WILD isn’t just working to protect wilderness, we are also working to protect wildness and its connection to the human spirit.

Author: Amy Lewis, WILD’s Managing Director, Policy & Campaigns

In the final installment of WILD’s 2024 Year End Impact reporting, we take a moment to share a work of truthful fiction. Sometimes WILD’s work takes us into situations that we cannot share with others because we would betray the trust of partners or community members. Sometimes, we cannot easily convey with words and statistics why it is we believe WILD’s work is so important. In these moments, we use truthful fiction – consciously and transparently – to help WILD’s global community understand better what it is we experience.

In the story below, we also deploy a good dose of metaphor, drawing on the Lakota story of the Wanagi, the star soul. In Lakota tradition, stars give their souls to Lakota children born on Earth. In keeping with our year-end theme of “giving makes Earth sacred” we wanted to use metaphor to capture the intangible gifts granted to us, the world, by the non-physical forces that are too often overlooked in the day-to-day empiricism and objectivity of our work.

***

Homelessness is as common as grass on the reservation, and her water had just broke. Still miles away from the hospital, out of charge on her phone, and out of gas in her tank, she was as determined as ever not to have this baby alone and in the back seat of her car. She needed a place, urgently, to stay the night. Through the gale force winds whipping clouds of sand-like snow across the empty road, she could see a small light twinkling in the distance…

***

It had been a long day of meetings in the Treaty Council room. Convening once a year in December in Rapid City (not, coincidentally, at the same time as the Lakota National Invitational), the Oceti Sakowin Treaty Council conference was one of the highlights of the year for WILD’s leadership team, and certainly the highest honor to attend. Sitting through the meetings, however, and giving each Oceti Sakowin leader the attention and respect they deserved, required a kind of emotional and physical endurance not normally practiced in day-to-day conservation activities. WILD’s three leaders stepped outside into the piercing cold, and collectively sighed a breath of relief.

Amy, ever a UFO enthusiast, was the first to point out the light in the sky. “What is that?”

Jenn considered it for a mere second before dismissing it as a satellite and leaving it at that. Adam thought it was best to just ignore it. They had more earthly matters to attend to, namely on how their presentation was received by the treaty council. While there were several Lakota efforts to establish buffalo herds on the reservation, as well as Indigenous-led efforts to restore grasslands and honor the 1851 & 1868 Fort Laramie treaties (which cover a territory of approximately 60 million acres of dangerously imperiled grasslands), the three of them did not know of any efforts that were linking the ecological, cultural, and legal initiatives to restore cultural institutions and ecological integrity across all Lakota lands. They hoped to work together with the Oceti Sakowin to establish a Treaty Council working group to do just that as a component of protecting Half of Earth’s lands and seas, the scientific consensus for the protection of the biosphere, and restoring justice between the two cultures.

As with most cross-cultural work, it had its moments, and reading the room was ever a challenge.

Adam brought up the need for stronger partnerships and involvement from Lakota-led groups. Jenn focused on structuring stronger collective benefits for all Treaty Council members including better honorariums and enhanced food security.

Amy continued to look at the light in the sky. “No, seriously guys. It’s not moving. What is it?”

The group politely paused and gazed upward. Fortunately, they were all friends, and so out of respect for Amy, Jenn and Adam temporarily indulged her fancy, with only the most fleeting knowing glance passed between them. Anyone who knew Amy knew that once fixated on something, it was virtually impossible to get her to pay attention to anything else. It was best to get this out of the way before attempting any further conversation.

In silence, they observed the object.

It was an odd light. Not at all like something on a plane or satellite. It blazed . . . fluidly . . . as if they were viewing it through some kind of heat signature, as if it were a mirage on a desert horizon. But they were on the edge of the Black Hills and the air around them was bone-chillingly cold.

The longer they regarded the unusual light, the faster their previous conversation slipped away into the winter night. Wordlessly, something came over them.

“It feels different,” Jenn said, quietly.

“Who wants to get a closer look?” Adam asked. “The rental car is parked back at the hotel.”

With minimal conversation, they agreed on the impromptu road trip, and hurriedly dashed into the chilly night in pursuit of the strange object overhead.

***

The barn was freezing, but it at least had more space than the car. Between the contractions, she allowed herself a brief moment of congratulations for having found a place to stay. She had tried the door at the main house, but no one was home and it was hopelessly locked. Fortunately, to the side of the house she had noticed the open barn door. Full of trepidation, and calling into the darkness if anyone was home, she stepped inside. No answer. But a pile of clean hay in the corner of the building beckoned to her. She pulled her blanket, water bottle, and flashlight from the car, and made herself as comfortable as she could.

Still, she was alone.

Overhead, unnoticed by her, a light grew brighter in the night.

***

“Is it still moving?” Jenn asked. “We’ve been driving for over an hour and a half!”

