Theodore Roosevelt’s Resolve
THE LITTLE MISSOURI RIVER IS THE COLOR OF HOT CHOCOLATE AS IT slithers through the Badlands of North Dakota. I watch as it slowly cuts a meandering path just outside of where Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch once stood.
The ranch is gone now, but the reasons our 26th president moved here — stunning beauty, isolation, ruggedness — remain. “Out here, it doesn’t change very much,” says Rolf Sletten, a Roosevelt biographer who is giving me a tour of Roosevelt’s stomping grounds in and around Medora, North Dakota.
The view from Roosevelt’s “front yard” is dominated by the river and several enormous cottonwoods, craggy and misshapen, as if years of being alone has left them twisted and grotesque. Pictures from Roosevelt’s era here (1884 – 1887) show some of those same trees, then young, fresh, and vibrant.
The Elkhorn’s “backyard” faces west, where gray buttes swallow the view, stretching north and south as far as I can see. A light spring breeze cools my skin, which was warmed by the walk in from a nearby parking area. Birds sing in praise of this beautiful spring day, 65 and sunny, ideal conditions to sit on Roosevelt’s long-gone veranda that overlooked the river.
“A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be
