ENTS,
June 27th of Monica's and my journey follows. I'll follow with June 28th in
about a week.
Bob
June 27th,
Monica and I arose to a cool, crystal-clear morning – the ideal
start to a beautiful summer day - a specialty of the Great Plains. We had a
quick breakfast in a small gazebo that the motel provides its guests. The
gazebo looks out over the Missouri River, albeit a dammed portion. The light
green of the rolling hills along the Missouri, the light blue of the sky and
darker blue of the water was an especially stimulating early morning color
combination for me. It resonated with some feeling inside that yearns for
periodic communing with prairie earth. The combination of hills, water, and sky
made me feel like I was just where I needed to be at that moment in time. Other
moods would wash over me and my preferences would change, but at the time, all
was well.
Our motel in Chamberlain, South Dakota, was a short drive from the
Saint Joseph Indian School, which Monica and I had planned to visit. It turned
out that we had both been contributors to the school for years. We discovered
that little fact a couple of years ago and each of us had long felt a personal
need to see the school first hand. Saint Joseph’s promotion of their school and
its mission is first rate. Their mailings are compelling. One senses that they
are truly fulfilling the higher purpose that they promote in their literature.
The school administrators had certainly captured us as supporters through the
artful promotion of their mission.
On reaching the campus, we found it to be immaculate. Certainly,
from the outside, it appeared that our dollars were being well spent. The
school was closed for the summer, so we couldn’t get tours. However, there is
an Indian museum at Saint Joseph named Akta Lakota, which we both wanted to
see, and fortunately, it was open.
The museum proved to be one of the highlights of our trip. It is
simply one of the best organized museums that I have seen, and the task has
been accomplished without one dollar of federal or state funding. Basically,
the museum tells the story of the Lakota people, and its displays are organized
in a circle, symbolic of the circle of life to which Indian peoples relate.
The explanations of historical events are presented, naturally
enough, from the Lakota perspective. The language used to describe historical
events is not inflammatory, but it is pointed and critical. White historians
have traditionally glamorized our settlement of the West. The language used to
describe the occupiers freely employ terms like pioneer, settler, cowboy,
soldier, prospector, missionary, etc. Indians are often portrayed negatively.
At the least, they are described as being something of an inconvenience to
legitimate white settlement of western expanses and at worst as devils.
However, the Lakota recognized the advance of white settlers for what it
actually was – an invasion. Generals like Sherman, Sheridan, Terry, Harney, and
Custer led invading armies and won battles by virtue of their superior numbers
and technology, not by moral authority.
While Lakota civilization learned to make use of some of the
technologically superior tools of white civilization, that use is never
acknowledged by the Lakota as justification for the subjugation of the
indigenous civilization of the red man and the abrogation of treaty after
treaty. Basically, the museum displays tell the story of a once noble people
who were knocked down, but not counted out, and are only now coming to grips
with what happened to them with the loss of their culture and what they have to
do to regain their dignity in a vastly different world. They see one of their
functions in today’s world as spiritual leaders in a culture that has forgotten
the unity of all things. I expect that we’ll return more than once to the
museum, and in the interim, find ways to support Akta Lakota as a legitimate
expression of the Lakota culture.
As Monica and I continued our trip, we cheated and got onto
Interstate 90 for a stretch. We wanted to maximize the time we could spend in
the South Dakota Badlands before moving on to our end-of-day destination of
Bear Butte. Besides, the traffic was not heavy.
At a rest stop, we took a walk around a large meadow and observed
the grasses and the birdlife. I think we had our binoculars out. A gentleman
approached us, inquiring if we were birders. The gentleman’s daughter, a young
girl with a shy disposition, had made a showing as an amateur ornithologist and
was on the fast track as a freshman to Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. While
the proud father did most of the talking, it was a pleasant exchange, and
observing the girl served to remind me that not all young people are hopelessly
addicted to fast food, video games, and endless cell phone babble.
As we homed in on the South Dakota Badlands, I shared a few of my
prior experiences in the region with Monica. When I lived in South Dakota,
assigned to Ellsworth AFB, the Badlands were my second most frequented
destination. I have always found those open expanses of grass and bare earth
fascinating. Let’s take an up close and personal look at South Dakota’s other
great scenic attraction.
The Badlands National Park covers 244,000 acres in western South
Dakota, 64,144 of which is a designated wilderness area. The badlands, as one
visitor pointed out are not called the goodlands, and for good reason. The
region is a starkly beautiful, but not a place in which to earn a living. For
modern-day ecologists, it is especially important as one of the largest
protected areas of native mixed grasslands, that zone between the tall and
short grass prairies. The Badlands combination of intensely blue sky, green to
amber grasslands, colorful buttes and sharp spires, and intimidating alkali
flats presented early visitors with a nightmare to cross. Some thought they had
entered a surface extension of hell. The clay and ash-based soils can be
extremely slippery. In the pioneer era, when wet, wagons would bog down, and
the water was seldom potable.
As a geological phenomena, the Badlands are relatively young.
Erosion of the surrounding terrain began only 500,000 years ago. Evidence
suggests the rate of erosion of Badlands formations is on the order of an inch
per year. That is fast and sufficient to reduce the Badlands to level plains in
another 500,000 years. The oldest formation in the Badlands is Pierre Shale,
which dates to between 69 and 75 million years. The youngest layers of sediment
date to about 30 million years ago and include volcanic ash.
The climate of the Badlands is relatively severe. The average
January temperature is around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, but it has been as low as
40 degrees below zero. July is hottest with an average temperature of 74
degrees and with all time highs between 110 and 115 degrees. The period of hot
weather lasts about two and a half months – three at most. Nights are often
very cool. Annual precipitation is slightly under 20 inches – sufficient for a
healthy grassland.
