(Soothing Oboe Music) (Soothing Oboe Music) The man who built this cabin was known by some to be a recluse.

His name?

Badger Clark.

And, yes, when people asked, he said he had been named for the badger, a creature known here in South Dakota for its unsociable disposition.

Badger even named his cabin the Badger Hole.

Others thought the man who built this cabin was a sociable fellow, kind, generous, a chronicler of the human spirit.

He was a cowboy poet, a writer of stories, at times even a speech maker, before crowds of admirers throughout the West and Midwest.

Unlike your typical recluse, Badger enjoyed a modest degree of fame, publishing several volumes and earning the title of South Dakota's first poet laureate.

So why did he come here when the literary life beckoned?

Why did Badger Clark settle in this remote area of the Black Hills?

To build a cabin in the woods?

In his letters to a friend back east, a methodist minister friend will call Charles Badger, reveal the surprising range of emotions in living his life of semi solitude during the first part of this century.

My little cabin takes care of my needs, keeps me cool in the summer and toasty in the winter.

It's built solid out of stone and shingle, and the lumber is cut from solitary pine, which accounts, I suppose, for the solitary life I have come to lead.

But lonely every morning between 6 to 10, those and fans greet me at my back door and quarrel like children over the feed I throw out to them each afternoon on a stump.

I deposit my food scraps and thither resort all the camp robbers, woodpeckers, blue jays, chickadees and chipmunks that you could wish for.

And the squirrels are always on the job, racing along down logs with pine cones in their mouths, or shouting profane and abusive language at you from the safety of the treetops.

Enough like human society to satisfy anyone.

Still, I wonder, wouldn't I be just as well off back there in New York, signing autographs all day?

Hearing the thunder of the public every time I lifted my pen, I keep reminding myself I have more pleasures right outside my window than I'd have from all the humdrum hours of toiling after fame.

And yet I want it as much as any writer would.

For Badger, Clark, the choice to lead a simple life would lead to unexpected complexities.

(Soothing Oboe Music) Another year grows calmly, old Frost is on the morning.

Grass.

And quaking aspen shed its gold.

The mountain lakes lie still.

Is glass.

Here it is.

Winter, 1920 8th November.

And that means election time.

Many politicians are wondering just what's the matter with the present generation?

That's easy.

It's urbanization.

People were never meant to live in offices and walk.

When they do walk on cement.

Their nerves get as flabby as their hands.

And then, wanting something but not knowing what they try to satisfy their cravings with alcohol and all the other ancient forms of cussedness.

If the business and social pressure of our nation continues, thousands may end up shaking the dust of the city from their boots and building every man his hut in the wilderness, seeking such things as sleep, silence, solitude.

Once they get their sleep out of the way, these business folk may for the first time realize that they have the leisure to go through the pockets of their inner consciousness and fish up a strange and beautiful thing, which at present they don't realize they possess their souls.

One famous Easterner came west this year to search through his soul.

President Calvin Coolidge spent the summer vacationing in the Black Hills for three months.

The Western white House was just a stone's throw from my cabin door.

Now, ordinarily, having the president for one's neighbor would make for a bothersome situation.

But Mr. Coolidge, being the man of silence that he is, I had no doubt but what?

The summer would pass just as quietly as any other.

Well, late in August, there was a rodeo, a grand affair at which the president was guest of honor.

Now, some years back, during my cup hunting days down in Arizona, I had written a little verse about life out on the range and the long cattle drive.

I call it riding.

You know, it's funny, but local cowboys go right teary eyed whenever they hear this little verse.

So I agreed it could be read as a sort of opening invocation at this rodeo.

There's some that, like the city grass that's curried smooth and green theaters and strangling collars, wagons run by gasoline.

But for me, it's horse and saddle.

Every day without a change.

And a desert sun blazing on a hundred miles of rain.

Just to ride.

Riding desert.

Rippling in the sun.

Mountains blue along the skyline.

I don't envy anyone when I'm riding.

When my feet is in the stirrups.

And the horses on the bust.

There's just a flash and lightning.

From a cloud of golden dust.

And the bull and of the cattle is coming down the wind.

And a finer life than riding would be mighty hard to find.

Just to ride.

Riding desert rippling in the sun.

Mountains blue along the skyline.

I don't envy anyone when I'm riding.

Now inviting the muses to a rodeo is no frontier, after all, than inviting the president.

Well, afterward, there was a luncheon at the country club, which is a pretty funny event itself to follow a rodeo.

