Uncle Don’s Campground- Sturgis, South Dakota:

Monster crickets ring high-to-low, fast-to-slow lullaby like electricity buzzing thru a power line, loud as buzz saws in the night, with the timbre of engines revved against the black sky. The ever-present South Dakota wind ruffles warm thru the skin like morphine, blowing stars around like salt dust. It’s quiet here. It’s calm atop this hill. This is Uncle Don’s place. It is an island refuge amid the ruckus of the motorcycle rally swarming below. It drifts gently, lulls you into contentment.

Uncle Don: I didn’t open this campground here until ’90. Yeah, I bought the land in ’85. My friend, one of his daughters started callin’ me Uncle Don, okay. Everything is word of mouth. I’ve only had to 86 three people outta here since 1990. You don’t see no arm bands on nobody here do ya? It’s the honor system, okay.

It’s easy to feel at home here, easy to picture yourself coming back year after year- like Robyn and Bryan. They got married here in 2006.

Bryan: We met on her birthday at a bar called the Full Throttle. Robyn caught my eye and it was just kinda, you know, ‘Well, can I buy ya a drink?’ She’s probably the first person I ever took for a ride, you know. Honestly I couldn’t tell ya a name if there was ever anybody on the back of my bike before her. Ever.

Uncle Don’s burnt down a couple of years ago. But he rebuilt it. He’s a tall, sinewy man- bright eyes, white hair, veins like road maps and a tan like he vacations on the sun. He’s always laughing and talking. He drives a golf cart all around sharing beers with the campers and learning their names. He’s happy.

Bryan: I come here and I’m walkin’ up this trail in the Petrified Forest with a flashlight, and ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and I picked it up and it was a piece of petrified rock- a little piece- kinda like a half-moon shape…I chucked it into this ravine. And the first year I brought Robyn here we were on our way up the hill and here’s that piece of rock. It was in my footsteps again on the same trail. That’s when I knew. This is my spiritual ground and that’s my symbol. My spirit’s here.

Uncle Don will recommend you have breakfast at the Piedmont American Legion, where the real people eat, where there are no tourists. It’s a beige cafeteria with plastic silverware and a bingo ambience. Eight years worth of Budweiser banners from rallies past cover the walls, and they are covered with the autographs of past attendees.

Bryan: Don’s like my dad and Polly’s like my mom. We come to love em, and they love us. They’re great people. Can’t find any better. That’s why I said, ‘I’m getting’ married in Sturgis.’ Robyn rode with me for two years out here on the back of my bike, and then the year after we got married we wanted to get her a bike. I said ‘You need your own bike, ‘cause you gotta experience this for yourself.’ A friend of mine had a bike for sale; it was like a brand new bike. She got on it and she took off- I mean that bike was made for her.

When the storms come, the rain falls thick and lashing and the lightening switches the track on your CD player. The tents begin to boogie in the wind, collapsing into the swamps pooling inside of them. This is a good time to take your huge bottle of Jack Daniels over to the pavilion and listen to Uncle Don play a tune or two on the guitar.

Bryan: I’ve done a lot of wrong things in my life, relationship wise, and that’s where ya learn from. I spent almost three years alone in a cabin in Wisconsin trying to find some solidarity. I needed to in order ta move on. I put all the little details together and come up with a picture. Years later, I come to the point where I know what I’m looking for. Ya really have ta be selective and take your time in choosing. We’re soul mates. I mean, there is no doubt.

Uncle Don’s sound is a steel-string blues somewhere between a rocking chair on a humid porch in New Orleans, and Jimmy Buffet at a beach front bar in the Caribbean lamenting his salt shaker. The song is called Wildfire Blues. It’s about resilience. It’s about working hard to rebuild when your entire operation burns down.

By popular request, Uncle Don:

Hey, hey, workin’ man,

A workin’ man like me,

Ain’t never been on welfare

and that you’ll never see,

I’ll be workin’

Cryin’ away my wildfire blues

One time I thought ’bout leavin’

and Polly tol’ me no

Our nieces and our nephews

wouldn’t have no place to go

I’ll be workin’

Cryin’ away my wildfire blues

Uncle Don: You can go home now and say, ‘Yeah, I got a uncle Don. I got cousins from everywhere! Ha ha ha!’ It’s just a wonderful deal! It’s my bowl of soup! I live for it! Hahaha ha! It’s just gonna get better, okay, I’ll keep shinin’ it up and I’ll wait for y’all to get here and I’ll have big tears in my eyes when ya leave. Haha Haha!

This is the reason why people come here year after year. And it’s easy to want to keep the place a secret. This is why, in order to find the place, you must have a close personal friend who can tell you the way.

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