A Sioux legend tells of a woman who brought them the red stone pipe and taught them to smoke the pipe in the name of peace. The pipe was sacred and still is the center of Sioux spirituality. Pipestone National Monument, a “living monument,” was created to protect the quarries where the indigenous people still mine the red stone to make their sacred pipes.

We can barely hear each other over the cacophony of screeching seabirds as we carry our field equipment along the precipice of a towering sandstone cliff, hundreds of feet above the pounding surge of the frigid North Atlantic. Several days of severe weather has destroyed countless nests, and today’s sun-filled sky, which would normally be placid in mid-July is instead filled with thousands of airborne seabirds, busily rebuilding what they have lost.