All the dignitaries of the town were on hand with the president to chat about the roping and the bulldog, and over tea.

Well, to everyone, surprise!

After introductions all around.

The president asks, where's the poet Badger Clark?

I'd like to meet the author of the cowboy poem.

Nobody thought about having the poet present.

A car was dispatched, and I was summoned by royal command to an interview with the great New Englander.

Now, Mr. Coolidge is not as standoffish as the public believes.

Of course, he's not what you'd call Gabby, either.

So the interview turned out to be more of a monologue by me, and I'm not a very loquacious person myself.

As you can see.

Well, here I am, a reclusive old bachelor.

My poems are my only children, most of whom have made their way into the world.

You know, every now and then I hear how my children have visited interesting places where I shall never go and met fine people whom I shall never see.

But for one afternoon I rubbed shoulders with the president of the United States, and it was mighty fine, standin face to face with fame myself.

Charles says that I should not worry about fame at age 45, that it belongs to youth.

But I find youth is conventional.

When I was young, I had no desire for fame, only adventure.

When I was 20, I had successfully ruined a college career by chasing a goat through a dormitory over there at Dakota Wesleyan University.

So I took off for Cuba with a crowd of colonizers right after the Spanish-American War.

You know, I enjoyed myself there as much as any young man in a new exotic climate.

But after six months, colonizing scheme fell through.

I lost my shirt and nearly my hide.

The climate sent me away with a case of tropical fever, which, upon my return to this cold northern climate, threatened to turn into tuberculosis.

TB, said the doctor.

Get out of here in 30 days and go to the southwest.

So at age 22, I set out for Arizona, for freedom.

You know the most Americans today.

Freedom is just a word compared to the freedom of the old open range, where a fella could start out at a ranch and ride for 50 miles in any direction without ever hitting a fence.

In six months, I simply forgot my TB.

I grew so enthusiastic about the cowboy life that I wrote a little letter in verse about it to my stepmother, and she, being a more practical person than I sent it to a magazine.

And about two weeks after that, I received a check for $10.

Now, up until that time, I'd been pretty undecided about what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that I wanted a job without any hours, without any boss, and without any responsibility.

So when I received that check for my verses, I saw that I had the ideal job cinched.

Well, no money in it, of course, but a job that would do for life very nicely.

Down in Arizona, I had charge of a ranch set bordered on Old Mexico, and one day three Mexican families came riding in with a big band of goats.

Now, I haven't got any kind of prejudice towards any kind of people, but I just naturally don't take to goats.

Well, I rode into the Mexicans camp and I explained to them how their goats were ruining my boss's cattle range and torn the life out of my horse pasture.

Would they please pick up and move?

Comprende, Amigos?

Oh six, senor.

They comprende perfectamente and would move their goats just as soon as they could pull up stakes a Posada manana.

Well, Posada manana came and went.

And riding around that part of the range one day I saw the goats were still there.

So I rode into the Mexicans camp again, and they stammered and sputtered and said, okay, senor, but what?

Two of the little baby goats had been very sick and they would pull up stakes soon say, Posada manana.

I done my best to look stern as I rode away.

Well, now, the next day, my partner and I were sent out on the range to change the brands on about 50 head of cattle.

And between tending the branding fires and slopping them animals to the ground and dodging their horns.

We had a busy day and it was 105 in the shade.

Well, that night the other boys took their girls into town to a dance, and for once I was glad that nobody loved me because I wanted to take my time that night in a good, soaking, sizzling, soul satisfying bath.

So after supper, I just drag the old washtub out there in the middle of the floor and I undressed.

Now I had I had just started scrubbing down when I remembered the cattle.

I'd aim to throw them into the pasture before supper, and I plumb forgot.

Well, I just jumped into an old pair of boots without going through no more formalities in the way of dressing, and I galloped across to the corral in the moonlight.

I opened the gate, the cattle scuffled through and I stopped.

Now it was a hot June night with a full moon and just a breath of wind.

And right then it come to me that I was actually feeling a breeze.

That breeze touched me up and down and round, as soft as a brush of ostrich blues.

I never know a fella could get so much fun out of his own skin.

I know now why civilized Americans aren't really free.

No man is free that wears clothes.

But I was free then.

Alone in the moonlight.

Miles from the nearest ranch.

The night was mine.

The moonlight was mine.

And that warm, delicate breeze was my right.

Then I saw my old white horse over in the corral.

And I jumped on without no saddle.

And we loped down the road aways.

And then we walked a spell.

And I sang high me mudra, that moon and that warm, delicate breeze.

