting to build something you can be proud of. Recognizing an opportunity clearly and being able to successfully pursue it is truly something special.

Twelve years ago, downtown Sioux Falls was an incredibly different place than it is today. There was a need for more vibrant retail and businesses, which led the town to initiate an incubator program aimed at revitalizing the downtown area and attracting more businesses to the vacant buildings.

In the past twelve years, Phillips Avenue has undergone significant transformation, with multimillion-dollar projects now populating the area, reflecting a resurgence in development and community engagement. Chris and Caryn Hanmer experienced this firsthand as they, too, put their heart and faith into building their most recent business in downtown Sioux Falls.

The Hanmers are the proud and dedicated owners behind CH Patisserie. The couple are not just passionate entrepreneurs, but also experts in their field. Their distinct yet complementary backgrounds have shaped their culinary journey as a team, instilling a sense of confidence in their business acumen.

Caryn is a native of Sioux Falls and she spent most of her early years in the area before moving to Las Vegas in her twenties, where she built a successful career in the salon industry. Chris, on the other hand, comes from Southern California, where his culinary career started and led him to the Las Vegas area. He spent most of his time in Las Vegas working in hotels before he took on the role of Assistant Pastry Chef at the prestigious Bellagio Hotel.

Being in such a fast-paced area that was recognized for quality food allowed the two to flourish through the city’s culinary offerings. It also gave them the space to engage in the local community by starting their own school and consulting business focused on the culinary arts.

Along with much of the practical knowledge he has accumulated throughout his career, Chef Chris has been awarded a gold medal at the World Pastry Team Championship – the youngest American to do so at the age of 26. He has also been recognized as one of America’s Top-10 Pastry Chefs, competed in several Food Network challenges and claimed the title of “Top Chef” on Season 2 of Bravo’s Top Chef: Just Desserts.

Not only was Las Vegas an enterprising place to begin their careers, but it was also where they first met, started their relationship and soon decided to get married before they had their first daughter.

“Our real form of entertainment, when we met and were dating and got married, was dining, you know, all of our friends were basically chefs or in the hair industry, kind of creative people,” Chris said. “All of our expendable income went to dining out in Vegas, and at that time, it was a really golden time in Vegas.”

After spending nearly a decade immersing themselves in the vibrant dining scene and participating in Vegas’s distinctive and growing culture, they wanted to do something different.

“We really just wanted to start making things again and to be involved, and we both had a heart for service, you know, and we were both in the people business in different ways,” Chris said.

This, in turn, pushed them to return to Sioux Falls, where they used their rich and formative experiences in Las Vegas to their advantage. The decision to move was driven by a desire to create something unique in a city that, at the time, lacked high-quality patisserie options. They recognized that the area was undergoing a considerable change, providing them with the perfect opportunity to introduce their vision of a quality patisserie to the community.

“When people ask, kind of, ‘Why Sioux Falls?’ We could be anywhere in the country. We want to be here,” Chris said.

CH Patisserie opened its doors in May 2013, and it took a combination of drive and a strong sense of work ethic to bring the business to the point it is at today. This is evident in their dedication to the craft of pastry making and their commitment to the community. Their strong passion for service, stemming from their backgrounds in Las Vegas, has given them an approach to business rooted in a desire to create memorable customer experiences. This is a notable reflection of the two entrepreneurs, and highlights the quality of their products and the atmosphere of their patisserie.

“The community has really loved us, and that’s the beautiful thing about Sioux Falls... they just rally around you,” Caryn said. “They support you, especially if they like it.”

This shows that little things make a monumental difference— with customers and within the business itself. This mentality lends itself to customer satisfaction, while highlighting the importance of maintaining steady financial growth within the food industry.

“When Covid first started, we had our guests coming in and literally buying six macarons and leaving one-hundred-dollar tips, looking us in the eyes and thanking us for being here,” Chris said.

They had very little money when they first opened their shop, so being financially savvy was the only way the Hanmers could allow themselves to succeed and bring their vision to life. Winning “Top Chef” was one of the significant contributors to getting things started, but most of that money went to taxes and medical bills for their daughter at the time.

“The scariest thing about that is that when you get an SBA loan, you use your money first,” Chris said. “You drain your bank account, and then the loan kicks in. Not many people realize that you literally have to write that last check, so we had to be really creative.”

All of the original furniture for the patisserie was bought from IKEA, and on the day of the opening, they were still building the chairs. The Hanmers started with what they needed—nothing too fancy or expensive.

“We had one small oven, used display cases and we got some fun wallpaper…that was our splurge, to put wallpaper on a wall,” Caryn said.

They did everything they could to keep things running and push improvement where they needed it, including late nights reviewing the budget to make sure they knew exactly where every dollar was going. Having a life partner to do these things with made it possible for the Hanmers to build the blooming business that is visible today. With Caryn’s financial knowledge, she was able to make sure they were profitable from day one.

With their experience in the industry, combined with what they were learning with the patisserie, they knew immediately that staying small and only working with what you need when you absolutely have to have it was the most efficient way to maintain profits.

“We were so lean with spending, and we still are,” Chris said. “I think that’s a testament to Paul. We get to a point where we’re practically bashing our heads against the ceiling before we’ll spend that money, and then we grow again. I think that is something really important with entrepreneurship and business ownership; some people overextend on that part of it.”

As they built their business, one of the key figures who supported their journey was Paul Edwards, the owner of Chef Rubber, a supplier of culinary products. Chris met Paul early in his career, and their relationship provided instrumental encouragement and resources, helping to solidify their business’s growth.

Without this solid foundation, they might not have had the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with the community in Sioux Falls. A combination of strategic planning, community engagement, aesthetic considerations and a strong work ethic allowed the business to flourish. That initial success allowed the Hanmers to train their team on the intricacies of French pastries while also imparting the importance of building connections with the people in the community.

While the patisserie business continues to grow, their pastries have maintained the level of quality CH Patisserie became known for. Without a second thought, Chris was sure that one of their top selling items are its French macarons, which are meringue-based almond cookies where the flavor comes from the fillings.

“Salted caramel and vanilla bean are our two best sellers, and everything else is a close third,” Chris said. “We do 12 flavors every day, and one of those flavors cycles every month. I was thinking over the years we’ve done close to a-hundred-plus flavors of the month if we add it all up.”

Chris never anticipated macarons being their best seller, but it made sense to him because there are many trends in food, and at this level of pastry, certain things are timeless and have become generational in France.

“They are not a trend like you see with the big cookies or cupcakes that cycle in and out throughout the years,” Chris said. “Macarons

are an actual desire of people throughout the world—they are just coming to new locations. They’re always going to be popular because it’s ingrained in a culture, you know, a long-standing culture.”

It really adds to the other delightful options on the patisserie’s menu. A number of specialties drinks and viennoiserie, which include croissants, brioche and beignet, are also among their top selling items.

With everything put into building a successful and impactful business, CH Patisserie is a place where people can come and enjoy themselves. It is a space that is comforting, simple and easy. The design and vibe of the space are timeless, which lends itself to the timeless nature of the pastries produced at the patisserie.

“We wanted a warm, relaxed ambiance, and when we talk to just guests that know us, or we come to know, they talk about how the feeling is one of the number one things they love about the space,” Caryn said.

When it comes down to it, CH represents the entire Hanmer family—Chris, Caryn, and their two daughters. It’s not just a business; it’s a family endeavor where everyone is involved, from working at the farmers market to supporting the patisserie’s daily operations. The goal is to have something that can make both the community and themselves proud.

Chris and Caryn’s work ethic has been central to their journey, and their daughters have grown up witnessing their parents’ dedication. From long hours in the kitchen to fostering a sense of responsibility and hard work, the patisserie has provided a neverending supply of learning experiences.

When asked if there was anything special about their business or their way of doing things, their answer was quite simple.

“At the heart of everything is our faith in God and Jesus,” Chris said. “It has carried us through countless challenges, including difficult moments with our daughter. Every major decision we’ve made, from moving here to navigating life’s hurdles, has been guided by prayer and trust in God’s plan.”

Sparked by inspiration, curiosity and hope, Ma Cualli is now almost entirely staffed by the Solorios’ immediate and extended family.

“I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” said Jose Herrera, a partial owner and son-in-law of the Solorio’s. “My only hesitation was my parents back home in New Mexico. Other than that, I had to think of my wife and my little boy, and what would be the best for our future. When [the Solorio’s] told me [to come with them], I was okay with it and it was a risk I was willing to take. Either it goes good or it goes bad. If it goes good, great. If it goes bad, then I could always just go back to what I was doing.”

Herrera wasn’t the only one who came from a job that required a change in perspective.

“Most of our staff came from a bunch of different jobs,” Herrera said. “Some were at Dairy Queens, others were doing manual labor and some were in office jobs. They came from everywhere to make this happen. It’s been cool to watch them learn how to work in a restaurant.”

And learn how to work in a restaurant they did. Ma Cualli takes traditional Mexican food to another level of class and comfort. Every single staff member inside the restaurant knew exactly what to do and how they should be doing it. The servers were friendly and every single chair, table, counter and tile in the restaurant was dust-free and spotlessly clean. And the food was absolutely incredible.

“All of our employees catch on really fast,” Herrera said. “They struggle just like when anyone starts a new job, but we try our best to make sure that they can do things well. You can see that improvement, in serving, cooking, everything. We are also big on cleaning… We want [guests] to come into a clean environment, and that starts with us and our employees.”

To inspire this type of commitment in employees, such a degree of motivation and determination takes a lot of work, but the management team at Ma Cualli takes a casual approach and brings their family element into their methods.

“We motivate our employees by giving them responsibility,” Solorio said. “We tell them, ‘You are old enough. You guys know better than to not do things that need to be done. Later, years from now, you’ll have to do it by yourself, but now, if you need anything, any help, we will be there for you.’”

