Journal

The landscape here defies one’s attempts to capture it well with photography.

No matter how hard you try.

I’m heading to an area in the park where there is a trail called “The Notch.”

“I want to feel the vastness of the prairie,” I told my local Parks resource.  She smiled and showed me a place on the map where I could turn off the road just inside Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.  It was noon and in the 90’s as I turned up the little used path and drove two miles across the grasslands.  I find the terrain soothing, and my favorite terrain second only to the rolling pastures of the Virginia and North Carolina mountains.  After awhile I abandon my vehicle, wanting to experience all this on foot.

Off in the distance is my rental vehicle.

Not long after I have my reward as I spot a group of pronghorn antelope off in the distance.  They see me first and sprint away but I’m able to get a photo first.

I wanted to pitch a tent out here for the night and sleep under the vast canopy of stars I witnessed the night before but a small voice told me to check the weather forecast first.  Thunderstorms after midnight and gusts up to 50mph.  I’ve camped in weather like that while backpacking but never by choice.  So it’s another night at the Sunshine Inn.

is never easy.  And I never imagined I would find mine inside the famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota.  We’re going to spend our honeymoon right here.  She doesn’t like to move around much.

Last night as I stepped out of the Badlands Bar with a belly full of bison and beer, I glanced up at the night sky.  “An inky sky,” I thought, and continued up the sidewalk past some locals who had a bit too much beer in them.  Then I looked up again.  “Oh wow, that is very dark indeed.  In fact, that is extraordinarily dark.”  I hurried back to my room at the Sunshine Inn, finished unloading some gear, then found and assembled my tripod.  I threw it all into the Xterra and headed up the road going into Badlands National Park.  Along the way a fox strutted across the road in front of me.  Further along a large mule deer buck casually crossed the road with his females and looked at me as though wondering at my audacity for intruding into his home.  Miles up the road I came to an overlook and stepped out.  Even without dark adapted eyes I was instantly struck at just how dark it really is here at night.  The Milky Way cut a wide swath across the sky, dipping down deep into the east and west.  The horizons were very low, almost as low as at the ocean, and the Milky Way in the west almost touched the horizon.  I have never seen that before, never seen skies like this anywhere I’ve been.  As my eyes adapted to the dark I became lost.  Constellations which are usually the guideposts in the heavens were much less prominent, with so many other stars visible.  I thought briefly about setting up for photography but then realized how windy it was and how the lack of a tracking mechanism could never capture any of this anyway.  Odd night sounds from across the formations and prairie kept me wondering what was out there with me.

I don’t know how long I spent out there, sitting and getting lost in a heavens which few will ever see.  As I finally drove back home it was with not a little sadness at our loss of one of the greatest natural resources we have – darkness.

Words defy describing the experience one has when first seeing the Badlands.  To begin to understand you first have to realize that for mile after mile throughout this part of the West there is vast, beautiful prairie; undulating grasslands which stretch on as far as the eye can see.  There is a calmness to it, a serenity which itself is difficult to explain.  It speaks of the beauty of untarnished land, enormous expanses of it, enough for large herds of bison to roam freely.  For one whom has lived his entire life on the Eastern seaboard, it is a marvel.  It is as though the West was never settled, and this feels like a very good thing.

Enter the Badlands.  These ash-turned-rock formations sprawl across the beautiful grasslands like a massive wound.  They scream “wrong.”  They appear like a foreign intruder, like a cancer in a healthy body.  They are dead, utterly lifeless.  The appearance is that of a piece of Mars dropped into our western paradise.  Even the casual observer, the quickest tourist, is not unmoved.  For although the Badlands seem so alien, lifeless and misplaced, they have a power to them.  Their mere presence is a yawning chasm in the landscape.  But standing before it, before this power that cares not the slightest that a misstep on its craggy slopes means certain death, a silent sort of reverence arises.  People step out of their cars chatty and excited.  Then they stand before this uncompromising authority and suddenly seem extremely small; remarkably insignificant.  The visual perception is deceiving.  It feels like one is standing before a diorama, that it is a mere one hundred yards to that craggy spire, when it fact it is a half a mile.