“And yet we still haven’t finished the last Taylor Swift album,” Amy muttered darkly from the front passenger seat.

“We are definitely getting closer.” Adam was at the wheel and had been navigating the dark and often unnamed labyrinth of roads on Pine Ridge reservation, where the light had taken them. “Or at least, it’s getting a lot brighter and a lot bigger. Like, a lot.”

The three of them peered through the windshield at the object. It was now easily the size of a full moon, and it radiated an otherworldly golden glow.

“I’m pretty sure it’s settled over that hill, and I think I see a light underneath it.”

“Do you think it could be someone’s drone?” Jenn asked, ever trying to offer up a pragmatic solution to a problem.

They considered the object once again. Closer now, its surface writhed as if covered by a fiery, molten skin. It churned like the surface of the sun.

“Nooooo,” Adam quietly remarked. “Definitely not a drone.”

He turned the rental car down a long, dark driveway. As they drew near to the mysterious light, their shadows grew more distinct against the backdrop of the night.

***

The baby was coming faster than she had anticipated. She had never known so much physical pain. As the contractions quickened and grew more intense, the cold around her seemed to withdraw. Sweat glistened on her brow.

In between contractions, she became aware of a noise outside. Voices.

“Hello?” She called out. “Is someone there? I’m in the barn. I need help!”

Three figures appeared in the doorway. A light from behind them illuminated their silhouettes. She assumed it was from the headlights of a vehicle.

She shined her flashlight at them, trying to make out their faces, and saw that they were wasicu, white people. What were they doing on the rez in the middle of the night? A sharp contraction quickly curtailed any nascent desire she had to pursue her curiosity.

“I’m having a baby,” she exclaimed.

“Okay, it’s going to be okay,” Amy, the only childless member of the trio, tried to reassure in breathless and hurried tones. “Stay calm.”

“I don’t think anyone here is panicking,” Jenn observed.

“Should we take you to a hospital?” Adam offered.

She grunted through a particularly painful contraction as they waited what seemed an uncomfortably long time for her answer. “Probably,” she said when it was finished. “But I don’t think there’s any time left.”

Amy inhaled sharply. Jenn approached the young woman in the hay. Crisis was her element. What would be an unnatural calm for others came completely naturally to Jenn.

“Can we do anything to help?” Before the woman could answer, Jenn turned to Adam. “Go get some boiling water. And some scissors.”

“Where?”

“The house, of course.”

“It’s locked,” the woman grimaced. Another contraction.

Without missing a beat, Jenn responded, looking at Adam. “Break a window. There’s a crowbar in the trunk.”

“I’ll go help,” Amy offered, hopefully. “I’m good at breaking things. And I love crowbars.”

“No, we need you here,” Jenn commanded.

“Why?”

Jenn thought for a second, “Redundancy.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

Adam dashed out of the barn and returned a few minutes later with the required water and implements. Then he left again to leave the women to their business and to contemplate the night. And the star.

As Jenn knelt beside the woman she introduced herself and Amy, and asked for the woman’s name.

She could only manage a whisper at this point. “Mary.”

Jenn exchanged a single exasperated glance of surrender with Amy before rolling up her sleeves. “Of course,” she muttered to herself.

***

When the baby came, and after Mary had held her little girl in her arms for a good long while and gazed into her eyes for the very first time, she briefly returned her attention to the two other women beside her.

“Thank you,” she stated, eyes glistening in the beam of the flashlight. “I know you are strangers, but it meant a lot to me for you to be here. I didn’t want to be alone.”

***

Outside the barn, Adam passed the hours in wonder and contemplation of the star. The wind whipped fiercely in the night but the light shone ever steady and unperturbed over the barn. In the first minutes beneath its extraordinary illumination, he had felt dumbstruck by the sublime, a combination of awe and fear of the unknown. But as time passed, he found himself unwittingly recalling barely remembered memories. The first hunting trip with his father. The last time he was cradled in the arms of his grandmother. The first camping trip when he had fallen asleep beneath the Milky Way. In fact, the memories were so vivid it was as if they came to sit beside him and keep him company in the cold night.

As the hours passed and the wind calmed, Adam waited in silence and memory. And when the first cry of the baby finally pierced the night, the star flashed once, twice, thrice, and finally four times before dissolving into a gentle shower of light and sparkles, anointing the earth and barn beneath.

The first rays of the sun glowed against the sky in the east. The day was, once again, reborn.

This blog is the fifth and final in a series of 5 blogs sharing stories from WILD’s work and impact during 2024. If you are inspired by the work and ideas in these blogs, please consider giving a donation to WILD here. WILD’s impact belongs as much to our community of donors as it does to the members of our organization. To learn more about WILD’s work in 2024, visit here to read our annual report.