When it comes to accuracy, the Ma Cualli team has streamlined the learning process for that as well.

“We give our new staff a certain amount of time to learn our drinks and food,” said Solorio. “This was [Jose’s] first time serving in his life, so he knows exactly how long it should take for a server to learn these things. If they haven’t learned by that time, we try to make sure to work with them, or if they make a mistake, make sure they’re okay. [We] ask them what’s going on and if they’re okay. We watch them on everything, every plate, every drink to make sure that everyone is one-hundred percent sure on what they’re taking out. If they’re not sure, they can ask anyone around them. We use a lot of teamwork.”

Their teamwork and work ethic has taken them far, but the Ma Cualli team has another strong factor that motivates them to continue to produce the quality product and experience everyone that walks into their restaurant can see: faith.

“Behind everything is eighteen years of ups and downs,” Solorio said. “But we said that we were going to put it in God’s hands for this dream to go on. To decide if [the restaurant] is going to be a blessing for us; a blessing for our family. If it’s not going to be a blessing for us, then that’s God’s decision to close those doors… But that doesn’t seem like the case and we try to let the kids know that too.”

This faith and commitment to long-lasting, generational quality has led the Ma Cualli team to take every step they can to ensure everything is as great as it possibly can be.

“One thing that we do is we taste everything,” Solorio said. “If there’s something that’s not as good as it could be, we change it… [For example,] our corn chips. We’ve gone through so many suppliers. Everything can impact the way it tastes, kind of like tequila. The soil, the water, the weather. We finally found the ones we like, but if we find some that we like better one day, it would be a quick decision to make sure that we are serving those ones instead.”

The Solorio’s seem to have made the correct decision for their restaurant’s location.

“The one thing I want to make sure everyone knows is that we are so grateful for the Rapid City community,” Solorio said. “We couldn’t have done it if they weren’t coming in and being so welcoming to us. We really appreciate them and what they’ve done for Ma Cualli.”

The night began with a grand scene. An entire table filled with steaming entrees and colorful drinks, as well as the wonderful Nora making Ma Cualli’s signature table-side guacamole.

The first dish I tried was the pork tamal and cheese chile relleno. The chile relleno was made with one of the largest poblano peppers I have seen in my life, roasted to a perfect point that brought out the sweetness of the flesh. It was filled with the soft, savory, meltin-your-mouth egg batter that chile relleno is famous for and topped with a generous helping of melted cheese along with a slightly spicy red sauce poured along the length of the pepper. The pork tamal was well seasoned and had a perfect pork-to-masa ratio that didn’t leave the meat or the masa dry.

The grilled chicken salad was served with avocado, lettuce, cheese and house-made pico de gallo. Our next dish was the ownerrecommended Ma Cualli Special. This dish featured shrimp and chicken tossed with a poblano crema and cheese, along with an assortment of squash, both zucchini and yellow squash. These proteins and vegetables were served with avocado and rice.

The carne asada was served on a lone plate, with an accompanying side of rice, beans and crema. It was tender, so tender it almost didn’t require a knife. It was beautifully seasoned, with cumin being the main spice I could pick up. Many of our guests were fighting over who got the bigger slice of the meat.

The taco flight was a tray filled with nine different, delicious tacos. They featured three sets of Ma Cualli’s individual shrimp, walleye and rib-eye tacos. The walleye and shrimp were incredibly fresh tasting and were accompanied by a sweet and spicy chipotle crema, along with cabbage and curtido, a cabbage relish.

The cazuela was a sight to behold with a steaming bowl filled to the brim with skirt steak, chicken, pork chop, chorizo, queso asadero, onion, poblano peppers, chiles toreados (roasted peppers) and roasted nopales (cactus). All of these were swimming in a flavorful frijoles charros, a soup commonly served with ample amounts of proteins and traditional Mexican spices.

Along with the unmatchable atmosphere and customer service, Ma Cualli cannot be beat in my book. The quality and taste of their dishes matches that and allows for a perfectly well-rounded service that keeps patrons coming, again and again. This includes myself, as this experience bought Ma Cualli a brand-new repeat customer.

bhe sun rises and paints the town of Alliance, Nebraska, with a warm tint of gold. The people around town stretch and get ready for a day of work. Two of these people include Flor and Fletcher Sheridan. The husband and wife duo own and operate the mouth-watering barbeque joint known as Golden Hour. They start their day early to prepare their food for the people that will soon be lined up out the door waiting to get a taste of their barbeque. The couple takes great pride in being able to bring Texas-style barbeque to Nebraska, and they work hard to make sure everyone enjoys their experience. Their hard work seems to be paying off – for they were just awarded one of the spots on the list of Top Texas-Style BBQ Joints Outside the Lone Star State by Texas Monthly’s Daniel Vaughan.

“Daniel Vaughan is one of the biggest food editors when it comes to Texas barbeque,” Fletcher said. “He does a top-50 in Texas every four years, and that’s kind of the end all be all for barbeque, but he got Texas Monthly to let him go around the country to all the other forty-eight lower states, tried over 150 barbeque places and put us at number ten.”

This new title did not just excite Flor and Fletcher, but the town of Alliance as a whole. Golden Hour has a special tie to the

community due to the location that it has made its home. Golden Hour can be found on the main stretch of Alliance tucked into a historical building called Newberry. The Newberry was built in 1914 and holds a lot of history and nostalgia for the people in Alliance. This tie is extra special for Flor, who grew up in Alliance.

“The fact that we are in this beautiful building that has been a part of a lot of peoples childhood not just ours but also a lot of peoples’ grandparents,” Flor said. “It is such an honor to keep this building thriving and to take care of it for the next generation.”

To celebrate the special relationship between Golden Hour and the community, Flor and Fletcher host community events such as Newberry market and themed nights at Golden Hour for fundraisers. At its core this is what Texas barbeque is: spending time with friends and family to enjoy a good meal. Good food can do more than just nourish the body. It can make people feel a certain way and bring them together.

“In this community everyone knows each other and it’s so cool to see people just interacting with each other after not seeing each other for a while, or someone just comes in intending to eat by themselves but seeing someone they know and sitting with them, it is just a place to be together,” Flor said.

Nothing draws people to a place quite like good food does. With the amount of time and care Flor and Fletcher put into their food it is no wonder people come in droves just to get a taste.

Creating good quality Texas barbeque is no easy task, preparation is required everyday except Tuesdays. Sausage by itself is a three-day-process. Even off-days are filled with making banana pudding and coordinating catering and events. The couple works hard to ensure that every piece of meat sold is crafted to perfection and meets a quality that they are proud of.

“If I am spending fourteen hours cooking one piece of meat I better get it right, and it better be as good as possible, because if you mess that up you are wasting everybody's time from the rancher who raised the beef properly to the person who is trimming it and seasoning it,” Fletcher said.

Bringing top-notch Texas-style barbeque to Nebraska started as a source of nostalgia for Fletcher who grew up in Texas. He noticed a serious lack of good barbeque places in Nebraska when he first moved there for college. With roughly 44,400 farms and ranches within the state this came as a bit of a shock.

“This is a meat and potatoes kind of place, so Texas barbeque should be here already, brisket is the single biggest cut of meat on the cow and no one is cooking it up here,” Fletcher said.

They feel that Nebraskans deserve better barbecue. So the mission began for them to do it themselves. Barbeque is a craft that requires extensive labor and a work ethic that connects the business to the work ethic of the people of Alliance. There is a blue collar pride that runs through the town. The people take pride in the hard

work that they get up to do each day. This is a quality that is directly reflected inside Golden Hour.

“Barbeque is for the working man,” Fletcher said. “It is not city food necessarily, it tastes best cooked in your backyard and we are just doing the business version of that.”

To be able to make a business that has a backyard-home-cooked taste requires a lot of work and a lot of wood. Fletcher uses an oak, or what they call post oak in Texas, to smoke his meat. One log will keep the cooker at 250 degrees even through the winter. This business also requires huge cookers that are made of repurposed propane tanks – one being 250 gallons. Lastly, it takes a lot of time and care. Together these things make up the essence of good Texas barbecue.

“In Texas we have something called the Texas trinity and that is brisket, ribs and sausage,” Fletcher said.

Golden Hour has shined a new light on the community of Alliance. When Golden Hour is packed with people the building comes alive. Older generations reminisce about how things used to be when Alliance was a booming town, and Fletcher hopes that this could be the first step in having the whole downtown come alive again. In the future Flor and Fletcher hope to turn the second and third floor of the Newberry into apartment living. All it takes is a few steps and this barbeque joint could be the start of lifting up a small town, and in turn this place will make sure this barbeque joint can keep rising up. As delicious smelling smoke billowed up through the air the golden light caught it for the second time that day. The same way golden hour happens twice a day, Fletcher checks on the meat twice. Soft golden light is a reminder that we get to do it all again tomorrow.

Mark Vazquez, the owner of K&M Jewelers, has been a rock fanatic since he was a child, but not in the way some may think. He would collect fossils, crystals and rocks from surrounding areas and shops as a kid, and this passion found him again in adulthood in one of the most unexpected ways.

“One day, in 1980 or 1978, I was doing construction like every other young guy does around here,” Vazquez said. “I saw this older guy broke down on the side of the road. I stopped to help him out, and it turned out he was from England. I got a kick out of the way he talked. We became friends after that and one day he said, ‘You have the hands of a jeweler. Have you ever thought about becoming one?’”

Little did Vazquez know at the time, this man, Basil Barion, was one of the former master jewelers for De Beers Diamond Company, the second largest diamond company in the world to this day. This fateful encounter then led to the next three years of Vazquez’s life as a jeweler’s apprentice. The intense program left Vazquez with all of the skills necessary to become a master jeweler, the same as his teacher.

