Mother..Broken..Earth..Burnt.
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Makoshika State Park, located in Eastern Montana, takes its name from two Lakota words, Maka (mah-kah) and Sica (see-cha). Mother and Broken. Earth and Burnt.* These burned lands who water our souls here under the Big Sky have always been our Broken Mother. Generations of us have continually found ways to love her back the best ways we know how. With solitary sunrise hikes, soaking in a full moon’s rise, stopping to scent the sage as the train yards rumble below, and risking a little gumbo on our soles after a fresh spring deluge.
Together with community members like you, we wrote a new honor song for those broken, muddy, nourishing lands and released it at a benefit concert in the spring of 2026. You can play the new song, Mud & Bone, from the audio player, or buy clicking on the Buy link, you'll go to the Bandcamp website, where you can see the lyrics, or download the entire EP which is 3 live recordings from the night. All proceeds from Mud&Bone's sales return to the Friends of Makoshika to sustain the lands for generations to come. * Sica (see-cha) is often translated as 'bad', as in bad-Earth or badlands. Yet the Lakota hand symbol for Sica refers to the broken up nature of these lands, how they rise from the valleys and prairies to break up what we see. Time to Giveaway |
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This is me, Mary Overlie, and my cousin, Geoff Taylor. Two Taylors on Taylor Avenue, as it were. Born to an ancestral line of musicians, we craft the songs in our hands and hearts, making mud harmonies as the duo, Augmeanted.
About 6 blocks from this photo, I grew up underneath Makoshika State Park's muddy, gumboed, webby feet. If you stand atop the Park’s highest plateau and look down into town, you can see the backyard where I used splay myself for quiet hours watching contrails from pilots stationed in Minot or Great Falls or Rapid City garland the sky. That's likely true for many of you reading this too. Yet, it came time for my family to sell that family home, the one situated at the end of a dead-end street that used to be nothing but mud, and still does nothing but return to mud, getting slaked in Makoshika's run off at the close of each bone-shaking thunderstorm. I was given so unspeakably much as a child by growing up in the shelter of Makoshika's ridges and swales, it's all I could do to put it into song. As this chapter of life found its close, it only seems right to do what I could to give a little, if only incomparably, back. Together with the Friends of Makoshika, Geoff and I held a benefit concert in the spring of 2026. Collectively, we raised $1,100 to ensure the Park's muddy, gumboed, webby feet breathe life into generations to come. Photos of the night, captured by Ashlee at Range & River Photography, are in the gallery below. Special thanks to Bud Larsen for lending us the 1898 Gunnar Helland Hardanger fiddle for the concert. |
Media
- Ecological, organic listening room concert slated for March 14 (The Dickinson Press)
- Friends of Makoshika concert to feature 130-year-old Hardanger fiddle (The Glendive Ranger Review)
- Benefit concert for Friends of Makoshika will feature song written for the park (The Glendive Ranger Review)
