Volume 83, Issue 7, 2005

NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

NEBRASKAland Magazine

Volume 83, Number 7, August-September 2005 Published monthly except for combined January-February and August-September issues by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, 2200 N. 33rd Street, Lincoln, NE 68503. Copyright 2005 by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, all rights reserved. ISSN: 0028-1964 ISBN 0-9727806-1-0 Periodicals postage paid at Lincoln, Nebraska. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to NEBRASKAland Magazine, P.O. Box 30370, Lincoln, NE 68503-0370. Cover: Cloaked in early morning light and fog, the Niobrara River evokes nature’s ethereal beauty and mystery as it flows through Cherry County in June. - Bob Grier Left: Yellow cottonwood leaves, among the first to fall in August, slip down a waterfall in Stone Creek, which courses Platte River State Park in Cass County. - Doug Carroll Above: The color and shape of the Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus) mimics bracket fungi, hanging like miniature shelves from a tree in Antelope County. - Doug Carroll NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 3

Introduction

“Capt. Lewis and my Self walked in the Prarie on the top of the Bluff and observed the most butifull prospects imagionable . . . - Captain William Clark, journal entry on July 30, 1804, from Council Bluff, now the site of Fort Atkinson State Historical Park.

From the beginning, wild and scenic Nebraska captured our imaginations. From the grandeur of endless plains, to the sparkle in meandering streams, to the intricate balance between creatures, the beauty and astounding complexity of natural Nebraska have inspired generations. And now, even after 150 years of development and massive changes to our landscape, wildness lives.

This book is testament to the pristine, serene expanses that nurtured our forebears and still exist amid today’s hurly burly. It is a gallery of images depicting past and present; photographic glimpses of the natural realm that once spanned each of the state’s 77,000 square miles, and of the wild beauty to be discovered within its borders today.

In selecting the scores of images included in this volume, we looked at thousands of frames shot by more than a dozen photographers over several years. We sought dichotomies: the archetypical and atypical; encompassing landscapes and defining details; massive forms and whimsical patterns; bold shades and subtle hues. We demanded both visually compelling frames and photo realism. And, while cognizant of the breadth and diversity of beauty from east to west, north to south, our goal was to explore, rather than to catalog, Nebraska’s wild and scenic essence.

Writer Mari Sandoz once observed that most people traveling through Nebraska see it as a long, flat state between them and a place they want to go. Their impatience, their notion that natural beauty exists only in mountains and on shores, is cur gain. We invite you to turn these pages slowly and drink in the nuances and wonders that William Clark saw when he climbed atop that Missouri River bluff more than 200 years ago and said, in effect, "Wow."

For many, we hope this book is only a beginning, an inspiration to explore and examine the real thing - natural Nebraska - step by step, moment by moment. It’s a grand, inspiring journey.

- Tom White, Editor 4 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 5   6 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

"The thunder was loud and metallic, like the rattle ok sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a moment. Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the lightning-flashes it looked like deep blue water...”

Willa Cather, My Antonia, 1918. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 7   8 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 9   10 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • II  

“Time is something we recognize by the rhythms oh things. For most oh our history as a species, those rhythms have been nature’s; the patterns oh sun and moon and tide, the migration oh birds, the flowering oh plants, the heeding oh sparrows.”

— Peter Steinhart, “Time Passes,” Audubon. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 13   14 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

“Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness ok autumn and the passion ok spring. The birds have gone. The teeming like that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated ... It is like an iron country, and the One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.”

— Wil la Gather, O Pioneers!, 1913 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 15  

“Several times I passed through villages oh prairie-dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his burrow, holding his paws before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away most vehemently, whisking his little tail with every sy ueaking cry he uttered. Prairie-dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions; various long, checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of the village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white ring around each eye, were perched side-by-side with the rightful inhabitants.”

