The Little Town We Never Planned to Visit
WE-002
The prairie dogs saw the peanuts before they saw me.
I’m convinced of it.
Cash and I were somewhere on the way to Badlands National Park when we came across this little roadside prairie dog town, which was not on the itinerary, not part of the plan, and absolutely not something we had allotted time for.
Then I saw tiny heads popping out of the ground.
Well.
The itinerary had a good run.
We pulled over.
There were prairie dogs everywhere.
Little brown bodies darting between holes. Tiny faces watching us from the dirt. Some standing straight up on their back legs like neighborhood watch had been alerted to suspicious activity.
Then I discovered we could buy peanuts.
That was the end of any reasonable adult decision-making.
Of course I bought the peanuts.
Of course we walked out there.
And apparently prairie dogs have an intelligence network rivaling several federal agencies, because the moment we had food, everybody knew.
They came running.
Not one.
Not two.
A whole tiny prairie civilization had received the memo.
THE WOMAN HAS PEANUTS.
And I lost my damn mind.
Animals do something to me.
I can be a perfectly functional forty-something woman with bills and responsibilities and a business I’m trying to build, but let one small animal voluntarily approach me and suddenly I am six years old.
Everything else shuts off.
There could have been a tornado forming behind us.
I would’ve been crouched in the dirt whispering,
“Cash. Look at his little hands.”
Because have you ever watched a prairie dog hold a peanut?
The hands.
Good Lord.
Those tiny little hands.
One would run up, grab a peanut, sit there chewing like he’d personally earned it, then another would appear.
And another.
Pretty soon I was surrounded by prairie dogs and operating what appeared to be the most poorly regulated peanut distribution center in South Dakota.
I was delighted.
Completely, ridiculously delighted.
Cash was beside me, watching this unfold with the expression of a man who had already accepted that whatever we’d planned to do next was now dependent upon the appetites of several dozen rodents.
He knows me.
There was no point asking, “Ready to go?”
No, sir.
I had peanuts.
What I remember most is how uncomplicated it felt.
There was nothing to accomplish.
Nobody needed anything from me.
I wasn’t solving a problem.
I wasn’t building something.
I wasn’t trying to figure out what came next.
For however long we stood out there, my entire job was:
Give prairie dog peanut.
Excellent.
Finally, a position for which I was fully qualified.
The South Dakota sky stretched over everything.
Dust under our shoes.
Little burrows scattered across the ground.
Cash beside me.
Peanut shells.
Prairie dogs appearing and disappearing like somebody had built a tiny underground town beneath our feet and we’d arrived during lunch rush.
I laughed.
I talked to them because naturally I talked to them.
I probably assigned personalities to at least three.
There was almost certainly one I considered my favorite and then felt guilty about because a responsible prairie-dog benefactor should not show favoritism.
Meanwhile, the Badlands were still waiting for us.
Imagine competing with one of the most spectacular landscapes in America and losing Wild Jai to a four-pound animal holding a peanut.
But there we were.
And yes, we eventually made it to the Badlands.
They were extraordinary.
The kind of landscape that makes you stare because your brain needs a minute to understand what your eyes are reporting.
We had gone there intentionally.
We had driven all that way to see them.
They deserved every bit of awe we gave them.
But when I think about that trip, those prairie dogs come running back too.
That’s what makes me laugh.
Nobody plans a trip to South Dakota and says,
“You know what I really hope changes me?
Roadside rodents.”
Yet that little stop became one of my favorite memories.
Not because it meant something enormous.
I don’t think it did.
I’ve tried very hard in my life to make things mean something.
This doesn’t need my help.
I liked feeding the prairie dogs.
That’s it.
That’s the story.
I was happy.
Maybe that’s precisely why I remember it.
Adult happiness gets awfully complicated.
We attach conditions to it.
I’ll be happy when this works.
When we move.
When there’s more money.
When I finish this.
When that problem is handled.
When the thing I’ve been waiting for finally happens.
Apparently nobody told the prairie dogs about any of that.
They had a simpler arrangement.
I had peanuts.
They wanted peanuts.
Everybody understood the terms.
For a little while, nothing existed outside that exchange.
Tiny paws.
Peanut.
Crunch.
Repeat.
No five-year plan required.
There is a photograph of happiness people like to sell us.
It tends to be impressive.
Beautiful places.
Big accomplishments.
Perfect celebrations.
Things you can explain easily when someone asks why they mattered.
But some of the happiest moments of my life would sound completely stupid if I tried to defend them in court.
Your Honor, there were prairie dogs.
That’s my evidence.
And I stand by it.
Maybe I don’t need every beautiful thing to justify itself.
Maybe some memories stay simply because we enjoyed being alive while they were happening.
No transformation.
No lesson delivered by the South Dakota wind.
No wiser woman emerging from the prairie.
Just me, Cash, a bag of peanuts, and several extremely persuasive locals.
Honestly, I like the story better that way.
I can still picture them running toward us.
That’s the piece my mind kept.
Those tiny bodies coming across the dirt because we had exactly what they wanted.
I can remember looking at Cash.
He already knew.
We were going to be there awhile.
There are a thousand reasons I love traveling with that man, but one of them is that he understands this particular thing about me.
Sometimes we are going somewhere.
And sometimes his wife has found animals.
These are different situations.
Plans must be adjusted accordingly.
We left eventually.
The prairie dogs went back to whatever prairie dogs do once the tourists with peanuts disappear.
Cash and I continued toward the Badlands.
The day moved on.
Nothing monumental had happened.
Nobody knew to mark the time.
But that little town came home with me anyway.
Not literally.
Although given the opportunity, I cannot confidently say I wouldn’t have attempted prairie-dog adoption, and Cash probably deserves recognition for never having to utter the sentence,
“No, you cannot put him in the car.”
Instead, I carried the memory.
The dirt.
The laughter.
The tiny hands.
Cash standing beside me.
That absurdly pure happiness of having nowhere I wanted to be more than exactly where I was.
Years from now, there are things about that trip I may forget.
Names.
Distances.
Which road we took.
What time we arrived.
What we ate.
The careful little itinerary that once seemed important enough to organize the day.
But I don’t think I’ll forget the prairie dogs.
Especially those tiny hands.
I mean, seriously.
They held the peanuts.
♥ Wild Jai