All right.

Then all of a sudden, that beautiful moonlight got all mixed up with a couple of headlights.

And I knew there was a car coming right up behind me.

The driver of that car beeped his horn.

My old horse swung up a draw over the hill and straight out across the range.

I tried to stop him, but I had no stirrups.

Now I see the smoke from the Mexicans campfires right in front of me, and my old horse is fanning it straight for their camp, as it were, the home of his childhood.

Five seconds later we sailed into that camp.

Mexicans scattered like quail.

They call upon the name of the Lord and all the saints.

We tore through that camp.

Tents caved in.

Pot racks went flying.

Free alleys dumped into the ashes.

My horse jumped clean over a little goat.

And come near to spilling me off.

And finally I got him pointed towards home, and it wasn't long at his feet before he got there.

Well, the next morning I was in town and a fella told me how a Mexican outfit had come into town that morning and had gone to confession for the first time in years.

Now these Mexicans had been camped out on the range, you see, and they had seen the angel Gabriel come swooping down on them out of the moonlight on a great white horse.

He had sailed through their camp like lightning, they'd said, but none of them had suffered more than a scare, because the good hearted angel had kept his arms throwed across his face, so as not to kill them with the light of his countenance.

No, there's been nothing famous about my life up to the present.

As you can see.

But I have created one legend for the Mexicans of Arizona.

(Soothing Oboe Music) (Soothing Oboe Music) (Soothing Oboe Music) June 1st, 1931.

You can tell just how bad this economic depression is getting.

A new poetry magazine is being started over in Sioux Falls, which says it can't pay its contributors, but would like to have a poem from me once a month.

And please send the first no later than next week.

I suppose they don't pay the printers anything either, and ask the paper manufacturers to send a ton of stock gratis for the honor and glory of literature.

Don't people realize that writing and speechmaking is work, and that a few handshakes and I enjoyed it very much, said pretty light on the stomach.

Pardon me, but I am getting old and grouchy.

I detest a writer who, like a dog with a bone, plants his foot on his poor little scrawls and snarls at the world.

If there are any good at all, they belong to the world.

After the writer gets his little fee for them.

But some sort of payment is only civilized and necessary in these times.

it's been so dry this spring.

It's June, and the meadows are just beginning to green.

My vegetables, planted in mid-April, are just showing themselves.

I nearly stepped on a meadow nest out near the house this morning.

Their presence here in the woods is very unusual.

I think the dry spring has driven them up.

Being a little more busted than usual this spring, I stepped up the Speechmaking circuit.

I pestered 11 universities in May.

All of them cap and gown affairs.

I wore my doctors of the elements.

That honorary degree from the same university, which once expelled me, comes in handy on such occasions, although at times I get the panicky feeling that I have absentmindedly walked into public clad in an old fashioned nightshirt.

If some millionaire would endow me, I would be glad to go around and talk to audiences for nothing.

But in my present circumstances, such, of course, would soon have me fighting the squirrels for pine nuts to survive.

I've.

Spanish is all love and tongue soft as music.

Light his spray.

Twas a girl I learned from living down Sonora.

Way.

I don't look much like a lover.

Yet I sing her love words over.

Often when I'm all alone.

Love me a more me Corazon.

Me more me Corazon.

You know, for nearly half my life I have lived alone.

And it suits me so well that when I'm off on a speechmaking trip, I soon get fidgety and wistful for this little shack.

But now, after all this time, the Reverend Charlie wants to marry me off.

He sent me his photograph this month.

It looks a bit older.

Says he's never been so busy.

In hard times.

People return to the church, he tells me.

And he informs me that marriage is definitely back in fashion.

Well, I thank him for the wish that I had a wife.

But really?

Can you imagine a modern woman of the sort that I would want, who could tolerate this kind of living for a week?

Oh, wow.

I can't even afford a vacuum cleaner to sweep up my tobacco.

and I married at the usual age.

My wife and I would long ago have starved to death for that reason.

I have seldom been in grave danger.

Matrimonial.

Women are not so romantic about marriage as men.

They have to be more practical.

And most of them are.

then again, there is no fool like an old fool.

I am 48 now, and could quite easily fall in love once a week if permitted.

But for an old maverick like me, to enter into the most intimate of relations would be insanity.

Saint Paul says that it's better to marry than to burn.

But at my age, I don't see the slightest necessity of doing either.

Having come single this far, by luck, by perversity, and by the good taste of several women, I intend to go right on and successfully avoid both hell and marriage.

