Park Song: Personal Encounters with the Natural World in Custer State Park

Park Song is a recollection, a history in snapshots of 26 years of natural resource management in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of western South Dakota. The true events, recounted in prose and poetry of the 1979-2005 time period, open a window to the romance of the old west, where ways of the past are lived out in the often-controversial new age.

Ron Walker led the resource management team during that 26-year time period. His team handled the management of the buffalo roundup and sales, hunting seasons, grazing rotations, wildfire suppression and prescribed burning. They were involved with archeology, inventories, research, fences, trails and weeds, everything comprising the natural resources of one of America's premiere state parks. Park Song invites you behind the scenes into the workings of such a place. It beckons you not only to learn, but to feel - feel the pulse of the west through the park's ongoing story of the animals and seasons and history and the push and pull of politics and culture.

Custer State Park has hosted millions of visitors since 1979. Nearly 80 million people have personally enjoyed the park since that time. Although the park is a familiar place to so many, few understand what goes on in management of it. For those who would like to peek behind the curtain into the season to season operation of how these treasured natural resources were cared for and used, Park Song is for you. Enter into the life and lessons, the freedom and the ferocity, and the peace and passion of the park and its natural systems. Share the place and time through strong prose and poetic verse, sometimes from horseback and always from the true experiences of one who was fortunate to have lived it.