Writings by David A. Ek

by David A. Ek

There’s silent emptiness in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. If there ever were such a thing as “fly-over country,” this would be it. I once lived in its margined outskirts—when I was an impatient and unfocused young adult. The main thing I remember then about the Powder River was its bridges. I now regret not getting to know this river better back then—not just passing over or passing by—but to truly know it. In subsequent years, while in far remote and distant watersheds, the Powder River’s intrinsic qualities grew on me and drew me in. I felt the pull of its sights, sounds, and smells—the desire to feel its mud and subtle charms buried deep below its agricultural and petroleum industry’s overt dominance. Maturity can do that to you. Only years later had I finally succumbed to the urge to befriend, with wide eyes and full senses, this neglected fly-over free-flowing treasure.

To be overlooked is not always bad, especially for watersheds. Agricultural communities dam noticed rivers. Noticed rivers have cities lining their shores with waters confined between immobile walls. People abuse and over-use noticed rivers. A calamity of sounds follows the exploited as surely as squeals follow predators eviscerating their prey. Rarely in noticed rivers can one find the comforting silence of inner or outer peace. However, no hawkish dam-builder with piercing cry had swooped down and disemboweled the Powder River or clipped its wings—not yet. It helps that the landscape is not conducive to dams. Regardless of the reason, the Powder River is one of the West’s longest free-flowing rivers. This distinction alone should get it noticed.

It had not. For many people, the Powder River remains, just as it had with me in my youth, just another after-thought—a soon-forgotten roadside blur. This is fly-over country after all. Unfortunately for the Powder River, not having despoilers notice is not enough.

Since the Powder is a slow, meandering, braided, mud-filled free-flowing river in the heart of sturgeon country, sturgeons should note it. The river should be teeming with sturgeon. The more common shovelnose sturgeon notices, but the endangered pallid sturgeon does not. Why? For survival, sturgeon embryos require their free-flowing floats to be in long, shallow, and muddy rivers. So, what is the matter? It turns out the Powder River is not long enough for pallid sturgeon. For people, a miniature model house would also be unlivable and unusable as it would leave us homeless and out in the cold.

Compared with their shovelnose sturgeon cousins, pallid sturgeon embryos require longer free-floating streams. They need a bigger house. Besides a free-floating Powder River, pallids would also require free-floating segments of the Yellowstone River and maybe portions of the Missouri River. That is more than a house; that’s an entire and holistic pallid community. A float down a free-flowing Powder into a free-floating Yellowstone and then into a free-floating Missouri would be a long free-float indeed. Pallids would be pleased.

To the dismay of this ancient relic (that is if sturgeons are capable of feeling may, or dismay), the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers have dams—many dams. Migrating fish notice dams. A dam changes a river’s feel, look, taste, sound, and smell. Sensory disorientation has consequences for sturgeons throughout Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. While humans laud the Powder River for being one of the longest free-floating rivers, from the pallid sturgeon’s perspective, it is not laudable enough since dams on the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers directly affect the characteristics of the entire Power River Basin.

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The only instruction I received was that they would launch the boat at 8:30 am from the Lewis and Clark boat ramp, near the head of Lake Sakakawea—so “Be ready.” An internet search indicated the Lewis and Clark State Park held the only boat ramp near this lake befitting the intrepid explorers’ name. In anticipation of the morning’s trip on the Missouri River with Ryan’s pallid sturgeon monitoring crew, I spent the night as close to the launch as possible. No unintended complications were going to make me miss the pallid crew. I vowed not to burden their tight schedule or complicate their already challenging duties.

The night before, I drove close to the state park. For convenience’s sake and cost-savings, I employed the technique I had used countless times, especially as a youngling—I slept in the car. I parked on a wide stretch of a lonely gravel road on what already seemed a lonely North Dakota prairie enclave—east of and high above the Yellowstone and Missouri River confluence. When darkness took over, the road wasn’t as lonely as it first appeared. Countless trucks traveled back and forth between nearby Williston and the oil and gas wells that spread out across the horizon. During the night, I took notice of the number of petroleum wells, since darkness enhances all sights and illuminations.

I had easily lost production facilities in the daylight’s glare and visual distractions. However, at night, the dots shone in all their preeminent hydrocarbon glory. The sheer number of lighted distractions drew my eyes like a moth to a flame. Flames they were—with real fire and intensity. The night appeared to draw me in close to the heat. If I were a whaler, sweat would squeeze from my ever-tightening grip on the harpoon. But no mere harpoon could ever vanquish such a behemoth—or so many. Each flame was simply one of the many busy industrial sites with their all-night industrializing—complete with wellhead gas flares and burn-offs. I stared at the consuming pyres. Their allusion beckoned me as if it was a safe and comfortable hearth. Was this but a mirage enticing me into fathomless depths?