Oh, I confess that if I grow too old to enjoy the lovely lights and shadows of the twilight are too blind to read, or so feeble that to carry a bucket of water up from the spring seems like a labor of Hercules.

And maybe I'll regret being alone.

I will sit here in a sort of vegetable life, and some day somebody will find me dead in bed.

That'll be better for both of us, wouldn't it, Charles?

Charles.

If you must serve me in some religious capacity, I would much rather you bury me than marry me.

August 1934.

Dear publisher.

Oh.

What's the hope?

What's the purpose?

I have been cross and ornery here for the past few weeks, unable to do anything but sit and listen to the babbling brook of sweat running down my backbone.

This heat is outrageous.

Not at all like the Black Hills.

Summers of old.

I think the tourists must bring the heat from the Mississippi Valley right up with them.

You know, this depression is having a bad effect on people's scruples.

On my last speaking trip to Minnesota, where I read my poems to the stockyard workers in Saint Paul, I decided to take in a motion picture.

Now, these new talking pictures seem to be satisfying.

Some common need for diversion.

These days.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when hoping to divert my own mind for a while, I settled back in my seat, only to hear Bing Crosby singing a tune set to my own roundup lullaby.

And if that weren't enough, Poetry magazine, one of the most highbrow literary magazines in the country, published a poem of mine.

It wasn't credited to me, but as a native folk song indigenous to the southwest, which the cowboys could be heard to sing on their long rides over the romantic wilderness.

Well, I didn't mind.

I felt it in honor of sorts.

But now a publisher out in Denver is putting out postcards with my poem A Cowboy's Prayer, printed on it.

And underneath the words.

Author unknown.

Unfortunately, so.

Well, I have nothing to gain from it materially.

But when I wrote back to them, they openly accused me of stealing my own stuff.

So I am writing back to them at.

Oh, what's the hope, What is the purpose?

Oh.

Where I stand I can see my garden wilting in the afternoon sun.

Where is the good rich, dark mountain weather?

How I long for the rain clouds to scudding low over the hilltops.

And the long rolling echo of mountain thunder.

Picked up a little book in town by the young writer Steinbeck.

Charles says he's all the rage back in New York.

You know our mighty gods.

Hemingway.

Faulkner.

Steinbeck.

Well, they're all right, technically, but they do write about the damnedest people in the damnedest language.

People I don't know and don't want to know, even in print.

As for my own efforts, a politician friend is putting out all my latest poems in a little book, which should be out by Christmas.

Regular publishers won't touch poetry if the writer is not a national figure.

I suppose I should take to writing about Skid Row bums like all the rest, and then maybe a few doors would open to me.

Dear God, haven't I past the adolescent stage when I desire anything like fame?

Oh, I must lay off reading intellectuals.

I must crawl up and get some sun and air.

But where?

Outside my door.

The whole hot land seems dying in a dream.

Oh.

I hear less and less from Charles.

He tells me how the destitute of New York are increasing in numbers almost daily.

He's become a kind of poor man's missionary, having opened a soup kitchen on their behalf.

He asks me why.

Why is the struggle getting harder?

As though I were some sage on the mountain side?

Well, don't listen to politics, I tell him.

Roosevelt and all the Congress are shouting.

Try this, try that!

Striving to save our system that's gone awry.

Oh, there's a new deal in Washington, I tell him.

But there is an old deal out here among the mountains, older than they.

And it fulfills its promises and does not fail.

But as I look out now.

I see those mountains up.

And they are ashes.

And the sky is like shining steel.

Oh.

oh, I am ill.

I caught the meanest cold two weeks ago, and it has surprised me unpleasantly by bringing back some of the dear old symptoms I'd have forgotten.

Cough, temperature, night sweats, and other features which mark the grim countenance of that monster.

TB.

Of course, one does.

Doesn't wildly do something.

In such a case, one gives attention to what one eats, sleeps abundantly, waits to see what's going to happen next.

Now it's just a warning.

When one lives among these pines that stretched to their full growth through slow centuries.

One is apt to get the erroneous notion that he too, is immortal.

Dear God, I love my life so much it frightens me.

And yet I try to realize what I must face sooner or later.

That I am, even as other men.

And that the flowers may come back next spring.

Unloved by me.

(Sickly Cough) Oh, I dread the break.

When I shall die.

Not from my human friends.

For they are shifting shadows such as I.

But from my earth that still must swing.

From day to dusk.

From dusk to dawn.

Slow shimmering on.

From spring to spring.

