News From Montana’s American Prarie Reserve – and a Visitor Map!

Crossing Centuries on Foot
President’s Message from Sean Gerrity

I am fortunate that almost every month I am able to steal away on my own to explore areas of the APR on foot. In just a few hours exploring a small portion of the Sun Prairie region, I managed to walk through several million years of geologic and human history. On a small, bare ridge of bentonite, I saw eight-inch fossil of a baculite, a sea animal from the late Cretaceous period. A little further out on the sagebrush prairie lay a lichen-covered, Volkswagen Beetle-sized glacial erratic; a boulder left behind by the Wisconsin glacier roughly eleven thousand years ago.

A half mile further, I came upon a smooth stone that had been carefully cleaved; its edge flaked into a knife or scraping tool. I tried to imagine the Native American hunter, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years ago, ultimately discarding it in favor of better material. A sudden motion beneath a nearby shrub soon caught my attention. Glancing under it, I discovered a nest of tiny vesper sparrow chicks, bringing me full circle from prehistoric life to the prairie’s newest inhabitants. This story will continue centuries into the future, and each time we visit the prairie, we become a part of it. I hope you will have the opportunity to find out what stories the prairie can tell you this year.

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