In 1987, Vasquez took his Jewelers of America Certified Master Bench Jeweler Certification test, or CMBJ test. He passed and became a master, then immediately began selling his pieces. The first location he sold his jewelry was at the Golden Hills Resort in Lead, South Dakota. During the 1990’s, he would sell them off of a shelf in the lobby, where there would be a lot of tourist traffic.

In 1999, he had finally saved enough money for materials and began building his first jewelry shop in Custer Crossing, South Dakota. In this location, no one would stop to enter his shop as the traffic was mostly people trying to make it to Deadwood, Sturgis or Rapid City as fast as they could, which made his business a black hole for money. Vazquez then came across the rare opportunity to buy the property that his current shop sits on just a year later. Becoming a master jeweler and an independent business owner was a difficult task to undertake. Both endeavors take years of dedication to find any semblance of success. As a master jeweler, one must know how to grade stones, create designs, engrave pieces and many other specialized tasks. It has become even more challenging to become a master due to a lack of support from a stable community. The overarching guild of jewelers is slowly dwindling.

In 2015, there were around 21,000 jewelry stores in the United States, including corporate and independently owned stores, according to a study by Statista Research Department. As of 2023, that number has dropped to around 17,600, a 16 percent decrease in just eight years.

“I’ve had people come to me to do apprenticeships before,” Vazquez said. “I can never get them to stick around. I do it for free, but they’ll only stick around for long enough to make one, maybe two pieces, and then I’ll never see or hear from them again. It’s a dying art…it makes me sad.”

There is also a noticeable drop in quality as corporate jewelers take over more and more of the market.

“I don’t want to name names, but most companies, when they manufacture [jewelry], they make it as cheap as possible as fast as possible, and most people unfortunately don't know that they end up with junk,” Vazquez said. “People will bring their own jewelry in wanting to know how much it’s worth and I’ll say, ‘Do you want me to lie to you or do you want me to tell the truth?’”

Larger corporations’ practices when it comes to jewelling bother Vazquez, as he thinks quite a lot of them overcharge for the quality of their pieces, or outright lie about the piece they are selling. Contrary to the larger companies, Vazquez is a known perfectionist who prizes every piece he makes. If he doesn’t like the way a piece turns out, he refuses to sell it. Patrons appreciate Vazquez’s work ethic, but it’s his uplifting attitude that really sticks with his customers. One quick glance at the online reviews of his shop will quickly put any doubts to rest.

“This guy knows a lot about gemstones, and let me know what I had, and even explained and let me look around a little bit,” said Timothy Skaggs on Google Reviews. “He had a lot of neat and highquality stuff to look at. I would recommend K&M Jewelers to the new and old rock enthusiast if you don't really know what you've found, this guy is very knowledgeable. I thank you very much for your help. I drove 120 miles. And guess what my gemstone cluster was only worth about 5 bucks, I was very happy anyway and took it back home with me. I would like to thank this gentleman for the way he treated me. I was treated like I had a million-dollar item with me, thanks for being kind sir.”

Vazquez’s focus on ensuring that everyone visiting his shop feels like a part of the K&M family is a conscious decision. That makes his business acumen even more apparent.

“People come in and I treat them like I’ve known them forever,” Vazquez said. “I love telling them stories, and I don’t let my head swell.”

Vazquez puts a lot of effort into curating his collection. This includes his custom pieces of jewelry, raw and cut minerals, fossils and smaller trinkets. Many of his pieces hold sentimental value, and some are collected through relationships he’s made throughout his career.

“I source my minerals from all over the world. We go to big gem shows and source our raw minerals there, but we’ve made a lot of friends around the world,” Vazquez said. “Sometimes they’ll contact me and say, ‘I’ve got this are you interested?’ And I usually say ship it. it’s really cool that we have that [option]... In general, I sell a lot of the more touristy stuff like our carved roses, and tiny minerals.”

Vazquez finds comfort in his customers’ demand for the carved trinkets because they were made for him by a friend who passed away. Vazquez’s business community even extends out to Minnesota, where another friend runs a non-domestic animal farm and collects pelts from the creatures once they pass on from natural causes –Vazquez often helps his friend sell the pelts and donates the proceeds back into the animal shelter.

Not only does Vazquez make sure that these pelts find good homes, he also makes sure that his own mix of live animals find healthy fulfilling lives on his property in Deadwood. He houses over 50 animals, including wolves, foxes and coyotes.

“I just want to let people know that these aren’t mean, nasty animals,” Vazquez said. “They’re some of the most loyal and affectionate animals you’ll find. I always joke with people that if you want a vicious animal, get a domestic dog, but a wolf or coyote or fox will be so amazing if they know you.”

While the purest of intentions are behind his actions, not everyone in the area shares his passion for sheltering animals of that nature.

“The city of Deadwood actually tried to sue me back a couple years ago,” Vazquez said. “[They] said that they didn’t want vicious animals so close to town. I ended up winning because there’s nothing inhumane about the way I treat my animals, and there’s never been an incident of my animals being a nuisance or anything.

Anyone who visits this section of Vazquez’s property can see that the animals are treated with love and care. They are visibly healthy, with bright, shining coats and a rampant excitement when Vazquez approaches the paddocks. Vazquez uses a large portion of his profits from the shop towards caring for the animals and he also accepts donations towards the animals as well.

“Most people think that if someone owns a business, they’re rich,” Vazquez said. “Whatever money I make, goes right back into the business.”

No matter how rich or poor a business owner is, Vazquez most definitely has made an experience out of his shop.

“You can get anything here,” Vazquez said. “From colored diamonds to a complete dinosaur skeleton, and I think that’s pretty damn cool.”

“Blood, sweat and tears,” is a phrase that has been immortalized throughout time, made famous by figures such as Winston Churchill, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Johne Donne. It is a phrase used to describe efforts of unstinting measures given in the name of achieving success.

For centuries, this phrase was used by leaders of men on the battlefield, by politicians during times of hardship and in pregame speeches under the Friday night lights. It is a phrase that symbolizes the ultimate unwillingness to give up. It is a phrase that is embodied by a man named Willie Blazer.

Raised in the middle of western North Carolina’s Appalachian moonshine country, Blazer grew up with an appreciation for the art and history of concocting quality liquor with his family. However, shortly after his high school graduation, Blazer decided to leave his hometown in search of a new adventure.

Having always enjoyed a good challenge and the rush of adrenaline, Blazer enlisted in the airborne infantry – shortly after

that, he volunteered for the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program and became a United States Army Ranger. After six years of service, Blazer stepped back from active duty and moved to Missoula, Montana, in 1997.

“The reason I went to Missoula was because it’s kind of the headquarters of smokejumping,” Blazer said. “When I was on a little deployment, I read an article about the ‘94 King Mountain Fire in Colorado. The possibility of moving out west and getting paid to jump out of airplanes and fight fire caught my attention.”

The 1994 fire on Storm King Mountain, near Glenwood Spring, Colorado, officially named the South Canyon Fire, became infamous after it claimed the lives of 14 wildland firefighters (a mix of smokejumpers, hotshots and helitack crew members) on July 6. But, despite the death toll that was no doubt included in the article he read, Blazer was determined to jump out of a Forest Service airplane and fight fire.

Blazer enrolled at the University of Montana to study forestry in preparation for his new career in wildland fire, and, in his spare time, became a walk-on lineman for the football team and joined the Montana National Guard at the age of 24. It was also during his first and only academic year of college that he met his future wife, the former Robin Hensley, a Montana native and a student of English Literature and Philosophy.

In the summer of 1998, Blazer took the first step toward becoming a smokejumper.

“My first season of fire, I joined the Sealy Lake hand crew,” Blazer said. “That was a fun summer. There were really no fires out west, they were all popping up in Florida and Texas, so my first fire season was spent staying in motels and living it up.”

The following season, Blazer took his second step toward

boarding that Forest Service plane he’d been dreaming about since reading that article.

“In the summer of ‘99, I joined the Sawtooth Hotshots in Twin Falls, [Idaho],” Blazer said. “I ran a [chainsaw] for them. I got like 1,000 hours of overtime working for them. They were a real good crew, and the work was good – it reminded me of the Ranger Battalion a lot.”

Blazer remained with the Sawtooth Hotshots for a second fire season in the summer of 2000, but after a successful season, he was presented with the opportunity to get back into the special forces as a Green Beret. Shortly after Blazer got word back that he was selected for the 19th Special Forces Group, he and Robin got married before he left for training to become a Special Forces Airborne Medic.

Blazer was nearly halfway through his training when the September 11 attacks transpired, but with his training far from complete, it wasn’t until two years later that he got deployed to Afghanistan for his first and only tour as a Green Beret. After his return to the States, Blazer decided the time was right to return to the Forest Service to complete his goal.

“When I came back I was like, ‘Alright, if I’m gonna do this smokejumping thing, I need to actually start applying and trying to get in,’” Blazer said. “I got in with the Missoula Smokejumpers and rookied in 2005.”

Although Blazer had finally achieved his goal of becoming a smokejumper eight years after he set out on the path, he only stuck around for one season. Following the conclusion of the 2005 fire season, Blazer returned to military service as a contractor, but with

two new members in the Blazer family, he felt the time to settle into a career was drawing near.

“I had done a lot of contracting work, and I worked with Blackwater on Hurricane Katrina,” Blazer said. “But once we started having kids, things changed. I needed to figure out if I was gonna stick with contracting, work for the Forest Service or if Robin and I were going to do our own thing. Ultimately, we decided we liked Montana – Robin was from there, and we’d always made our own beer and wine – so our initial idea was to start a brewery. But, you know, there’s a lot of breweries, but nobody’s making whiskey in Montana.”