Regardless, the motion overload broke my trance. Motion everywhere—a unified hive with all frantic activities serving the queen. I, standing alone and apart, seemed indolent by comparison. Maturity will do that to you. Flame deities danced with wild outstretched arms—literally and figuratively burning up the night. Gas lights dotted the near-ground and distant horizons. Prairie fires, complete with prairie mirages. The night was busy on the North Dakota prairie east of the Yellowstone and Missouri River confluence. Many flames, dots, blurs, Fata Morgana, and dancing deities consume the land while fewer and fewer pallid sturgeon struggle in nearby waterways. From either perspective, a lonely and empty prairie it was not.

Wind is ubiquitous and communal here. Everything that doesn’t bend will eventually break or worn smooth by its eternal rolling onslaught. Relentless. The ever-present wind in and around the Williston Basin stops for and serves no one.

During the night’s dancing entertainment, I watched with fascination the nearby lower-lying plants and the higher-level flaming shamans dancing to the same music and the same beat—they were all in harmonious synchronicity to the wind conductor. Passing trucks barreling down the road, with or without full barrels, interrupted the harmonious dance and annoyed the otherwise enchanting scene. Compressed wind from each passing truck rocked my car and the nearby sagebrush so that we too joined the near-ground synchronized dance; however, the higher gas flares flaunted our non-harmonious dissonance.

The petroleum industry uses gas flares to relieve pressure from built-up methane and other dangerous gases. Oil wells pulling crude oil from the ground also inadvertently pull flammable gases. These gases have marketable value, but only if gas capturing and transportation to market infrastructure are nearby. If not, operators cannot leave gas at the well; the pressure would explode. Releasing gases into the air is dangerous and environmentally prohibited. Therefore, operators burn the gases in tall stacks well above ground level.

Despite their hypnotic dancing skills, nobody likes gas flares. Environmentalists cite the production of greenhouse gases and harm to night-flying fauna. Moths are not the only creatures that fly towards light, whether the light is a streetlamp, porch globe, campfire, or a Williston gas flare. Well owners do not like flares because they are government-regulated and represent millions of dollars of lost revenue—burned and wasted.

Williston area flares come from Bakken Shale production—the same geologic strata synonymous with “fracking.” Fracking is the controversial drilling and capturing technique that fueled the nation’s early 21^st-century oil boom-and-bust cycle—and caused an undeterminable environmental and health impact. Science and public opinion are inconclusive on the latter front. However, gas is not the only prairie combustible—we all have tempers and divisiveness that build pressure if not adequately burned off. In the world of Western water, there are always flare-ups or monster whales lurking below the surface.

There is no doubt fracking has increased petroleum production in the Bakken Fields. For instance, North Dakota’s oil production declined 10 percent from 1988 to 1998 but increased 176 percent from 1998 to 2008 and increased 743 percent from 2008 to 2018. The change to local economies, societies, and livelihoods was unmistakable, we could see, feel, and smell it—as a pallid sturgeon senses a free-flowing river. Prairie communities witnessed a remarkable economic transformation due to fracking. However, a fracked community can never return to pre-fracked times any more than a moth can return to a caterpillar or chrysalis, or an adult pallid sturgeon can return to a floating embryo.

On another level, fracking and flares represent just another face to the rural West’s long history of wildly riding from boom to bust in a tormenting perpetual cycle. It is as if the brimstone-smelling beast snarls, “I will follow you for an eternity—around the Missouri Breaks’ sharp bend, past the prairie maelstrom, and around perdition’s flames—I will never give up.”

Beyond such Melvin-inspired dramatic images, there’s little doubt that the pulsating boom-and-bust rhythm has burdened Western communities with the same Western dance. Whether wind, economic forces, petroleum industries, or cultural traditions, consciously or not, we are but entities reacting and swaying to the conductor’s baton. For much of the West, the conductor does not control the baton—the baton controls the conductor, each synchronized to a pulsating dissonance of compressed winds uniquely Western in origin and persistence. Upon reflection, humankind has more in common with gas flares and pallid sturgeon drifting embryos than I ever imagined.

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I survived the night and compressed winds without flying too close to any flame and without petroleum-laden trucks running me over while speeding to sights unseen. Not wanting to have the Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Service crew wait for me, I arrived almost two hours early. I whiled the time looking at unidentified shadowy mammals playing in the still waters of Lake Sakakawea’s marina within Lewis and Clark State Park. They appeared engaged with a playful dance all their own—a water dance. They bobbed their heads just enough above the surface tension to let me know of their presence but not enough to identify the species. They gleefully mocked me. It reminded me of playful California seals along the Oregon coast, but such creatures in Lake Sakakawea’s freshwater seemed unlikely. They were probably just otters or beavers. Or perhaps my mind played pre-dawn tricks on me. If they were seals, this would have been truly remarkable. However, otters and beavers are remarkable creatures in their own right.