Through all the years when I am gone.

Has it been my job thus far.

Only to live?

Or hasn't my job been to.

To keep a record of that living as I once believed?

I think that the flame of my ambition has dwindled to a very dim flicker.

(Soothing Oboe Music) (Lively Oboe Music) (Lively Oboe Music) He's coming!

Would you believe it?

This is the best Christmas present I could have asked for Christmas, 1937.

I've scraped together some money.

Will be there this spring if the ten year old invitation still stands.

Sincerely, Charles.

If it still stands.

Oh, I will start by scraping the cobwebs from the corners of this cabin.

No no no no no.

Better yet, I will write a poem in honor of his coming and have it waiting for him when he arrives.

When the governor declared me poet laureate of the state last fall.

I felt nothing less than a hypocrite.

But now there is reason to write again, and hope and inspiration.

Let us get out into the hills again.

I and my friend on our own.

No, no, no.

Alone I and my friend.

Alone.

Yes.

Let us get out into the hills again.

I am my friend.

Alone.

Far from the ways and places of men.

I know no.

Far from the ways.

far from the streets and the haunts of men.

Yes.

Let us get out into the hills again.

I and my friend alone.

Far from the streets.

And the haunts of men.

Far from the streets and the haunts.

Far from the streets and the haunts of men.

Let us get out into the hills again.

I and my friend alone.

Far from the streets.

And the haunts of men.

But God, it won't come right.

I have worked it over till my brain is numb.

The first flash came so bright that more ideas after a night.

I thought it some new constellation that men would wonder at.

But God, the thought was great.

The scheme, the dream.

Wait till the first charm broke.

The thing just wrote itself, and then it stuck.

It's dead as yet.

And the heart, the soul, the fiery, vital part to give it.

Life is what I cannot get.

Every spark is died.

I drop it all, only I can't.

I love my job.

You who ride the thunder.

Do you know what it is to dream and drudge and throb?

I wonder did it come at you with a rush?

Your dream.

Your plan?

Yes.

With rapt face and sparkling eyes.

If so, I know how you began flinging the hot globe out between the skies.

Walking in seas with white beach lines.

Sketching in the sun, the moon, the lightnings and the rains.

Sowing the hills with pines rising a rim of purple round the plains.

And then.

Then.

Man.

Oh, I see it now.

Dear God, I see your job.

While ages crawled.

Your eyes take on a sadder light for mine.

The fire and flower and center of it all.

Mine won't come right.

After slow centuries.

He your your central theme is, is just a jangling echo of your dream.

Grand as the rest may be.

He ruins it.

Why don't you quit, crumple it all and dream again?

No.

No.

Floor after floor.

You work it out.

Revise, refine.

Dear God, how you must love your job.

Help me as I love my.

Let us get out into the hills again.

I and my friend alone.

Far from the streets and the haunts of men.

To find no.

To see, no.

To learn.

To touch.

To dream.

No.

One.

Once his inner torment had passed.

Once the long winter had melted into a new and promising springtime Badger Clark would complete his poem.

Let me get out in the hills again.

I and myself alone.

Out through the wind and the lash of rain.

To find what we really own.

Under the stars while a campfire dies.

Let me sit and look myself in the eyes.

Same, but all of it.

Tired in old cities but all too loud.

For I and myself have lost our hold.

Swirled in the shifting crowd.

Under the spread of a smokeless sky.

We must find each other.

Myself and I. Blackwood.

Write.

What an odd life my life has become.

I had to come out here and live the simple life.

To figure out what a complicated proposition living is.

But it's the life I want.

I'm sure of that now.

And what more could any man ask?

So I shall try once more to sift the old Parnassus and wine, and claw the air.

And stare at newly made lines.

And scratch out certain words, and put in others, and make up little tunes to sing the lines by, to be sure of their rhythm.

And walk the floor.

And feel that I'm God's fool.

Even to dream of being able to write a line of real poetry and yet get the thrill one always gets out of attempting something too big for him.

(Soothing Oboe Music) (Soothing Oboe Music) This film is dedicated to Darryl F Patten, who passed away suddenly during the filming of Mountain Thunder.

Since 1985, Payton Ed portrayed Badger Clark on stage throughout the United States and Japan.

His energetic portrayals introduced new generations to the writings of Badger Clark, while his striking resemblance to Clark fascinated those who still remembered the cowboy poet.

Peyton abided deeply in the sentiments expressed by Badger Clark in the final lines of his poem Deer Trails.

The joy is in the journey and not in getting there.