And so, the idea of Willie’s Distillery was born in the small town of Ennis. The Blazers dove into research, learning everything they could about any and every law related to business owning and

the creation and distribution of liquor. Robin quickly emerged as the brains of the operation, becoming fluent in the ins and outs of the complex process of starting a business in a small town. But it wasn’t long before the Blazers ran into the same issue that many new entrepreneurs encounter.

“We didn’t have any money,” Blazer said. “And we didn’t know anyone who had money. So, I ended up working overseas again in Iraq and Afghanistan for around three and a half years.”

After one final stint as a military contractor, Blazer was able to save enough money to return to his family, purchase a building on main street and give their new business a decent head start. The family officially opened the doors of Willie’s distillery in 2012.

“We’ve just been rockin’ and rollin’ ever since,” Blazer said. “Seriously though, I’ve done quite a few things, but starting, running and managing a business is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s completely different from all the other things I’ve done because money is key. If you run out of money, you run out of business. We definitely had to scrape by for the first five years, but we managed to make it work.”

The Blazer’s original plan was to sell bourbon as their first product. However, with finances already stretched thin, they made the decision to start selling moonshine to give their first batch time to finish aging.

“The bourbon wasn’t even ready until about a year and a half after the distillery started selling alcohol,” said Matt Melugin, the general manager of Willie’s Distillery, “At the end of 2013, the Big Horn Bourbon became available, and we still sell it today. It’s our number one selling product by far.”

wanted to make it all about Montana, you know, Montana spirits and whiskey. But naturally, my background started to come out, and over time some of my buddies from the service or the Forest Service would bring me cool things to hang up in the tasting room.”

Today, the tasting room of Willie’s Distillery is heavily decorated with military and firefighter antiques – items ranging from Afgan rifles and saddles to World War II helmets. Members of his Missoula Smokejumper crew even made a point to return his jumping helmet from his rookie season in 2005.

Since then, Willie’s Distillery has experienced nothing but success and has expanded its selection to 14 different products – from bourbons to blended whiskies, to vodkas to even cream liquors – all of which have been tested and tweaked to perfection in their lab.

Aside from the monetary success Blazer found through the company, Willie’s Distillery has also cultivated an extensive community of individuals from backgrounds similar to Blazer’s, a community that played a big role in creating the unique attraction that has come to be known as Willie’s Museum.

“From day one, Robin and I never planned on making the business veteran, or military or fire [themed],” Blazer said. “We

“Patches have been a really big thing,” Blazer said. “Guys started giving me fire and law enforcement patches, and army patches and coins. I started putting them up, and it just kept growing. I probably get around ten to fifteen patches a week now. We’re starting to run out of

But despite all of the impressive memorabilia that adorns his establishment, the most important of them all hangs behind the bar as the crown jewel of Willie’s Distillery – a portrait of his Blazer’s wife and matriarch of the company, Robin, who passed away Jan. 27, 2022, after a long battle with cancer.

The portrait seems to serve as a reminder of how Willie’s Distillery came to be and as a symbol of the hard work and dedication it takes to find success.

Robin’s Obituary includes a saying she often used in life, “You cannot wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”

A lifestyle such as Blazer’s is not without adversity. From the military, to firefighting, to becoming a successful entrepreneur, the most impressive of his traits is his drive for success.

“I’m just trying to be better,” Blazer said. “A lot of what drives me in life is competition. It’s the way I was raised. I wasn’t naturally gifted with a lot of things, so I had to work for everything I got.”

The desire to win is what pulled Blazer through life, and even when it came to creating a business – something he had no background in – he was determined to become one of the best.

“We went with a distillery instead of a brewery because nobody else was doing that,” Blazer said. “And the reason nobody was doing it was because nobody wanted to put in the pain and suffering it takes. But my background has always proven to me that if you work your ass off harder than anyone, you just might succeed.”

In the thick silence of a Michigan forest on a sweltering September afternoon, a crack pierces the air, echoing off the trees, forcing a flock of birds to flee. Ezra Aderhold, a professional disc golfer from Aberdeen, South Dakota tossed a putt from 20 feet out, scraping the chains of the basket and dropping to the ground. Aderhold turned around, slamming an extra disc into his bag and looked up. A small tree in front of him met the palm of his hand, violently.

“The last two or three months have been pretty hard for me,” Aderhold said. “It’s difficult to have fun when I’m playing bad.”

Disc golf is a mental sport above all else, the walk between each tee pad under blinding sunlight is a time for the players to reflect on the mistakes they made. Every moment creates a narrative that follows them throughout the round. Aderhold is used to this mental game.

Sweat covered my hands when I arrived hours before Aderhold’s group teed off. Anxiety washed over me as I sent a text to him. While waiting for a response I took the chance to explore the venue. A large booth with a disc selection caught my eye. The booth was drastically emptier than the other booths. I picked up a dark purple disc before realizing why the booth was seemingly empty.

“Hey! You must wait in line buddy,” said an event employee.

My head spun around to the sight of hundreds of people forming a line weaving through the maple trees, the beginning of which started merely a dozen feet from the entrance of the booth. I quickly exited and walked over to the line. A man with over a dozen discs in his hand and dozens more in his backpack locked eyes with me.

“Better get in line, a special edition disc just got released,” the man said.

At the same time my phone buzzed in my pocket, “I just got to the course,” read a text message from Aderhold. My anxiety flushed away as I hurried over to the first hole tee pad. It was 1:50 p.m. when Aderhold sent that text, his scheduled tee time was 2 p.m. I found an open patch of grass next to the tee pad and took a seat, after getting my camera out I looked up at the players getting ready to tee off. Aderhold was walking down the hill with a backpack full of discs slung around his shoulder.

“He looks like a fitness model,” said the score keeper following Aderhold with me.

Aderhold has the build of a line-backer, 6’ 2” and 200 pounds isn’t the average size of a professional disc golfer. His biceps are the same diameter as the discs he throws, his physique appears

as if he was chisled out of granite by non-other than Michalengelo himself.

“I also had confidence that I was already good, even though, you know, back than I was pretty trash,” Aderhold said. “But that false confidence I think did help.”

While in school, professional disc golf was nowhere on his radar. Instead, he spent most of his time competing in high school golf.

“I kind of stumbled on it,” Aderhold said. “When I first started playing disc golf it was just super recreational. I was doing high school golf and that was my main focus.”

After graduating high school, Aderhold and his brother purchased four houses to flip, both having dreams of becoming real estate moguls. Working day and night the summer after he graduated in the prairie heat of eastern South Dakota proved to be too stressful for the young man.

“We got decent money and stuff, but I’m young now,” Aderhold said. “I can have more fun doing disc golf, so I might as well try that now.”

Aderhold was in his prime years as an athlete and knew professional disc golf wasn’t something he could pursue in his later years. 2017 was the year he shifted his focus to disc golf and hit the road, literally.

Aderhold drove tournament to tournament in his Prius while squeezing everything he needed to survive in with. The confines of his modified car were now his home allowing him to set up camp under the moonlight in the parking lot of each new course.

“Some of the downsides as far as like sleeping in my car and not knowing a bunch of people on tour and kind of being alone for that time,” Aderhold said. “I didn’t really see those negatives as that big of an issue since I was so focused on just, you know, making it happen.”

Aderhold spent hours every day in the interminable fields of the Dakota grasslands, honing his throws by recording and comparing to the top pros at the time. He focused mainly on distance, knowing he could build his game around that.

The years of practice and dedication paid off in early 2021 when Aderhold received a call from Discraft, a major disc golf manufacturing company, and secured a two-year contract. Being sponsored is the moment that converts most athletes from amateurs to professionals, not Ezra.

“As far as my moment goes, this might sound kind of bad but like, I expected it,” Aderhold said. “When I decided to make the jump and try to be a professional disc golfer I expected to be at that point.”

Three years later, the same confidence radiated from him as he walked up to tee off on hole one in Michigan.

“Up next from Aberdeen, South Dakota, Ezra Aderhold!” Said the announcer introducing Aderhold to the crowd around the tee.

The crowd erupted with cheers, which quickly morphed into dead silence. A bird tweeted behind my head while Aderhold takes a few steps, his shoe scraped against the turf followed by the disc being flung halfway to the basket before I could blink. The air turbulence could be heard pushing off the disc, bending to the right and landing only a couple meters from the basket.

Repeating throws thousands of times, day after day wasn’t for nothing. Aderhold can launch a disk over 650 feet, creating opportunities for memorable moments throughout career.

“My mind went to the 1099 weighted round I had back in Vegas,” Aderhold said. “I was leading by three strokes going into the third day, that round felt incredible after I tapped in my last putt.”

After every round in a professional tournament the players are given a rating, the highest rated round of all time is a 1132 by Paul McBeth, putting Aderhold less than 100 points behind. Multiple top finishes trace his career while he still yearns for that top spot.

“In order to be at the top of the world standings and be one of the actual best players, you got to be consistent and consistent at the top,” Aderhold said.

Every season there is always a handful of athletes in contention to win each tournament. While training Aderhold dreamed of becoming one of these athletes. Unable to meet that goal yet has spawned a new, simpler goal.

“I want to win a tournament,” Aderhold said. “I want to put myself in a position where I’m in contention week in and week out, always vying for a spot and always having a chance to win.”

The small town of Aberdeen presented challenges to Aderhold when pursuing a career in disc golf. He had no one to learn from other than himself and the internet.

“Pretty much everything I learned about becoming a pro I learned on YouTube,” Aderhold said. “The internet is kind of a great was to bring people together, I didn’t have the one-on-one personal connections.”