- Francis Parkman, The California and Oregon Trail Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life, 1849. 16 - NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 17   18 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 19   20 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 21  

“The Court-house lies about eight miles from the river, and three from the road; in circumference it may be a half a mile, and in height 500 feet; it is, however, gradually degrading, and the rains and snows of not many years will lay it level with the ground In books it is described as resembling a gigantic ruin, with a huge rotunda in front, windows in the sides, and remains of roofs and stages in its flanks: verily potent is the eye of imagination!

I saw it when set off by weather to advantage. A blazing sun rained fire upon its cream-couloured surface . . . and it stood boldly out against a purple-black nimbus which overspread the southern skies, growling distant thunders, and flashing red threads of 'chained lightning.'"

— Sir Richard Burton, The City of the Saints 1860.  

“The News oh September 14, 1861, reports that there are four salt basins of a thousand acres each — except one small one — hilled with small springs that during the night ooze out their briny waters . . . They ebb and blow like the tides of the ocean . . . covering the entire surfaces to the extent of thousands of acres and to a depth of several inches. By nine o’clock of an ordinarily dry day, with sunshine, the waters have sunk away, or rather evaporated, leaving a crust of salt.”

- J. Sterling Morton and Albert Wilkins, History of Nebraska, 1918. 24 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC • 25   26 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

“The roaring . . . came bearing down on us like a hundred freight trains. Only that twister didn't move on. It stationed itselh right overhead, and made the loudest noise I’d ever heard, whining worse than any jet. There was a tremendous crack, and I frit the wall shudder behind us. I knew then our house was being ripped apart.”

— Dan Hatch describing the 1980 Grand Island tornado in Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman, 1984. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 27  

"Many... are bound by the same seasonal rhythms as our forebears, who were bound by the same rhythms that spur the ducks. Just as we cannot slip the elemental and emotional tides ok the seasons, we cannot help but be buoyed by the birds that so typify a season's passing.*

— Michael Turfman^ Duclc Country, 2001. 28 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 29   30 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 31   32 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 33   34 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 35   36 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC 37   38 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 39   40 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 41   42 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 43   44 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 45   46 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 47  

“It has taken biologists some 23O years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million . . . insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of them.”

— Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, The Sixth Extinction, 1995 • 48 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC   50 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 51   52 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 53  

“If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. li- the Biota in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

— Aldo Leopold, Round River, 1953. 54 - NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 55 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC   56 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 57   58 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 59  

“Last winter, they [goldfinches] were all in khaki, wearing their army surplus overcoats. But inside each of them, through the winter months, one of last summer’s dandelion seeds was slowly coming to life, and each breast was beginning to bloom like a bright yellow flower.”

— Ted Kooser, Local Wonders, 2002. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 61   62 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 63   64 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 65   66 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC• 67   NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 69   70 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

"There is a mixture of the awful and the comic in the look of these huge animals as they heave their great bulk forwards, with an up and down motion of the unwieldy head and shoulders; their tail cocked up like the queue of Pantaloon in a pantomime, the end whisking about in a fierce yet whimsical style; and their eyes glaring venomously with an expression of fright and fury

- Washington Irving, The Grana Prairie - A Buffalo Hunt, 1835 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 71   72 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 73  

"It is a stern, formidable land that invites no dalliance with the viewer, no light-hearted love affair with persons who visit or inhabit it. Yet for those who are willing to accept it on its own terms, to battle its storms and fight its droughts, it offers incredible beauty — buttes that turn purple in the fading twilight, pinnacles of rock as delicate as anything designed by a human architect, broad horizons that stretch as far as the limitations imposed by the earth's curvature, deep canyons and broad rivers, all covered bu a sku unequaled for grandeur except on the ocean."

- Alexander B. Adams, Sunlight and Storm, 1977. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 75   76 NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC •77   78 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 79  

“There is a bird in the heart oh North America that is perhaps even older than the [Platte] river, and far more wary than the waterhowl or prairie-chickens. It is as gray as the clouds oh winter, as sohtly beautihul and gracehul as the hlower heads oh Indian grass and big bluestem, and its penetrating bugle-like notes are as distinctive and memorable as the barking oh a coyote or the song oh a western meadowlark. The bird is the sandhill crane.”

