A portion of my heart was broken last year when news broke that one of my favorite state parks, my one time “home” state park … Upper Sioux Agency … was about to be closed. Immediately plans were made to make one last visit before the actual closing, which occured this past weekend. Somehow a mistake was made on my end for I thought it was in mid-March rather than February. While I will miss the park, there are now no misgivings about the future of that land for it is being returned to the Dakota tribe. For many good reasons.

This, though, doesn’t dismiss what many of my friends felt was long-kept secret in St. Paul, and a decision that was seemingly made minus local input.

Politics aside, I will miss this stretch of public park alongside the Yellow Medicine River, the teepees in a campground along with some beautiful wooded campsites next to the river, as well as the high, tree-lined hill beside the “pull out” on the upper end of the park that stretched along the Minnesota River. I cannot count the number of times fellow writer, Tom Cherveny, and I used that pull out to conclude canoe and fishing trips down the Minnesota. Oh, and of all those catfish and walleye caught in the upriver bends and at the confluence of the two rivers, that triangular strip of earthen prairie sod that came to an ever-narrower point with each spring melt.

My first time at the park was to cover what some 30 years ago was the annual opening area-wide high school cross country meet on a late August afternoon, held on the hilltop where the old agency building stood fast. Little did I know of the historical significance of that building and the park at the time, nor did I learn of the angst of the local Natives until years later when a carload burst through the admission gate during a park event held with an intention to recognize that history. “We ain’t paying to come onto our own land!” came the anguished cry. 

That cry served to awaken me to a realization that as we move into the seventh generation since the War of 1862 between the Dakota and the immigrant white settlers, some of which occurred right there on that very hill overlooking the joined river valleys, some nerves were still raw. Yes, this land retained ghosts of a deeply troubled past. 

Not long after that introduction via the cross country meets our family began visiting the park perhaps a half-hour distant from our small town to camp, canoe and enjoy the incredible mix of nature, all accompanied by that grand and rarely quiet singer, the Dickcissel. No matter how many times a trip was made from the campground to the confluence, and mostly by foot with either a fly rod or camera, the loud songster was perched on the adjacent farmer’s barbed wire, fencepost or treetop, chest protruded and head arched back, blaring an operatic prairie song from deep within it’s inches-deep, feathered soul! 

Over the years we took carloads of foreign exchange students to camp there, for they were usually quite excited to spend a night or two camping in an iconic teepee. They would generally pair off for long walks, often climbing the hill to the park office at the top, or meandering along that dirt road to the confluence beneath the songs of the Dickcissel. One morning I cooked a breakfast for the group that included a package of peppered bacon, and when Jordan, the first or second grader daughter of dear friends, came through at the front of the line she piled the entire stack of bacon onto her plate. She’s been known as the “bacon thief” in the 20 plus years since!

On one deeply dark moonless night artist Joe Hauger set up his sky-scopes and did his best to point out those invisible (to me) constellations high in the night sky. In the end I could connect the dots but simply couldn’t see the inwardly connective tissue, those mythical shields, robes and arrows. I suppose in a few years it won’t make any difference, although just once … once in my 80 plus years of life … I’d love to identify, see or simply acknowledge Orion or Scorpus, or any damned thing beyond the Big Dipper!

On another day another artist, Ashley Hanson, with the help of a cast of local river rats, created a “river play” that could only be viewed by canoeing along various stopping points of the Minnesota that concluded a final two acts at Upper Sioux. Somehow she convinced an at-the-time fellow country newspaper editor, Scott Tedrick, to star in the play dressed to the “nines” in a beautiful blue prairie dress! 

Yet it was the quiet times with my late wife, Sharon, and our sons, Jacob and Aaron, that I most remember, of walking down that dirt road with our fishing poles to the confluence, then coming back near dark often with a stringer of fish that I would fillet with the headlights of our car; of how we would sit quietly in camping chairs watching fireflies buzz in the dry prairie grasses, sipping cold beer or wine. Once on a very cold and sunny winter day we brought the boys down to enjoy the sled hill at the entrance when one trip of trudging back up that hill dragging both the sleds and a boy each was considered a one and done. Have canoe trips been mentioned?

It was here we witnessed our first of many Wacipis, powwows hosted by the Native Dakota in the horse campground on the other side of the park, complete with hot frybread, beautiful drum songs and jingle dresses. It was our introductions to the Native culture and wasn’t taken lightly. Ever.

My last visit came long after Sharon’s untimely death when I came with a new woman friend with our newly purchased camper. We were to meet some of my Missouri family in the midst of their “Laura Ingalls Wilder” trip through the Minnesota and South Dakota prairie with my hopes that they would join us at Upper Sioux. Their’s was a different agenda, although we did meet for dinner in nearby Olivia. We two had ample time to explore the park in our wait, although this was years after a rain-dampened landslide had permanently closed the state highway between the lower campground and the hilltop headquarters. My hope then was to once again visit the canoe takeout but we found the long winding road down the hill chained off. Yet, the prairie was alive, and I would spend most of an uneventful afternoon playing photo “tag” with a yellow warbler. 

Yes, I again went fishing, and we were once again serenaded with an operatic prairie song by a feathered diva, yes, an ever present Dickcissel, and actually saw one of the few Meadowlarks in all my many years here in the “prairie region” of Western Minnesota. And, the Minnesota was sparkling in the late afternoon “Monet light” with beauty and poetic color, and I viewed that upriver bend unknowingly for the last time. The beauty preceded a deep sigh or two one has when meeting an old friend. Then, on our last day, much of an approaching evening was spent trying to create a good image of one of the teepees for a friend who lived in nearby Granite Falls. 

For many years … numbering close to 20 overall before moving upriver to Listening Stones Farm … the Minnesota River bottom was my home away from home, and Upper Sioux Agency State Park was my anchor. This is where I would come after crossing through the uncountable farm fields on mostly gravel roads to where the waters of confluenced rivers roamed, where old, soulful trees lined the banks and adjacent hillsides, where one could find nature’s beauty and sense the soulful depths of a riverine landscape. 

Now the old state park has been rightly reclaimed by Dakota for all those reasons and more, and it is time the rest of us moved along. I’ve heard the plan is to finally demolish the old Agency Building, a bastion to centuries-old ills of racism and genocide, and to close the former park to those outside of the Tribe. According to news sources, the Department of Natural Resources have discussed plans for a new state park within the area. Although there might one day be a replacement park, perhaps the word “replace” is the wrong word. In, these, my farewell thoughts, I must say thanks for many cherished memories.