Being unable to compare himself to other professionals allowed him to gain the confidence to play in his first event and get humbled by the abilities of the other pros on tour. However, being alone gave him the desire to take that first step into the pro scene without a second thought.

During the season Aderhold is competing in a tournament every Thursday-Sunday, sometimes across the country or even internationally leaving minimal personal time. Nonstop travel and competition has put a strain on personal relationships.

“It sucks to be away from them for so long, I’m on tour nine months out of the year,” Aderhold said. “Thankfully I’ve been able to stay somewhat close with like phone calls and Facetime.”

The three months he is not on tour it stays too cold back home to practice, only giving him a few weeks out of the year to spend with family.

“Disc golf has given me so much, I’ve got, you know, something to look forward to every week,” Aderhold said. “It’s given me a bit of a life and the sense of something to work towards, I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

Sports in general are fickle. The years that athletes can compete are limited with most professional athletes retiring before 30. Aderhold takes care of his body and hopes to stay in shape to continue competing for years to come.

Every missed putt and shanked drive sticks with the player, slamming discs back into their bag, profanity being spewed, and outbursts of frustration are common occurrences that quickly vanish with the sound of chains being struck and cheers filling the air.

“In professional golf some play until their 45, I think Phil Mickelson won when he was like 50,” Aderhold said. “You know, I think I’m in better shape than him.”

refreshing & uplifting

Black Hills State University students and faculty

Since Earth’s beginning, fire has been one of the greatest forces of nature. Like an artist’s mangled gum eraser, fire removes what is old and leaves a clean canvas for new life to leave its mark. But, unlike the artist’s tools, fire is alive. Fire is hungry. Thus, fire needs an artist to guide it.

Long before the European colonization of the “New World”, native tribes, such as the Yurok, Karuk and Coast Miwok, became students of fire and learned how to redirect thousands of acres of inferno away from their homes by burning the area around their settlements before the wildfire could have a chance. By fighting fire with fire, these tribes preserved their lives and cemented themselves in history as the first wildland firefighters.

Thousands of years later, long after the establishment of the United States of America, wildfire had once again become an issue of major concern. Long forgotten were the ancient native techniques of controlled burning, replaced by faulty tactics that involved buckets of water, ditch digging and the high likelihood of a premature cremation. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that the U.S. Forest Service came to the realization that they too needed to become students of fire in order to survive the destructive onslaught of the fire season.

Today, thousands of acres, homes and lives are saved from nature’s relentless blaze each year because of the men and women who adapted. These heroes who learned how to battle one of nature’s greatest weapons. Heroes like Ray Varland.

Raised in Douglas, Wyoming, Varland was not unlike any other Wyomingite. He was an avid outdoorsman, a wildlife enthusiast and a devoted collector of rocks. And, like so many high school seniors, had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

“When I was in high school, I interned with a wildlife biologist who worked for the [U.S.] Forest Service,” Varland said. “I

thought it sounded like an interesting enough job. But, while I was interning with him, he talked about how he worked as a seasonal wildland firefighter in the summer for some extra money while he was in college.”

The conversation sparked Varland’s interest, and he began looking further into job opportunities and potential career paths with the Forest Service as graduation approached.

“The guy I interned with said that I should talk to folks from a bunch of different disciplines within the Forest Service,” Varland said. “I got to talk with a bunch of different folks, including the Fire Management Officer (FMO) for the area. We sat down in a conference room and he told me about his career. He started on a [fire] engine right out of high school and worked his way up from there. He just kind of fell into and it worked.”

Varland’s meeting with the FMO essentially cemented his interest in joining up with the Wildland Fire Department, but it would be years before he understood what it truly meant to become a wildland firefighter.

“I was just a senior in high school,” Varland said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and becoming a firefighter sounded cool. But I had a loose understanding of what the job really was. Even though I grew up in Douglas, I’d never really seen that many wildfires.”

At 18 years old, just a few days after graduation, Varland began his first season as a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service on a type-six engine crew based in Estabrook, Wyoming.

“My first fire was on the Wyoming-South Dakota border outside Newcastle,” Varland said. “It was up the WhoopUp Caynon.”

On July 17, 2011, the WhoopUp Fire ignited, and within 24 hours, the blaze had engulfed over 4,000 acres. Evacuation orders were

released as the fire grew, and Varland’s crew was called into action. It wasn’t until after the WhoopUp Fire had burned through over 7,000 acres that firefighters on the scene were able to contain the spread.

“Pretty much all I got to do was clean up a fire line on some barren hillside,” Varland said. “In hindsight, that was a good foreshadowing event for how the rest of my first season turned out.”

The rest of Varland’s rookie season transpired without any major incidents. Despite the relatively boring first impression firefighting made, he was hooked and made the decision to return for round two.

“My second fire season was really busy,” Varland said. “We burned around a hundred-fifteen-thousand acres on our district. It was just non-stop all summer.”

After his second season, Varland had gotten a better taste of what working in fire had to offer, and he decided the time was right to chase new experiences with a different crew.

“I stayed in the same district, but I moved over to the north side of Douglas and joined a type-four engine crew that belongs to the Thunder Basin National Grassland,” Varland said. “I worked with those guys for two years as well. It was a nice experience, I got to work with different fuel types, different overhead and a new crew.”

By his fourth season, wildland firefighting had become a part of Varland’s life. During his short stint, he had already begun to build a reputation for himself as a driven, hardworking man. Especially in the eyes of his captain on the Thunder Basin Grassland.

“My engine captain worked with the Gila Hotshots from the Gila National Forest for a few years,” Varland said. “One day he told me that he thought I would make a good hotshot and that I should try

to get on a crew to experience what that was like. At that point, I was still more clueless than I realized, and I agreed to start looking for a crew to join.”

Unbeknownst to him at the time, joining a hotshot crew is one of the biggest steps a wildland firefighter can make in their young career. Hotshot crews are home to some of the most skilled and dedicated firefighters in the nation. These crews are historically known for their speed and aggression and are often the first on the scene of the largest and most dangerous fires.

“I contacted Kyle Miller, a Wyoming Hotshot I met when we were both doing some work with the state helitack [firefighter] crew and got a job on the Wyoming Hotshots the next year,” Varland said. “Before I left to join the hotshot crew, my engine boss warned me that it would be nothing like my time on the engine. But I was twenty-two at the time and thought nothing of it.”

That next season, Varland began again as a rookie on the Wyoming Hotshots.

“It was humbling,” Varland said. “Becoming a hotshot was a completely different animal, but it was still a great time. I got myself on a chainsaw team my first year, and had the chance to work with really knowledgeable and talented folks.”

Although the training was far more difficult, and the work much more harrowing than anything Varland had experienced as a firefighter, it was while he was a Wyoming Hotshot that he found his calling.

“I believe Ray came to the crew in 2016,” Miller said. “He was a scrawny little feller back then, but he was such a driven individual,

so I pushed to get him hired onto the crew. From the beginning, I knew he was gonna work out, we just needed to get some meat on his bones.”

Miller, who led a chainsaw team as a saw boss at the time, brought Varland onto his crew and began training him to become a sawyer.

“He was solid his first season,” Miller said. “He kept up with the team well and worked hard. But, like every other first-year hotshot, he just had no idea just how physically demanding the work really is. It’s kind of a universal thing. People tend to not understand the the weight of the expectations that are put on them before their first season as a hotshot. But, I think the people who really earn their spot on the crew are the folks that take the offseason before their second season and just put the work in. And that’s exactly what Ray did.”

At the end of Varland’s first season as a hotshot, Miller offered him an off season job that would provide him the opportunity to take his physical fitness to the next level and improve his skills with a chainsaw.

“I used to do some logging in the winters between fire seasons,” Miller said. “After Ray’s first season, I took him with me to live up in the boonies on an old ranch with no power and set him up on a strip to get him some trigger time. He did great, he really improved his skills with a saw and hit the weights in the offseason.”

In Varland’s second season with the Wyoming Hotshots, he made sawyer and earned his own chainsaw. By the time he left the hotshots after four years, Varland had climbed the ladder to become lead sawyer on the team.

Towards the end of Varland’s time on the hotshot crew, it had been brought up on occasion what he planned to move on to. For many, retiring from a shot crew meant moving on to an office job within the Wildland Fire Department or returning to the more laidback work schedule of an engine or fuels crew. But, for a man like Varland, with his head in the clouds, the sky was the limit.

“No one understands what you have to go through to earn your spot as a smokejumper except for those who have gone through it themselves,” Miller said. “They want to test you, and they’re

gonna play mind games with you. They want to see what kind of drive you have, and if you have the mental strength to keep going. Ray had what it took.”

The ability to overcome is one of the most valued traits among jumper crews. In 1939, the U.S. Forest Service realized that it was imperative that they figured out a way to catch a wildfire before it grew too big to handle. Their solution was to take a page out of the Army’s book and start throwing their firefighters out of airplanes 3,000 feet in the air with over 120 pounds of gear strapped to their bodies.

Immediately after the hard landing, smokejumpers often have to hike through miles of nearly untouched wildland to reach the fire. A typical deployment, also known as a roll, can last anywhere from 14-28 days, each day lasting a minimum of 16 hours. During that time, firefighters have little to no contact with the outside world, all they know is the mission at hand.

“After my last season as a hotshot, I talked to a lot of folks, sent out a bunch of applications and ended up signing a rookie contract with the smokejumper crew out of West Yellowstone,” Varland said. “It was a really stressful environment, both extremely mentally and physically demanding. But I had a great time. The work was so fulfilling.”

During his five-year stint as a smokejumper, Varland got to see and experience things during his workday that most would consider a dream vacation.