- Paul Johnsgard; Crane Music, 1991 80 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 81  

“I lie therejust under the wind, the grasses harping and singingfaintly, their tones rising and falling, the prairie world washing over me. There is no point in moving; with a little time, the wind will bring the world to be in a steady and varied traffic . . . I see a draeonflu, alias darting downwind to the slough off below. Next comes a squadron of monarch butterflies on their of butterfly milkweed. A male bobolink arrives twenty feet above ttie, hanging on the wind and stating his territorial claims ...”

— John Madson, The Lawns of God, I982. 82 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 83  

"As it leaves the Rockies and moves downward over the high plains towards the Missouri, the Platte River is a curious stream. In the spring floods, on occasion, it can be a mile-wide roaring torrent of destruction, gulping farms and bridges. Normally, however, it is a rambling, dispersed flowing erratically over fans that are, in part, the remnants oh a mightier Ice Age stream bed. Quicksands and shifting islands haunt its waters. Over it the prairie suns beat mercilessly throughout the summer. The Platte, ‘a mile wide and an inch deep,’ is a refuge for any heat-weary pilgrim along its shores.”

- Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, 1946 84 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 85  

“Boreal aurora glared brighter than a sunset in Syria. The long streamers were intercepted and mysteriously confused by a massive stratum of dark cloud, through whose narrow rifts andjaeged chinks the splendours poured in floods of magic fire . . . After a full hour of changeful beauty, the northern lights slowly faded away with a blush which made the sunrise look colder than its wont. It is no wonder that the imaginative Indian, looking with love upon these beauties, connects them with the ghosts of his ancestors."

— .Sir Richard Burton, The City of the Saints, 1860. 86 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 87   88 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 89   90 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 91  

"...I had an extensive view of the Serounding Plains, which afforded one of the most pleasing prospects ever beheld, under me a Butifull Kiver of Clear water of about 80 yards wide Meandering thro: a leavel and extensive meadow, as far as I could See, the prospect much enlivened by the fine Trees and Srubs which is bordering the bank of the river and the Creeks & runs falling into it, — The bottom land is covered with Grass of about 4 and 1/2 feet high, and appears as leavel as a Smoth Suffice, the 2nd bottom is also covered with Grass and rich weeds flours, interspersed with the Copses of Osage Plumb.”

- Captain William Clark, in a journal entry after looking down upon the Big Nemaha River Valley, July 12, 1804. 92 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 93  

“Perhaps, among outdoor men, the urge to paint is stimulated by the swift, subtle flows of blue hazes against the Nebraska hills, the yellow-greens, the tans, russets, and mauves of the rolling prairie, the patterns of the contoured fields, and the unsurpassed sunrises and sunsets over it all.

“‘Its paint rags ’stead a pliers in cowman replied when I wondered about the easel beside him in the jeep out on the range. ‘My boy down to the university drug me to look at some pictures. Fair time. I seen right away I could do better.’”

— Mari Sandoz, Nebraska” in Holiday, May 1956. 94 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 95  

"... the sky is just as much a force directing the lives oh prairie people as any religious icon, and the clouds are just as variable, and as likely to send conflicting messages in different lights ...”

— John Janovy Jr., NEBRASKAland, October 1988. 96 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 97   98 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC

"Soon you can hear it everywhere, the sound oh water trickling, shearing from pebble and hill, the lock of winter slipping, the chill drip-drop, drip-drop of what seems to be all the world’s water, running, feeling its way up out of the sockets of tree roots, spilling from roof and sill, from every tilt and crease and lip and corner, till the steep black creek banks soften with winter’s easing.”

