Theodore Roosevelt was often given to waxing poetic about North Dakota's Badlands, and it’s easy to see why. The earth rises and plummets in sepia folds that form dramatic buttes and canyons, dotted with dark pine trees. Prairie grasses bend and twist in the ever-present wind and mingle with the brilliant reds and muted browns that make up much of the clay-heavy soil. Roosevelt is known to have cited his time in North Dakota as being the reason he fell in love with the outdoors and set him on the path to becoming President.

It is this same North Dakota landscape that was Nick Ybarra’s first love.