“It’s impossible to pinpoint one single memory as a smokejumper that I could call my favorite,” Varland said. “But all the ones that stuck with me seemed insignificant at the time. I remember watching the sunset on a fire in Southeast Arizona and it just looks like the fucking Patagonia logo there are so many colors. I got to see the Madrean Sky Islands, the Cochise Stronghold and the Dragoon Mountains. I also remember when I was on a fire in Canada, I got to jump out of a bomber plane from World War Two. It’s moments like that that have really stuck with me, it’s part of why I loved the job so much.”

Varland’s five-year stint as a smokejumper led him to countless significant moments. It was during this time he traveled the country, forged his place in a brotherhood and met the love of his life – his wife, Hailey. But it was also during this time when he experienced unimaginable hardship, and one of the greatest losses of his life.

“Working in fire is difficult,” Varland said. “Anyone who has done fire for a substantial amount of time has knee problems or back problems. And you also miss things, my brother happens to have a birthday on July fourth, and, even though he and I are very close, I’ve only been able to see him on his birthday once in the last fourteen years. And then, eventually, you have to deal with things like folks getting injured and fireline fatalities.”

Throughout his career, Varland had been witness to numerous accidents on the fireline. Although there are many safety procedures in place, becoming a wildland firefighter means signing up for danger. But, unfortunately, for many the true weight of the risk they’re taking never settles until that worstcase scenario happens to someone close.

“In 2021, we were down in Silver City, New Mexico, staffed at the smokejumper base down there,” Varland said. “On May twentyfourth, we got a call about a fire just five miles off the Mexican border in the Animas Mountains. There were eight of us loaded up in the plane, including my buddy Tim Hart.”

Despite unfavorable wind conditions, the crew prepared to jump and took off for the fire in the hopes of cutting it off before it grew too large to contain.

“Even though it was a little windy, it seemed like a pretty simple jump,” Varland said. “But, on the way down, Tim drifted out of the landing zone and he dropped onto a pretty shitty rock pile. He was unconscious when we found him, but we did what we could to take care of him before the pilot was able to get him out of there.”

Hart was flown to a hospital in El Paso, New Mexico, where he spent the next eight days in the ICU.

“Early on we were pretty optimistic,” Varland said. “You hear stories all the time about people getting fucked up on the job and surviving. But after a few days, it became pretty obvious that he wasn’t getting any better. Then the realization just hit that we weren’t going to have Tim anymore.”

Tim Hart passed away June 2, 2021.

“Tim was the kind of person that we all need more of,” Varland said. “He was an experienced, capable firefighter. He was such a special guy.”

Following his friend's death, Varland spent two more seasons as a smokejumper before deciding the time was right to hang up the parachute. Wanting to finally move in with Hailey, Varland took a job in Cody, Wyoming, as the assistant captain of the fuels crew. By the end of his first season, he was promoted to captain. Although he’s no longer jumping from planes or working with the nation’s most elite firefighters, Varland has discovered a new calling.

“Transferring from high-level firefighting like jumping to a fuels crew has been a completely different challenge,” Varland said. “It’s been humbling and really rewarding. I’m starting to get a taste of the excitement that younger guys feel about things like their very first fire. It’s that kind of brand new excitement that I lost my appreciation for working with veterans for so long.”

As his fifteenth season in fire approaches, Varland has nearly reached senior status as a firefighter. And even though he loves to joke, mess around and bullshit with his friends and coworkers about ridiculous topics, his views on what truly matters most in fire and in life are deadly serious.

“The people around you are what’s most important,” Varland said. “Everything is more resilient than you think, whether its the what you think will be the easiest tree you’ve ever cut down, the people around you or yourself, and everything always finds a way to work itself out. What’s truly important, is taking care of your folks.”

Born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota, Marty Two Bulls Jr. was destined to become an artist.

“I come from a big family of artists,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “From my grandparents’ generation down, pretty much everyone in my family is involved in the arts. And a lot of my cousins are artists of all kinds such as painters, songwriters, musicians, filmmakers and journalists. A big part of my family history and dynamics is in art making.”

A descendent of a long line of Oglala Lakota artists and the son of accomplished artist and cartoonist, Marty Two Bulls Sr., Two Bulls Jr. dove head-first into the artistic world as a child.

“I grew up making art,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “My dad is an artist, and I grew up in his studio. He was my first art teacher. I kind of apprenticed in his studio – cleaning brushes and doing the dirty work – but also getting to use his tools to experiment and explore.”

Two Bulls Jr. 's curiosity and passion for the arts grew rapidly as he got older, and although his father’s teachings had laid groundwork for his talents to grow upon, he was constantly searching for new ways to express himself and create his own unique style.

“When he was growing up, I never tried to dictate his style or try to force my style onto him. I don’t think any artist should do that,” Two Bulls Sr. said. “I wanted him to develop his own style and do what he liked to do rather than what I or anyone else may have wanted or expected him to do. I just gave him access to everything, showed him how to use the tools and pretty much just turned him loose.”

From a young age, there was little to no doubt in Two Bulls Jr.’s mind that he wanted to pursue the arts for the rest of his life.

“It’s just something I have to do, it’s like I can only be an artist,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “Early in my life I tried to be a journalist. I love reading and I love the power of good journalism, becoming an artist was something I had to do. It’s my calling.”

When the time came to transition into adulthood, Two Bulls Jr. knew exactly where he was going after graduation.

“I left town after high school and went to school in New Mexico at the Institute of American Indian Arts,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “I got a BFA in Studio Arts with an emphasis in ceramics and printmaking. I grew up doing a lot of traditional painting, drawing and sculpting, so when I went to art school, I was really drawn towards media that I hadn’t had experience with before. I was especially curious about ceramics because I never had any experience with clay, and there’s a really strong ceramics tradition in the Southwest within Indigenous communities.”

After receiving his degree, Two Bulls Jr. decided to remain in Santa Fe, one of the largest artistic markets in the U.S., for the time being. He found work at local art galleries, climbing the ranks from a front desk person to a curator.

“I spent about ten years in Santa Fe after graduation,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “The gallery work was a great way for me to stay surrounded by the arts and have opportunities to make connections for myself and meet a lot of people. There’s also a really big Native Art and Contemporary Art scene there. It was a good experience to be working with such a diverse group of artists.”

After over a decade working with commercial art galleries and a few big life events, Two Bulls Jr. started to recognize a desire to return home to South Dakota.

“In 2017, my wife and I had our first daughter,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “We decided we wanted to move back to South Dakota because it’s where I’m from, and I really wanted my daughter to grow up around her Lakota community and her relatives. Also, at that point, I was starting to get really tired of working in commercial galleries.”

The timing of it all couldn’t have worked much better. Shortly after Two Bulls Jr. and his wife came to the decision they wanted to start working their way back to Rapid City, he received a message offering him a teaching position at the Oglala Lakota College (OLC).

“The school was trying to start up a graphic design program, and they asked me if I wanted to come teach,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “Coincidentally, my wife was offered the executive director position at the Seventh Circuit CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) in Rapid City. It was like all the stars were aligned and everything really fell into place.”

The Two Bulls family quickly wrapped up their lives and completed the move back to Rapid City in early 2017. Two Bulls Jr. began his new job at OLC almost immediately.

“I built the graphic design program pretty much from the bottom up,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “Using my experience in the field and drawing on my father’s experience, I was able to put a good program together. I’ve been teaching it ever since.”

Although much of his work tends to fall under the contemporary art category, Two Bulls Jr. believes that it’s important for artists to become proficient in many different media, including the digital ones.

“My dad worked for newspapers for many years as a graphic designer,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “He worked at the Rapid City Journal for a while, so I picked up those skills from him as well. I learned how to use programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and I also learned how to build websites and design logos. Those skills have helped me out a lot even to this day.”

Two Bulls Jr. has been teaching the graphic design program at OLC for eight years now. But despite having a full time day job teaching students the arts, he has not lost focus nor passion for his own personal projects.

“Right now, my artwork is very interdisciplinary,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “There’s a lot of things I’ll do over and over again, but I don’t identify with media in the way that I think some folks do by saying ‘I’m a painter.’ I have training and experience in a lot of different media, and I think of these media like tools for expression – I try to keep a diverse toolbox.”

Rather than confining himself to what could be considered the typical artistic process, Two Bulls Jr. prefers to keep his mind open to all potential paths he could take once an idea comes to him.

“When I have an idea for an artwork, I don’t come at it from the perspective of how it would work only as a painting or only as a ceramic object,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “I really try to let the ideas or concepts dictate what the medium should be. Some things work better in two

dimensions and some things work better in three – it really depends on the idea.”

Aside from his personal works, Two Bulls Jr. also takes commissions. One of his more recent public works was a mural completed in January 2024 at the Oyate Health Center in Rapid City – a hospital managed by the Oglala Sioux, the Rosebud Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes – which was established in 2022. Once the construction was complete, the hospital began purchasing artwork from mainly native artists from all over the South Dakota area.

In addition to the collection of original pieces the hospital started to collect, they also commissioned four murals.

“I got one of the commissions,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “I did a sort of photo collage piece about the history of the land that [the hospital is] on because it has a really complicated past. Originally, the building started out as a federal Indian boarding school, then it became a segregated tuberculosis clinic, then it became an Indian health services hospital. I knew when they were building the new hospital they were going to tear down the old stuff, so I really wanted to preserve some of that history in the new space.”

After he completed the mural for the Oyate Health Center, Two Bulls Jr. continued working on more ideas for large public works, and it became his latest tool of expression for a cause that he felt was important to his and his family’s culture.

“There’s a lot of larger public works in South Dakota, especially in this area,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “But there haven't been a lot of works like that done by Native artists. A lot of times there are works that depict images of Native people that were created by non-Native artists, so that’s the work I’ve been focusing on lately both as an artist and an educator.”