— led Kooser, Local Wonders, 2002. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 99  

“On this continent and in the psyche oh its people the plains have always been a staggering; presence, a place oh myth and cliche, a place hor transhormation, bafflement, or heartbreak. From the east they are release hrom the clawing oh swamp and tangle and human density. From the west they are a drop and a straightening ahter the kinks and strains oh mountains. Entered hrom any direction they are new air, ajoy to behold, a combination oh large-scale intimidation and primordial inner acoustics.”

- Merrill Gilhillan, Magpie Rising, 1988. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 101  

“And then the dog-days came, and I saw my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt — a half-starved lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of the beast when prey is scarce, and the ropy main current was like the lean, terrible muscles of its back. In the spring it had roared; now it only purred.”

— John G. Neihardt on the Missouri River, The River and I, 102 NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 103   NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 105   106 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 107   108 NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 109   110 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC

“Whatever else prairie is — grass, sky, wind — it is most of all a paradigm of infinity, a clearing full of many things except boundaries, and its power comes from its apparent limitlessness; there is no such thing as a small prairie any more than there is a little ocean, and the consequence of both is this challenge: try to take yourself seriously out here, you bipedal plodder, you complacent cartoon.”

— William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth, 1991. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC 111   112 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC • 113   114 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 115  

“It is somewhat to be wondered that, when Audubon’s experiments came up, no person of an ingenious and inquiring turn advanced a theory why Vultures were deprived of the sense of smell: reasoning that if their olfactories were acute they could not bring themselves to eat carrion, and that moreover they would be continually unhappy in the noxious atmosphere emanating from their own bodies; in short, that a merciful Creator had so arranged that they might not smell themselves!”

— Elliott Coues, Key to North American birds, 1872. 116 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 117   118 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 119  

“This earth seemed to her young and fresh and kindly, a place where refugees from old, sad countries were given another chance. The mere absence of rocks gave the soil a kind of amiability and generosity, and the absence of natural boundaries gave the spirit a wider range. Wire fences might mark the end of a man's pasture, but they could not shut in his thoughts as mountains and forests can. It was over flat lands like this, stretching out to drink the sun, that the larks sang - and one's heart sang there, too.”

- Willa Gather, Song of the Laric, 1915. 120 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 121   122 • NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 123   124 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 125  

“But as autumn advances, the woods will open up again. The deep shade, which seemed so unfamiliar when it first returned in late spring, will dissipate. Antiseptic sunlight will again reach the waterlogged earth beneath the great stands of oak and maple. Even as daylight slackens week by week, the turning, yellowing leaves will reflect more light in wavelengths with a warm, inviting cast. As the leaves cover the ground, the floor of the deciduous forest will begin to throw light upward toward the sky. The landscape will seem to decrease in volume because the woods are bare.”

— Verlyn Klinkenborg The Rural Life, 2002. 126 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 127