I spent a lot of time talking with the woman at the National Grasslands visitor center about how to approach this area.  I told her I wanted to do backcountry camping, to disappear into the prairie, to wake up with the dawn’s first light upon the spires of the Badlands.  She understood completely, and shared with me some of her own favorite hide-aways, off the beaten path.  “But take it slowly,” she cautioned.  She didn’t want me to fall into the tourist trap, to jump in, take my photos and leave.

I understand what she was trying to communicate.  The land here, for the more solemn sojourner, can be the one to ask the questions.  Looking at this barren landscape one feels a yawning void in oneself.  It’s tempting to try to quickly fill that void up with generated thoughts, noise, picture taking and other distractions.  But the barrenness has something to offer.

The woman at the visitor center knew this.  After she visited from Oregon over twenty years ago, she went home, packed her bags and moved here.  She evidently liked what she found, in the land and in herself.

used to occupy southwest South Dakota. On the flight here I met a grizzled veteran who worked on them in the 60’s. “You don’t want to hear my war stories,” he said in a raspy voice. I sat in rapt attention for the next hour as I cajoled story after story out of him, much of which contained some of this nation’s most top secret information not too long ago. What a treasure, thank you Bob.

“South Dakota, huh?” said the baggage handler at RDU. Her coworker broke into a laugh. I cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve never been there, that’s not a good sign.” “Oh don’t mind her, she’s just laughing at me.”

My first blog post for my South Dakota trip will hopefully be the least interesting of the bunch.  I do need to document this for my own purposes, however.  I set quite a challenge for myself to haul camping equipment, hiking gear, a lot of camera equipment (including tripod), video recorder, laptop, chargers, clothes, cycling gear and other miscellaneous stuff all the way out to South Dakota using just one checked bag, one small camera bag and a laptop bag.

Here’s what it looks like (sans cycling gear and sleeping bag):

And here is what it contains, in three packages:

1) Camera bag (carried)

• Canon 40D DSLR body
• Canon 10-22mm macro lens with hood
• Canon 200mm F2.8 lens with hood
• 2 8gb flash cards
• Phottix self timer
• 4 batteries with charger
• 2 microfiber cloths
• molecular lens cleaner spray
• blower bulb

2) Laptop bag (carried)

• Macbook Pro
• Cables for charging Macbook & iPhone
• Cables for transferring elph camera & video data to laptop
• Elph camera battery charger
• Various other cables
• Sleeping bag liner (kept here because I use it as a lumbar support on planes)
• Ibuprofen
• Airline tickets, rental car reservation info

3) Suitcase (checked)

• Tripod (disassembled)
• Kitchen (emergency matches, fuel bricks for 9 meals, wind screen, ground cover, lighter, two stoves, lexan spoon – all packed inside a titanium cookpot)
• Living room (tent, rain fly, tent poles, stakes, ground cloth, sleeping bag in a compression sack, air mattress, air pillow)
• Bathroom (deodorant, q-tips, salve, razor blade, shaving cream, shampoo, soap, face cloth, towel, floss, toothbrush, toothpaste)
• Closet (jeans, hiking pants, 2 hiking shirts, long sleeve t, 3 cotton t shirts, 2 undershirts, long underwear – tops & bottoms [at 10K+ feet there is snow this time of year], fleece shirt, 6 pair underwear, 6 pair socks, hiking shoes)
• Swimming trunks (for the Hobo Hot Springs in Saratoga, Wyoming.  I’m just dying to try it)
• Emergency (swiss knife, safety whistle, 3 photon lights on a mini carabiner)
• Camelback
• Sunglasses
• Travel guide book, Wyoming map
• Garmin GPSMap60CSX with 2 new AA batteries
• Tire gauge for rental car (Mike, John or David would know why but are sworn to secrecy)
• Digital high definition camera & video recorder with charger, 2 8gb SDHC cards & USB reader
• Dynex multi device usb reader (for DSLR compaq flash transference to laptop)
• Pen
• Hat
• Eye mask (for sleeping – if there is light I awaken)
• Ear plugs (for sleeping – best way to keep coyotes and bears at bay.  If you can’t hear them, they don’t exist)
• Small bible (in case ear plugs fail)
• Cycling shoes (mtb), 2 cycling bibs, 3 cycling jerseys, cycling gloves, 3 pair cycling socks
• Day planner (wasn’t going to bring but would feel naked without it)

Worn: cotton shorts, cotton tshirt, sneakers

Carried on person: wallet with National Parks annual pass, iPhone