In his most profound political observation, Dennis Daugaard said that, after the primary, most voters just want to go to the lake.
Congressman Dusty Johnson and his family agree. After he won his primary last month, the Johnson went to the lake—but instead of just heading up the street to Lake Mitchell, they took three pals 1,600+ kilometers north to Keefe Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Kevin Woster reports on this fishing expedition:
“It’s really remote, incredible. And it’s really not about the fishing. It’s about spending time together. It’s about reminding yourself that your soul is not in your cell phone,” says the 45-year-old Republican U.S. representative from Mitchell. “And for me, it’s also about looking around at a pristine part of the world to remind myself that there are things more important than politics.”
…“At least for me, there’s a religious flavor to this,” he says. “I can’t, after five days of that experience, I can’t help but come away with more of a sense of a higher power than I can when I’m bustling around in the concrete jungle of Washington, D.C.” [Kevin Woster, “Congressman Seeks True Soul Far from the Concrete Jungle,” SDPB Radio, 2022.07.14]
A black bear sought to join the expedition, perhaps to get a little Dusty flavor:
A black bear had paid the camp a visit while the previous fishing group was there. The camp manager went out with a gun and fired a round or two to scare it away. He fired another warning shot on the second day Johnson and the family were there. When the bear returned on the third day, the camp manager peppered the bear with a round of light bird shot, which encouraged a grudging departure.
“The bird shot did it,” Johnson says [Woster, 2022.07.14].
Funny—Johnson’s colleague Senator John Thune says South Dakotans need assault rifles to dispatch prairie dogs. Yet all Saskatchewanians need to save South Dakota’s lone Congressman from becoming a bear d’œuvre is a shotgun.