Two Bulls Jr. strongly believes in the importance of creating art that properly represents his culture and educating young artists to do the same.

“That’s a big part of the mission of my graphic design program,” Two Bulls Jr. said. “I want to help create competent artists and designers who can take on jobs like me. Some of it seems really small and insignificant, but any art that represents our culture has an effect on the way we’re seen and on the way we see ourselves. So whenever we can have somebody from our community creating art, I feel like it’s a healthier form of representation.”

Two Bulls Jr.’s dedication to the pursuit of education for his students and himself has not yet peaked. After three more years of schooling at Bard College, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in the spring of 2024.

“I’m more than proud of what he’s accomplished,” Two Bulls Sr. said. “His successes are so wonderful to me. What he’s done is beyond any expectation I’ve had.”

Two Bulls Jr. plans to continue to use his knowledge of the arts to educate young artists on the importance of self expression and culture in the hopes of helping to preserve the past and build a better future.

SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA

Seconds turn into minutes, minutes into hours, hours to days. All time put toward shedding a few seconds off the clock. Among the absurd heat and humidity of late July or the crushing winters in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, resides Atlas Tuning and Performance.

Oil and grime stain the warm grey concrete, a pungent smell of gas thickens the air. The roaring sound of an RX-7 rotary engine producing more power than it should siphons all other sounds out of my ear while a flame rockets out the exhaust, increasing the already hellish heat.

“I had no anxiety, no pressure behind it,” said Brayden Plooster, co-owner of Atlas “I was at a point of where I could free ball it and do whatever the fuck I wanted.”

Plooster was the one in the RX-7, with one hand on a computer in his lap and the other gripping the shifter.

“The first core memory I really have was my friend got his brand new WRX, and that kind of solidified me being into cars and being around people in the car community,” Plooster said Plooster didn’t always envision cars consuming his life. Originally, he wanted to pursue a career in cardiology, but lost interest during Covid. He then started hopping between jobs without a clear path in sight. One morning while working on his cars outside a storage unit in Harrisburg, he noticed another person leaned over a vehicle.

“Our job is meant for fun, not for necessity.” said Michael Butterfield, co-owner of Atlas and the guy leaned over the vehicle. When the two first met, Butterfield was working at the local Subaru dealership. “I learned a lot there I–learned a lot about work efficiency and being able to get my job done in the quickest way possible.”

Butterfield had worked at Subaru for years and was able to get Plooster a job as a technician. The two of them worked there for another year, becoming acquainted with a like-minded co-worker.

“It was actually in Florida, my dad was a big cigar guy and when I was a kid we went to a cigar shop together.” said Sawyer Ptak, co-owner of Atlas. “I loved the smell of the cigars, while I was sitting there these guys came in, wearing big Cuban links and they were shopping for, you know, 200 dollar cigars, crazy expensive cigars, and they pulled up in a Ferrari F40. That was the first memory of cars that really stuck in my brain.”

After Ptak graduated high school, he didn’t have any plans for his future. While at his uncle’s house in Florida he got a call from the service manager at Subaru and secured a job in the service department.

“In that moment I told them[Aunt and Uncle] that I was going to own my own performance shop someday,” Ptak said. “The next time I visited them, I owned my own performance shop.”

The three worked together at Subaru for a little under two years, learning and honing their skills. More importantly, the three formed a personal and professional relationship together.

One night after a couple beers at a small, musty shop, they rented together while still working at Subaru and after growing tired of the stress and disrespect they felt from management at Subaru, the three decided it was time to pack up the tools and take a chance.

“I technically got fired” Ptak said. “Subaru didn’t have enough work for everyone there, so I just told them. If I’m not going to make any money here, and Greg, who’s got a

family to feed is missing out on work because I am here, I’m just going to go full time at Atlas.”

Ptak was told by management he had to stay and work full time at Subaru or he would be fired. He walked out of the pristine 10,000-square-foot shop with a smile on his face, never looking back.

“I did a build on a ZL1 Camaro, completely after-market build with a bunch of extra bullshit, and they paid me off of book pay for that,” Plooster said “It ended up taking two-weeks to do that job and the book pay was only 42 hours, so they screwed me over an entire week’s worth of pay.”

Butterfield and Ptak were in their early 20’s when the decision was made to start their own business and Plooster was only 18. Fear of failure and anxiety of performing wasn’t on the minds of the young entrepreneurs. They have already started working on other clients’ cars while under employment at Subaru reaching a point of profitability while still having projects booked and parked outside waiting for work to be done.

“We had nothing to lose,” Butterfield said. “Let’s be totally honest, we had work to do, we had a small but functioning customer-base and we had nothing to lose.”

Their small customer base returned day after day, broken part after broken part, keeping the men busy unlike the leisurely general maintenance and warranty they performed in their jobs at Subaru.

“I think the biggest deciding factor was that we were all prepared to fail.” Ptak said.

The perk of being young with no major responsibilities nor anyone relying on them for a steady paycheck made the decision easier. The time was right for them to take a risk while they all had time to commit and the drive to succeed. Along with Sioux Falls being recognized year-after-year as one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, coupled with the connections made at Subaru and the sheer amount of money circulating through the city, the time and place provided the perfect set of ingredients for a new start up.

“There’s nothing but growth going on in Sioux Falls, so if you were to start a business anywhere, you’d want to start here,” Ptak said. “There’s only guaranteed success and infinite growth.”

South Dakota is one of the only states in the country with virtually no regulation when it comes to emission making it a haven for performance modding and tuning, allowing customers builds to be fully customized without worry of legal trouble.

“I know so many people in Sioux Falls, my network expands throughout,” Plooster said. “When you know so many people it makes different ventures and also aiding your current venture relatively simple.”

The Sioux Falls community enthusiastically invested into the new business without a need for return, putting full trust in the young trio.

Owning a business alone presents challenges, owning a business split between three owners creates a whole different dynamic. When it comes to business decisions, having a 33% split makes bureaucracy easy. Each owner possesses their own strengths, Butterfield builds the engines, Ptak is the troubleshooter, and Plooster is the tuner, all working together in sync, much like the vehicles they create.

“There isn’t really a point where we’re fighting over who should do the work, we all understand who’s going to get the work done,” Ptak said.

Working on cars is blue collar. The grease and grime amalgamate with sweat, the clock ticks away as aggravation rises until finally it’s time to go home and watch the filth pollute the shower water and circle down the drain. Ten-hour days of manual labor underneath a vehicle or bent over a hood isn’t something many people would even consider doing for a job.

“I would say the redeeming aspect was the gratification of the customer along with the money being made,” Plooster said. “Now, I would say it’s in pursuit of an easier future.”

Atlas wasn’t profitable until years later, the men worked all day into the night, making just enough to sustain the business and pay personal bills.

“I think we work our asses off, long term, you know, to make a name for ourselves, to make sure Atlas succeeds,” Ptak said.

The man hours along with the unending dirt and filth mixed with the extreme heat and cold are all obstacles the men tolerate with the hopes of turning Atlas into the flourishing high performance shop the three dream of.

“It’s honestly the satisfaction,” Butterfield said. “Seeing something get put together and it does what you know it should

do. We’re doing it for ourselves, it’s not like someone is telling us to do this because it’s our job, we’re doing it because we want too.”

Even with the enjoyment of completing builds that satisfy customers and grow their brand, conflicts still arise when balancing work-life and personal life.

“There is a balance, and it’s extremely hard to find that balance,” Butterfield said. “It’s probably taken me three years to even remotely try to work on that balance.”

The dedication needed to create a successful business from the ground up leaves no time for personal endeavors.

“Atlas Tuning and Performance is our baby, I mean, 90% of our life is consumed by cars and the culture of the community,” Ptak said.

Atlas is the culmination of years consumed by unrelenting stress and dedication by three people barely old enough to drink a beer. Sacrifices have been made and continue to be made to reach the end of that quarter mile, quicker than the day before.

“We’re not robots and we’re not wizards, but we can be quicker than the rest,” Butterfield said.

Music is a language, a language that connects us all. Songs bring us closer together, inspire us and open the doors of self-reflection, allowing anybody to connect to a wide range of emotions and feel heard. Every so often, a musician will come along and give a voice to the voiceless, or raise a melody that people relate to, and feel in their soul.

This kind of music is born in fire. Turmoil in the world – or in life – is an opportunity to pull harmony from chaos, and sometimes an artist can use the storm to paint a picture; a picture of comfort to those around them. This tumult doesn’t have to be overt, or really even chaotic. Melancholy, unrest, love or simply ordinary life can all serve as muses to those special artists who weave stories and music into a place of comfort.

Christian Wallowing Bull is one of these once-in-a-generation artists. A member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, the folk/blues artist hailing from the Wind River Reservation in west-central Wyoming stormed onto the music scene in 2020 with a five-song EP, titled Warrior. With a voice of thunder and low, rhythmic guitar to match, Wallowing Bull pulled poetry from his life and cemented his place as a songwriter of his people.

“Since I was a little kid, music has always just been who I am,” Wallowing Bull said. “Whether it was hip-hop, or playing guitar, singing, or whatever it was through music, I know that I feel most alive whenever I’m performing on stage. That’s where I desire to be. And recording, writing a new song, there’s just so much in it for me, it feels like medicine for me.”

Wallowing Bull had a long, hard road to travel before he became the multi-talented artist he is today. His mother was from the Wind River Reservation, but he grew up in foster care on the Crow Reservation in Montana, as such he had a choice of where he wanted ‘home’ to be. He’d always taken more after his mother, and so he chose to live on the Wind River Reservation once he could. While still in his foster home, at around ten years old, he started hanging around his cousin Christian Parrish Takes the Gun, an MTV Video Music Award recipient known professionally as Supaman, who would give Wallowing Bull hip-hop beats to freestyle rap over.