Not far from here, five years before, beavers helped save the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara’s water supply on the Fort Berthold Reservation. An unreported fracking brine spill cascaded down a rocky gully toward Lake Sakakawea and the Reservation’s water supply. Beaver dams contained most of the spill, which saved the communities considerable work, expense, ecological impact, and the ill health effects typical of contamination spills.

A producing well using fracking techniques not only pulls crude oil and flammable gases, but it also pulls enormous quantities of water laced with salts, brines, heavy metals, and sometimes even radioactivity. Most non-petroleum people would call this contaminated wastewater, but to make it sound less onerous, the industry calls it “saltwater.” “Saltwater,” isn’t that sweet? Isn’t that special? You’re not afraid of a little “saltwater” are you? Don’t you now feel safe, warm, and cozy inside? Hot cocoa anyone?—while curled up to the fireplace’s warm glow. Forrest Gump was right: within any box marked as sweet chocolate, you never know what you will get.

Historically, few regulations protected the public from “saltwater” spills. There aren’t enough beavers to save us all—even if they were so inclined. However, even after laws that adopted oversight regulations, many local farmers claim enforcement, accountability, and follow-through has been light. The culture throughout the fracking West has traditionally been wary and suspicious of regulation and government oversight, even those intended to protect the well-being of Westerners—they are merely embryos floating with the current. Consequently, wastewater—or should I say saltwater—spills are common. In North Dakota in 2014 alone, there were 138 reported spills. Beavers partially protected one, but they missed the other 137. This doesn’t include the many unreported “saltwater” incidents. With this much saltwater in North Dakota’s environment, maybe the Lake Sakakawea creatures were seals?

Saltwater spills are often harder to clean than the oily kind—and the contaminants they leave behind make the land unusable for farming or livestock grazing. Existing laws require the company that caused the spill to clean up the mess. Many farmers claim that in the end, they, the farmers, local communities, and taxpayers foot the bill.

The beavers, seals, or whatever I watched in those pre-dawn hours in Lake Sakakawea, were still remarkable, despite holding back no contaminates that day. Later in the morning, once the sun’s rays graced the cool and windy water’s surface, the frolicking creatures frolicked no more; they retreated to safety—or spills in distant waters.

This retreat reminded me that the Fish and Wildlife Service crew I had been waiting for was two hours late. I gave Ryan a call on his cell phone. They had been patiently waiting for me at the real Lewis and Clark boat ramp. Google Maps gave no label to the true Lewis and Clark boat ramp, but Ryan’s updated directions got me there one-half hour later. After a quick introduction to Ryan, Luke, Adam, Patrick, and Kate, I hopped aboard their decked-out Woolridge boat. The clanging of boots against metal sent reverberations far and wide. Beavers likely scattered in fright.

The Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Service crew conducts routine pallid sturgeon sampling throughout the watershed. This court-ordered research, funded by dam operators, attempts to find the optimum means for the endangered pallid sturgeon to survive the industrial impact inherent within the heart of the region’s economy.

Ryan fired up the powerful outboard jet motor and raced to the first sampling point about fifteen miles downstream. During the ride, I gazed about. I was on the same Missouri River as Lewis and Clark once explored, steamboats once plied, Lakota once roamed, and pallid sturgeons once floated. However, intuitively, I knew it no longer had the same feel, taste, or smell. There have been too many dams and too many flare-ups for organisms simply drifting with the current. It was not truly the same Missouri River. This also equates to not being the same Powder River despite its laudable free-floating noteworthiness.

Hopefully, Ryan and his team will find something, anything, that will aid the pallid and their plight. However, even if they had a solution, would politicians float or implement it within the contentiousness of their fly-over districts? Considering the number of flames, flares, and discordant winds buffeting the petroleum-infused prairies, the future does not bode well for the poor pallid sturgeon. Being overlooked in fly-over country is rarely a good sign—for any community or organism.

— The End —

In the meantime, please check out informative websites from the Fish and Wildlife Service, The Upper Basin Pallid Sturgeon Working Group, and the private nonprofit The Powder River Basin Resource Council.

Also, please check out my website’s Portfolio page for a description of my compelling novels, Pedro’s Pickles and the American Dream and Lizard People: Death Valley Underground, and my relatable literary nonfiction book Nowhere Bound—A Spud’s Reflections on Climbing, Caving, and Other Useless Toils. I encourage you to like or follow my Facebook and Goodreads “Author’s Pages.” Until then, take care and I look forward to our next glimpse into Americana on our next TAR adventure. See you then…