Index Adams, Alexander B., 75 Adams County, 16, 64-65 Antelope County, 3 Aurora borealis, 86-87 Bessey Ranger District, 38-39 Big Nemaha River, 98-99 Birds American goldfinch, 61 Belted kingfisher, 40-41 Burrowing owl, 16 Ducks Northern shoveler, 29 Wood, 64-65 Cranes Sandhill, 80, 80-81 Whooping, 54-55 Geese Canada, 103 Snow, 90-91 Great blue heron, 108-109 Gull, 28-29 Peregrine falcon, 74 Red-winged blackbird, 12 Turkey vulture, 116-117 Wild turkey, 38-39,51 Blaine County, 20-21 Blue Creek, 94-95 Box Butte County, 101 Box Elder Creek, 109 Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuge, 126-127 Brown County, 16-17, 49, 70-71 Bullfrog, American, 36 Burton, Sir Richard, 22-23, 86 Gather, Willa, 7, 15, 121 Chadron State Park, 10-11 Cass County, 2, 68, 129 Chase County, 106-107 Cherry County, front cover, 18-19, 30-31, 34-35, 36-37, 48, 50, 54, 62-63, 72-73, 108-109, 116-117, 131 Clark, Captain William, 4, 92 Clay County, 6-7 Cottonwood-Steverson Wildlife Management Area, 108-109 Courthouse and Jail rocks, 22-23 Coues, Elliott, 117 Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge, 29 Dawes County, 10-11, 46-47, 51, 86-87, 111 Dismal River, 100 Dixon County, 102-103 Douglas County, 109 Eiseley, Loren, 85 Fort Robinson State Park, 8-9 Furtman, Michael, 28 Garden County, 29, 94-95 Garden spider, 68 Gilfillan, Merrill, 101 Goose Lake, 29 Hall County, 54-55, 90-91, 121 Hamilton County, 88 Heat-Moon, William Least, 111 Insects Beetles Goldsmith, 49 Salt Creek tiger, 24 Common buckeye butterfly, 121 Damselfly, 109 Green darner, 76-77 Picture-winged fly, 48 Polyphemus moth, 3 Variegated fritillary, 88 Irving, Washington, 71 Janovy, John Jr., 97 Johnsgard, Paul, 81 Johnson County, 98-99 Kearney County, 80-81, 110-111 Keith County, 28-29 Keya Paha County, 118-119 Kimball County, 52-53 Klinkenborg, Verlyn, 126 Knox County, 96-97 Kooser, Ted, 61, 99 Lancaster County, 12, 24-25, 36, 69, 74, 76-77, 99 Leakey, Richard, 48 Leopold, Aldo, 54 Lewin, Roger, 48 Lincoln County, 60 Lightning, 6-7, 44-45 Little Salt Fork Marsh, 24-25 Louisville State Recreation Area, 68 Loup River, 20-21 Madson, John. 82 Mammatus clouds, 96-97 Mammals Black-tailed prairie dog, 16-17 Bighorn sheep, 8-9 Bison, 54, 70-71 Coyote, 106-107 Deer Mule, 32-33 White-tailed, 46-47, 112-113 Desert cottontail rabbit, 105 Elk, 60 Foxes Red, 111 Swift, 122-123, back cover Pronghorn, 52-53 River otter, 101 McKelvie, Samuel R., National Forest, 34-35, 38-39, 48 Missouri River, 92-93, 102-103 Morrill County, 22-23, 56-57 Morton, J. Sterling, 24 Nance County, 82-83 Neihardt, John G., 102 Nemaha River, 98-99 Nine-Mile Prairie, 69 Niobrara Breaks, 42-43, 104 Niobrara River, front cover, 36-37, 62-63, 118-119 Niobrara Valley Preserve, 70-71 Oglala National Grassland, 58-59, 86-87, 122-123, back cover Parkman, Francis, 16 Pawnee County, 89 Pawnee Lake State Recreation Area, 36 Pawnee Prairie Wildlife Management Area, 89 Pine Ridge, 75, 114-115 Plants Grasses Big bluestem, 82-83, 89 Indiangrass, 89 Needle-and-thread, 52-53 Switchgrass, 89, 131 Plains sunflower, 18-19 Poison ivy, 126-127 Prairie wild rose, 120 Prickly pear, 43 Round-headed bushcover, 88 Saltwort, 24-25 Spiderwort, 69 Standing milk-vetch, 56-57 Smooth sumac, 13, 30-31 Western wallflower, 66-67 Yucca, 30-31 Platte River, 80-81, 84-85 Platte River State Park, 2 Ponca State Park, 102-103 Red-sided garter snake, 99 Richardson County, 92-93 Ruckman, Ivy, 27 Rulo Bluffs, 92-93 Sandhills, 18-19, 32-33,51, 70-71, 72-73, 94-95, 100 Sandoz, Mari, 95 Sarpy County, 40-41. Scotts Bluff County, 14-15 Sioux County, 4-5, 42-43, 58-59, 66-67, 75, 78-79, 104-105, 114-115, 122-123, 124-125 Snake