When I woke up in the primitive campground in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, I raised the window shade to see a bison lying about 100 yards away. He lazily munched on grass, and then, as the air warmed, lumbered to his feet and wandered off.

We have seen bison all across the plains – Texas, Kansas, South Dakota – but usually behind fences or, stuffed, in museums. Here, in the Badlands and in Custer State Park, they roam freely, grazing, scratching their backs against tree stumps, meandering across roadways, glancing, with little interest, at the cars.

Bison, whose ancestors came across the Bering land bridge from Siberia are, perhaps, the most American of all iconic wildlife.

Mount Rushmore the way it probably appeared when my mother visited in 1933.

Some of my mother’s first memories are of a trip with her parents to see Mount Rushmore under construction. It was 1933. She was just three years old.

Tornado damage at Roseland, Nebraska.

The tornado siren on my iPhone went off as I sat in The Epic Van, a slight sprinkle pattering on the roof. The storm app showed a red line around Nebraska’s Webster County, now under a tornado watch. It meant the angry storm lines on the radar, green bands with yellow centers and red spots, were capable of “firing” funnel clouds.