On Saturday, Husband, I, and Boommate met up with our son and his family for a Father’s Day hike at the Pipestone National Monument, aka The Pipestone Indian Shrine. (I don’t think 47 would like to see that name.) It is almost equidistant from both Luverne and Aurora, SD, where son and family live. Here are some park photos.
My mother’s family is from Pipestone. My Uncle Harvey’s old farm abuts the park. It is an odd place, consisting of a quartzite quarry surrounded by prairie with a creek. For hundreds of years, native tribes would come from all over the contnent and get rock for ceremonial pipes. It is a holy place, and there were many cloth prayer bundles tied up in the tree branches. There continue to be native carvers at the visitor center who make pipes. Husband’s is in the header photo. We bought it several years ago. Boommate made the case it rests on. We keep it in its case, as our native friends say it is disrespectful to display it.
On our hike through the park we ran into a graduate school friend of DIL who heads a program at SDSU for disadvantaged students to help them transition to university. The students were with him. He and DIL hadn’t seen each other for some time, and it was nice for them to meet up.
We have a Hidatsa Indian friend from the ND Fort Berthold Reserve who attended the Pipestone Indian School. It closed many years ago. He also worked briefly at the park visitor center as a pipe carver. All the staff at the visitor center are native, and Husband took a chance and asked the older woman at the checkout if she knew our friend, Leo. Well, of course she did, and knew his wife’s name and the name of the band he played bass guitar and drums in. She was so delighted she gave us a bunch of free bumper stickers!
It is a small world, and it was fun to feel connected in so many diverse ways.
When have you felt the world is small? Ever been to Pipestone?
Trail Baboon 
During a stay at a marina in Jupiter Florida, we ran into a Canadian dentist met on vacation in Jamaica 10 years earlier. He recognized our boat from photographs we shared, and came over to say hello.
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Part of our trip to Japan was a fiber arts tour centered in Kyoto. The tour group was small, 10 persons or so. One of those persons was a schoolmate and longtime friend of BiR.
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s Robin and I were members of a historical reenactment group, The Living History Society of Minnesota, where we, as civilian reenactors, costumed ourselves in Civil War era attire. We were invited to Pipestone for an event, a battle reenactment, and stayed while we were there in the Calumet Inn. We didn’t visit the Pipestone Monument but stopped at Jeffers Petroglyphs on our way back home.
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We loved the Calumet Hotel. We spent our wedding night there many moons ago. I am sorry to report that the building has been recently declared structurally unsound and needs major repairs.
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I’ve always said St Paul is a nice small town. Couple of weekends ago, a friend at church told me she was neighbors with one of my cousins and had spotted me in a picture on Facebook.
I have 14 cousins on my dad’s side (+ all of their families), so I wasn’t too surprised. Turned out her neighbor was the sister-in-law of my cousin, no blood relation at all, but that’s how we roll.
Was also fun to spot ancestors of one of the track coaches the s&h knows well at the ancestral cemetery for all of the ancestors of one branch of my family.
My neighborhood in St Paul has lots of people who have lived there for generations.
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I’ve had numerous chance encounters with people that elicit the “small world” reference. Don’t remember a lot of specifics, just interesting to see a variation of the “six degrees of separation” theory in play.
We visited Pipestone NM a few years ago and were greatly impressed. Well done exhibits, beautiful grounds, a pleasant hike around the property, even on a steamy hot June day. Well worth a visit.
Chris in Owatonna
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