River, 50, 116-117 Steinhart, Peter, 13 Sugar Loaf Butte, 58-59 Thayer County, 26-27 Thomas County, 38-39 Thunderstorm, 6-7, 32-33, 44-45 Toadstool Geologic Park, 78-79 Tornado, 26-27 Twin Oaks Wildlife Management Area, 98-99 Washington County, 44-45, 112-113, 126-127 Webster County, 120 Wilkins, Albert, 24 Photographers NEBRASKAland Magazine photographers who contributed images to this special issue are: Ken Bouc, pages 40-41; Doug Carroll, pages 2, 3, 13, 36, 68, 74, 112-113, 126-127 and 129; Jon Farrar, pages 16-17, 18-19, 30-31, 36-37, 42-43, 82-83, 102-103, 118-119 and 131; Eric Fowler, pages 60, 84-85, 89, 92-93, 98-99, 100 and 106-107; Bob Grier, front cover, pages 4-5, 8-9, 14-15, 20-21, 22-23, 28-29, 46-47, 50, 51, 56-57, 58-59, 62-63, 66-67, 75, 78-79, 86-87, 101, 105, 108-109, 114-115, 122-123, 124-125 and back cover; Rocky Hoffmann, page 61. Freelance Photographers George Burba, a native of Russia, is Senior Scientist with Li-Cor Biosciences. His photos have appeared in American and Russian magazines. His photo web site is www.gburba.com. His images are on pages 34-35, 38-39, 109, and 116-117. Michael Forsberg is a Lincoln wildlife photographer whose work frequently appears in NEBRASKAland and who last fall published On Ancient Wings - The Sandhill Cranes of North America. His site is www.michaelforsberg.com. His photos appear on pages 32-33, 52-53, 70-71, 94-95, 104, and 120. 126 • NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC Chris Helzer is Director of Science and Stewardship for The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska and lives in Aurora. His contributions to this book are on pages 24-25, 48, 49, 88, and 121. Mike Hollingshead, a lifelong resident of Blair, is a self-described storm chaser. His images appear on his web site, www.extremeinstabilitv.com. His pictures are on pages 26-27, 44-45, and 96-97. Rick Houchin has been a photojoumalist for 29 years, which include the past 20 years at The Hasting Tribune. His photos in this issue are on pages 6-7, 16, 54, 54-55, 64-65, 80, 80-81, 110-111, and 111. Joel Sartore lives in Lincoln and has covered assignments around the world for National Geographic Magazine for the past 14 years. His web site is www.ioelsartore.com. His images are on pages 24 and 99. Justin Wambold, a native of North Platte who recently relocated from Lincoln to Chicago, has been a frequent contributor to NEBRASKAland Magazine during the past five years. His photography web site is www.jw-photography.com and his images appear on pages 10-11. 12, 69. 72-73, 76-77, 90-91, 103. NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC • 129

NEBRASKA WILD AND SCENIC

Coordinator: Tim Reigert Editors: Tom White, Doug Carroll Art Director: Tim Reigert NEBRASKALAND MAGAZINE STAFF Editor: Tom White Associate Editor: Doug Carroll Art Director: Tim Reigert Senior Editors: Jon Farrar, Ken Bouc Regional Editors: Bob Grier, Rocky Hoffmann, Eric Fowler Contributing Editor. Michael Forsberg Circulation: Donna Robinson Photo Librarian: Sarah Johnson NEBRASKA GAME AND PARKS COMMISSION Administration Director: Rex Amack Assistant Directors: Roger Kuhn, Kirk Nelson, Sam Sidner Information and Education Administrator: Ken Bouc Information and Education Art Director: Steve O’Hare Board of Commissioners Chairman: Dr. Mark Pinkerton, Wilber Vice Chairman: Bill Grewcock, Omaha 2nd Vice Chairman: James Stuart Jr., Lincoln Bill Zutavern, Dunning Gary Parker, Columbus George E. Hall, Bridgeport James Ziebarth, Wilcox Jerrod Burke, Curtis NEBRASKAland Magazine Published by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission 130 NEBRASKA WILD and SCENIC