Little yurt on the prairie

Have you ever felt good about vis­it­ing a place that was hungry for vis­it­ors but not get­ting the atten­tion it deserved? 

Its lack of pop­ular­ity may have been due to the des­tin­a­tion or attrac­tion being new, or out of the way, or maybe it some­how got a bad rap. Whatever the reas­on, it was off most people’s radar. You, at least, could appre­ci­ate the unique­ness and beauty of the place. 

If this sounds famil­i­ar, then you have giv­en an ‘under­dog’ a chance. The good feel­ing that comes from that is an import­ant com­pon­ent of good tour­ism in my view.

The inside track

Con­nor Clark is a PhD can­did­ate at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity and a research asso­ci­ate for ASU’s Cen­ter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism. His diverse exper­i­ences in South Amer­ica and North Amer­ica inform his sus­tain­able com­munity devel­op­ment advocacy. Off Sea­son Adven­tures invited Con­nor to write for “GT” Travel.

This is pre­cisely what I did in the sum­mer of 2019 with my wife and daugh­ter as I dragged them along with me on their first ever camp­ing trip: Eight days. Mos­quito attacks. Gale-force winds. And a light­ning storm! (More on that later.)

Even with this ‘bap­tism by fire’ exper­i­ence for my fam­ily, we felt the lure of the place and became intrigued by the sights and sounds of its beau­ti­ful land­scape, unique wild­life, and stor­ies of sig­ni­fic­ant (and tra­gic) his­tor­ic events asso­ci­ated with the region.

We had vis­ited the Amer­ic­an Prair­ie Reserve (APR), a con­ser­va­tion not-for-profit loc­ated on the Great Plains of north cent­ral Montana, USA. Most people fly over this wide-open coun­try on their way to pop­u­lar des­tin­a­tions in the moun­tain­ous parts of the state, such as Gla­ci­er Nation­al Park and Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park. They give little thought to explor­ing the hid­den gems of the prairie. 

This is a shame, because APR’s mis­sion is to not only pro­tect a 3.2 mil­lion-acre (1.3 mil­lion-hec­tare) swathe of threatened prair­ie eco­sys­tem and to restore wild­life pop­u­la­tions, but also drive vis­it­a­tion through its net­work of huts, yurts, and camp­grounds. APR relies on expand­ing its nation­al and inter­na­tion­al vis­ib­il­ity, dona­tions, and the con­tri­bu­tions of vis­it­ors in order to do its con­ser­va­tion work.

APR often quotes the author Willa Cath­er who said: “Any­body can love the moun­tains, but it takes a soul to love the prair­ie”. Love for the prair­ie can only come from going out there and exper­i­en­cing the prair­ie for your­self; giv­ing the place a chance.

Although giv­ing a place a chance will often res­ult in pos­it­ive emo­tions and exper­i­ences, they can deliv­er sur­prises too. While spend­ing the night in a tent at APR’s buf­falo camp, where there is basic­ally noth­ing but open grass­land, a light­ning storm woke us up in the middle of the night and forced us to retreat to the car for cov­er. I’m writ­ing this, so clearly I lived. And I can con­firm that my wife and daugh­ter did too!

In addi­tion to broad­en­ing our hori­zons to what our own coun­try had to offer, and chal­len­ging our pre­con­ceived notions, our vis­it brought some extra tour­ism dol­lars to the prair­ie towns of Malta and Lewis­town. They lie out­side the pop­u­lar nation­al parks, yet their Montana charm, small town-char­ac­ter, and nat­ur­al sur­round­ings offer plenty for vis­it­ors to explore. More people should exper­i­ence small coun­try towns like these. They are the rur­al back­bone of any state, province, or country.

The Yel­low­stones, Gla­ciers, Venices, Bar­celo­nas, and Dis­ney­lands of the world are pop­u­lar, sure. But will you remem­ber them? The unique per­son­al exper­i­ences that come from vis­it­ing an under­dog des­tin­a­tion are likely to stay with you just as long, if not longer. I mean, how could you for­get run­ning for cov­er from light­ning out on the prair­ie in the dead of night?

Where is this?

Amer­ic­an Prair­ie Reserve
Headquar­ters: 2048 Ana­lys­is Drive, Suite B
Boze­man, MT 59718, USA
Tel: +1 (406) 585 4600 | Email: [email protected]

Fea­tured image (top of post): The author, Con­nor Clark, and his daugh­ter, Gen­es­is, at an Amer­ic­an Prair­ie Reserve yurt in Montana, USA.

Where next?