Photographing Crow Country | Wildflowers

I inherited my love of the Native American tribes from my father. At an early age he taught us about them and told us about their ways. When I was a teenager my father gave me the book Plenty-Coups Chief of the Crows by Frank B. Linderman. I fell in love with the book and story of the Crow (Absarokees) peoples and their ancient way of life. Over the years I have had occasion to visit some of the land these marvelous people inhabit and I have always loved looking at the mountains, rivers, streams and prairies and wondered what it looked like back then in the early 1800's when white man first started pushing the Natives from their land. On a trip to Montana the end of June 2020, I took this photograph not far from a memorial to the Crows and I was in awe at the sweeping landscape and rugged snow capped mountains, prairie grass and wildflowers. Once again I tried to imagine what it looked like before the bison were all killed and the white man's cows were set to range the land.

This is what makes it all worth while though, the sound of meadow larks as the sun sets and the breeze blowing the wildflowers. It really doesn't get better than this for me, getting a good image is only secondary to experiencing such an amazing site.