I’ve seen big horn sheep before, but never this close. And without collars on them. Usually they are far off in the mountains of Montana near my parent’s cabin, but this was my first time encountering six sheep just hanging out in the middle of the road in Custer State Park. All the other cars were just going by and all I was thinking was, “STOP! This is so cool! Look at the sheep!” So, I channeled my inner wild animal nerd and photographed the sheep for a few minutes before getting to my assignment at the State Game Lodge. There were some females near the lodge, but by then the mystique had warn off a bit.

by Kristina Barker

I’ve made four trips to Deadwood in the last three weeks and I still feel like I couldn’t make a picture to tell the story of the town and how it came to be. But maybe it’s a story that can’t be told in one photo. There’s so many different faces to Deadwood. Yeah, there’s the casinos and the souvenir shops and the bars. But the city and the steep hills that surround it are bursting with stories of the West and the way things were. In an effort to educate myself for this story, I found a Deadwood that I didn’t even  know I was there. Of all the times I’ve been stopped around town and had someone say to me, “You HAVE to go see this,” not once was one of those places in Deadwood. Maybe it’s just something you have to explore on your own. And maybe people don’t want tourists traipsing around in their backyards. Or maybe it’s better that the traffic is confined to the downtown streets. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I hadn’t heard of Mt. Moriah cemetery, but I had never had someone say, “Go up there, it’s beautiful. You wouldn’t want to miss it.” With some coaxing from our photo editor Ryan, I bundled up and wandered up to the cemetery at dusk, hoping to get a moodier photo that would help tell the story of Deadwood that we wanted to tell. This photo didn’t make it into the final edit. And I’m not sure my snowy footprints really need to be gracing the pages of A1 in the first place, but at this moment I couldn’t help but wonder about all of the stories buried six feet beneath me.

Go up there. It’s beautiful. You wouldn’t want to miss it.

Kristina