At fifteen, Wallowing Bull decided he wanted to learn to play guitar. Some of his siblings played the instrument and showed him a couple of chords. Over the next few years, Wallowing Bull played guitar every single day, constantly honing his craft.

“I was never technically trained, in singing, writing, or playing guitar,” Wallowing Bull said. “[With] guitar, I play pretty much entirely by ear still, and just have always played what I felt. It was just a really intense journey, because I didn’t have anybody to guide me, I just never quit.”

Once he hit his late teens Wallowing Bull started playing open mics– which didn’t happen on the reservation– he was traveling and getting on stage wherever he could. At eighteen, he was getting in trouble and was encouraged to get off the reservation to try to experience life. Wallowing Bull ended up hitchhiking to Alaska, and

from there he would play shows, those around him and some as far away as California.

In the subsequent years, Wallowing Bull was becoming more wild. Off and on he struggled with addiction, but managed to get himself into treatment at 23-years-old. After some years of getting help, at around 26 or 27, he began writing the first iterations of what would become his debut EP, “Warrior.” The release of the EP saw a wave of support completely unprecedented for Wallowing Bull.

“I didn’t realize, but people were so impacted by [Warrior], and that’s where my name started to really get out there,” Wallowing Bull said. “I just put out Spotify and Youtube, just put it in the general area, and it started to hit people. Some of the struggle I’ve been through, and sharing it through music… I didn’t realize it would impact people in that way.”

out, have documented his journey through time, but one stands out above the rest for Wallowing Bull.

“One of my favorite songs to perform, I play it at every show, is In Loving Memory,” Wallowing Bull said. “It’s just heavy. A lot of times when I’m on the road, traveling, I often miss family members or relatives, and it’s about wishing I could take them with me. There’s a lot of hardship on the reservation side of life, and when it comes to my relatives, who are Native, there’s a lot of struggle. A lot of things I went through growing up as well, like jail, institution, and treatment, and all this stuff.”

A couple of years ago, a friend of Wallowing Bull’s came to him, congratulating him on his successes and how he’d “made it.” This friend of his was going through a rough time, and things just weren’t working out for him.

“What I wanted to tell him was just that ‘I haven’t really made

Warrior came out in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was followed by a slew of EP’s and Singles in the subsequent years. These releases show a progression of maturing artistry, and exploration of different musical styles. 2022 saw a mellow, folky track titled Machine, recorded with ex-partner and fellow artist Fiadh. That same year Wallowing Bull also released a live recording of his song Rachel, and in 2023 he came out with a radio edit of his self titled song “Wallowing Bull,” and a single titled “Strong Heart,” which featured the beautiful string talents of violinist Aaron Wade. These releases, among the many others Wallowing Bull has put

it unless you’re there with me, I haven’t made it unless you’re doing ok,’” Wallowing Bull said. “So that was powerful for me, [In Loving Memory] is such an emotional song, wanting to take everybody with me.”

Music was always an escape for Wallowing Bull and such intense songs allow his listeners to escape with him, if only for a moment.

January of 2024 saw the release of Wallowing Bull’s first seven-song LP. “My First Buffalo Hunt” is the culmination of who Wallowing Bull became as a songwriter, and holds a message of familial strength and pride.

“The name [for the album] came from– I was 25 years old – I went on my first buffalo hunt where I took down my first buffalo, and that’s when my grandmother gave me my Native name,” Wallowing Bull said. “It was beautiful… I’d known for a few years that I’d wanted to create some project that had that idea, that journey for me, that right of passage of becoming a man.”

It was toward the end of 2023 that Wallowing Bull decided to write a collection of songs that held those values, and also explored some of the struggles that he’d had to face during his life, namely growing up in and around every aspect of reservation life. The album's opening track, aptly titled Tribal Resilience, is a powerful strain that captures the many facets of such a life.

“This album itself was such an experience for me because I’d never realized that I could war-cry on a song… this project was something brand new for me,” Wallowing Bull said. “As I was writing this music, I kept hearing war-cries and stuff. I have heavy songs, like Land of Wolves, but I’d never projected so loud on a song before.”

Everything Wallowing Bull records is DIY. Having started out recording songs on his phone, and eventually in a home studio, adding these bigger elements to his writing was something he had to learn to navigate on his own. In order to achieve these sounds, he had to think outside of the box, going so far as to use a friend's garage to get the right tones and loudness for his war-cries–an element that brings another level of majesty to the song.

“It just felt fitting, because ‘Tribal Resilience’ is, essentially, just about being proud of who you are,” Wallowing Bull said. “That song hit me hard, and I wasn’t sure how people would receive it because it’s a heavier song, but the way I’ve always viewed my music is that there’s folk elements, there’s some western, kinda grit element to it, but there’s also a tribal, kind of primal element to it also.”

“Tribal Resilience” carries the tones and feelings of traditional pow wow music, with one driving drum, and everything is loud and heavy, emotionally and musically. The second song on the album, “Sweetgrass on My Dash,” is Wallowing Bull’s take on modern reservation life.

“The significance of that song was, imagine an older Native person… just driving an old beater truck on the reservation, [it’s] like what they’d be listening to on the radio,” Wallowing Bull said. “It’s beautiful, because there are some references in there for people that are familiar with the Wind River Reservation. I’d like to continue to capture the life of the Wind River, this is my home, these are my people.

Moving into the rest of the album, Wallowing Bull was unsure of the direction he wanted to take. Keeping with the themes from the earlier songs, he referenced one of his first songs, “Land of Wolves,” with the song “Valley of the Wolves,” which featured a similar story of overcoming hardship. These ideas set the tone for “My First Buffalo Hunt,” an album of pride in who you are, the challenges you’ve faced, and recognizing where you come from.

The album closer, “Ancestors,” is a powerful hymn to those who have come before us. The song rises and falls like an ocean of memory, sweeping the listener away into a tale of time long past. Written overnight, on the very last day of Wallowing Bull’s recording deadline, the song carries a massive emotional weight, and brings the album to rest in a way that sits with the listener, and makes them truly appreciate everything and everyone

“There’s the line, ‘Seventeen miles up ahead/ On a midnight casino run,’ it’s about the big casino on the reservation, the Wind River Casino, and that seventeen mile road is the road between here and Ethete. It’s fun to share this album and have people who are local and understand these references.”

These little references, or “easter-eggs,” in “Sweetgrass” are an example of the thought Wallowing Bull puts into the writing of each song. He knows his audience, he knows who he’s writing his songs for, and this is a way to bring his listeners closer to him. If they know the reservation, then they know a piece of Wallowing Bull’s life that he holds dear.

“At the end of the album, there’s like a breath, just a minute of it being ethereal, and all I say is, ‘I know’,” Wallowing Bull said. “The reason it’s my favorite song to wrap up the album is because that ‘I know’ kind of applies to everything; everything being that journey that we’re all on as humans, things I still struggle with, things my family struggles with. Sometimes there’s nothing you can say when you’re faced with trauma or loss or grief, or anything. There’s a lot of things you can say, but a lot of times I just find

“Ancestors,” for Wallowing Bull, was an exploration of what it was like to be the listener, and not just the singer. In the writing process, “My First Buffalo Hunt” became its own being, an entity set free by Wallowing Bull to share the experiences and life that he has been through.

Throughout this intense musical journey, from 2020 through the present, Wallowing Bull has unintentionally evolved into a voice of his people, drawing the issues they face into the limelight and being somebody that those around him can relate to. He never set out to become the voice of a nation, things just happened that way for him.

“Where I am today, just being able to witness myself… I want to be seen as a friend, as someone who’s able to help,” Wallowing Bull said. “I’ve been through so much, and I’ve struggled so much, and still do with like, mental health stuff, and I want to continue to be able to be a friend, or somebody who’s able to speak out on a lot of hardships, more-so to Native communities because that’s just who I am. I just hope to be someone who can bring light to these situations.

“I feel like a warrior, but I feel just kind of tired– I feel like a tired warrior. We all have our journeys and I just want to be someone who can help along the way, as I have been helped.

And some of the heavier songs, like “Land of Wolves,” reference that warrior mentality that I try to hold onto, and I try to see myself as a warrior as it’s unraveled in my own personal journey. That doesn’t mean just all grit all the time, it’s being vulnerable and remaining open to people and to the community. So I see myself as a warrior, but I haven’t always seen the warrior as being that vulnerable and open person. When I was younger I would say that it is all grit and war cries, heavy, really cool and badass, but it’s not like that anymore. It’s more like me just wanting to be a good man.”

To date, Wallowing Bull has released eight singles, two EPs, and one LP. For an artist of his caliber, one who speaks for his people and can also relate to anybody who has faced challenges in life, there is nowhere to go but up. Every day, more people discover his music and find comfort in its warmth. Wallowing Bull’s journey is not over, but, tired warrior that he is, he will keep pushing on, weaving the chaos of the world into soothing, inspiring melody.

Beguin Enterprises, LLC

Black Hills Federal Credit Union

Brian & Alisha Butterfield

Coca-Cola High Country

Knecht Home Center

Mark & Meg Ward

Peak Sports

Riddle's Group Inc.

Sprockets Fun Foundry

Summit Wealth Group

Superior Siding Inc.

Victor Property Management

Ponder Magazine would also like to thank the Black Hills State University College of Liberal Arts, Office of Marketing & Communications, BHSU Bookstore, & Business Office. As well as the individuals and businesses interviewed and featured in this issue of Ponder.

Ponder Magazine

Exclusive opportunities and professional connections

State-of-the-art amenities for creatives

Ashley Beguin

Editor in Chief

Articles inside

Inherited Vision

We're Not Robots and We're Not Wizards

Un Hogar De Verdad - A Real Home