Tapestry Institute: Sowbelly Canyon

The bluffs shown above stand guard over the canyon's east slope above the bunkhouse and other ranch buildings. The photograph was taken on an early evening in August, 2005. The lowering sun had already spun shadows up the slopes of forest leading to the canyon rim, but the cliffs and towering thunderhead behind were lit by sunset light of the high plains above.

Sowbelly Canyon, on Pine Ridge in the northwestern Nebraska panhandle, was a full and formative partner in Tapestry's work and mission between fall 2004 and fall 2007. We will always remember and honor this Place and the support, protection, and kinship we shared together for three vitally important years.

Where the name "Sowbelly" came from

What Sowbelly Canyon was like

The "end" of our story with Sowbelly

Sowbelly Forestry: Before and After the Fire

Where the name "Sowbelly" came from.

The name "Sowbelly" goes back to the late 1800's when, according to local tradition, several soldiers from nearby Fort Robinson were surprised by a Lakota war party while on patrol.They fled into the canyon and hid here for several days, surviving on the salt pork -- "sow belly" -- in their saddlebags. The canyon protected Indian people from the Fort Robinson soldiers as well. When Northern Cheyenne imprisoned at Fort Robinson broke for freedom on a bitterly cold winter night during a blizzard, at least two groups headed west along Pine Ridge. As far as history knows, everyone in both of those two groups was killed by pursuing soldiers within a matter of days. But one tradition says a small group of women and children took shelter from the blizzard and soldiers in Sowbelly Canyon and survived to eventually make it home to their relatives. (Return to top of page)

What Sowbelly was like.

Sowbelly Canyon was much the same when we lived there as it was in the late 1800's, despite the fire of 2006. In fact, in some ways the fire began the long process of restoring the canyon's forest-and-grasslands ecosystem to something like it was at that time. As you can see in the photographs below, the forest covered much more land, much more densely, by 2006 than it had at any previous time in the canyon's history.

	Sowbelly Canyon in 1924. This image is from The Jesse Earl Hyde Collection , Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Department of Geological Sciences. Used with permission.
	Sowbelly Canyon in 2004, from a position slightly lower and south of (to the "left" of) the viewpoint in the Hyde photograph. Primary differences are an increase in the density of pines and less prominence of deciduous trees along the creek due to season (winter instead of summer). The areas of dense pines where there was only grass in 1924 are the areas that burned most catastrophically in the wildfire of 2006.
	Sowbelly Canyon in 2007, from a position very close to that of both previous pictures, but closer to the canyon rim and a bit farther south. The photo was taken just after a freezing fog in mid-winter, as the white ground helps show the burned trees (which are otherwise nearly invisible against the charred ground surface). Fog obscures the far side of the canyon. Notice that the areas on the slopes in the near distance, that are so badly burned, are the ones so densely forested in 2004 and hardly forested at all in 1924.

Although 90% of the canyon was burned, much of it severely, the land was healing nicely at the time we had to leave it. Our Forestry Project helped it through the initial stages of the process and documented what happened. This helped us learn more about how we and others can live with the increasing presence of wildfires and catastrophic burns in these times of climate change, as all of us harvest the results of years of unintentionally unhealthy land use practices around the world. We are now preparing a book about our experience and what we learned, to share with others in this time of numerous wildfires. To receive notification when the book is in print, please email us your contact information. Put "wildfire" in the email subject line. (Return to top of page)

The "end" of our story with Sowbelly.
Despite our devotion to the Canyon, which only increased after the burn, we had to leave Sowbelly 15 months after the fire. We chose to make healing of the land our priority during the first, critical year after the fire, so we cancelled public events that would have generated funds for the annual land payment -- but that would also have brought damaging levels of human presence and foot traffic to the too-fragile landscape. As a result, we preserved Sowbelly but had to let it go into other hands.

In the larger scheme of things, though, we have not lost it. Sowbelly Canyon lives on. It continues healing with the boost provided by the critical year of protection we gave it. And it lives in our mission and work, carried out soon with a new land partner in New Mexico. (Return to top of page)