The only negative to the Badlands is that the convenient corridor
available for brief public visitation can get a little crowded in mid-summer.
However, if one takes the time to leave the pavement and short spur trails, the
magic of the Badlands quickly manifests itself. For brief periods, one can
experience an almost profound silence. More frequently, the air is alive with
the sounds of prairie birds, a prairie dog town, and if one is lucky, the
sounds from a herd of bison. If one spends more time wandering the prairie, the
eternal winds of the grasslands leave an audible imprint on the consciousness.
Unfortunately, time was not on our side, so with only the briefest encounter,
we left the Badlands, vowing to return when we could fully experience the
elements.
From the Badlands, we continued westward toward Rapid City, passing
through mixed and short grass prairie. I knew that to the south were the Pine
Ridge and Rosebud Reservations – testaments to a shameful era of colonial
expansion. I knew that to the northwest lay my old home Ellsworth AFB,
surrounded by decommissioned Minuteman Missile silos. There was also the little
community of Boxelder, which had been my South Dakota home of record when I was
a citizen of the state. For me it was familiar territory and I felt a sense of
pride. I knew what to anticipate.
Soon there would appear on the distant horizon an irregular, dark
blue line, the signature of the venerable Black Hills. I knew their profile
well. In short order, I spotted 7,242-foot Harney Peak and just south of there,
the sharp spires of the Needles. I also knew to expect a bright speck when the
light was just right – Mount Rushmore, famous to most, infamous to me, a
desecration of a beautiful mountain that was sacred to the Lakota, Cheyenne,
and Kiowa.
However, we would not visit the southern Black Hills on this trip -
no Custer State Park, Harney Peak, Sylvan Lake, or Joe Dollar Gulch. Those gems
would be bypassed. We were headed for another destination, a mountain lying
just east of the town of Sturgis. Our end-of-day destination was 4,426-foot
Bear Butte, a small volcanic remnant thrusting its inviting form 1,250 feet
above its base. Like Pipestone, Bear Butte is a sacred Indian site.
Geologically, Bear Butte is a lacolith, an igneous intrusion thrust
upward into sedimentary layers. The sedimentary overburden was softer and
eroded away, leaving the volcanic remains similar to what one sees at Devils
Tower in Wyoming. Bear Butte was declared a state park in 1961. It is a
national natural landmark. Deference to the wishes of Native peoples has kept
the development to a minimum and tastefully presented in the visitor’s center.
Monica had especially wanted to climb Bear Butte and then camp near
its base for at least one night. Though she had not seen it, the mountain had
special meaning for her. In August of 2006 Chief Arvol Looking Horse had
offered a prayer from the summit of the Butte calling for blessings on our
marriage. The action by Chief Looking Horse bestowed on us a singularly
distinctive honor. Neither of us will ever forget it, and as a consequence, I
think that Monica felt that the least we could do in return was to visit the
Butte and pay our respects to Lakota elders who had walked the path, prayed,
held vision quests, and done ceremony. I agreed. We would express our gratitude
to the mountain and through simple ceremony acknowledge the distinguished
Native persons who had visited the mountain in centuries past and today.
Dignitaries from the past included famous chiefs like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull,
Crazy Horse, and Spotted Tail - all Lakota greats.
Bear Butte is also sacred to the Northern Cheyenne. Sweet Medicine,
the Northern Cheyenne law give, is said to have received the medicine bundle of
four arrows from spirits who live on Bear Butte. Crazy Horse held vision quests
on Bear Butte in 1857 and again in 1871. There has never been a break in the
attention given the mountain by Native peoples. Today the mountain is adorned
with prayer ties that are hung from trees and shrubs.
Climbing Bear Butte is guaranteed to be a memorable experience,
whether the objective is exercise, a pleasure hike, an ecological survey, a
spiritual experience, or a combination of these. Although small as mountains
go, Bear Butte has an imposing appearance. The trail to the summit is steep,
but not dangerously so. The mountain has elevated pitches to its sides that are
cluttered in volcanic debris. The rugged outcroppings make the climb feel like
one is on a much larger mountain. An old ponderosa pine forest survives on the
lower slopes and even the sharper talus slopes higher up. Trees cling
precariously to life in nooks and crannies. Their gnarly forms impart a feeling
of both forest antiquity and austerity of climate.
From the Butte’s steep sides, we looked down upon the rolling green
of the prairie as it gave way to the dark blue of the venerable Black Hills. We
were viewing one sacred site from another. A small herd of bison grazed
peacefully at the base of Bear Butte, lending to the ambience.
As we gained altitude, it looked as though we could make the
summit, but alas, on that day I was good for only 2/3rds of the 1000-foot
elevation gain over the steep trail that had been heated by a hot sun. I
suggested we let caution prevail and Monica agreed that we should turn around
shy of the summit. We would return another day to finish the job. So we
stopped, performed a ceremony as we had planned, thanking the spirits of the
mountain and the ancestors who had sought spiritual refuge on the Butte and had
gained wisdom from its powers.
Before leaving the subject of our trek, I feel compelled to point
out that were a person led blindfolded up Bear Butte on a day of heavy
visitation, one might pass a dozen and a half Native Americans without knowing
it. But whites in groups of two or more would be recognized from their
incessant babble, mostly about nothing. I felt a deep sense of embarrassment
as we passed white after white without observing even one who seem captivated
by the mountain, its geological history, its cultural history, its sacredness
to Native Americans, or even the extraordinary scenery constantly calling to
the appreciative eye to be scanned, to be savored, to be pondered. The
shallowness of the general public is a sign of the times, I guess, but I was
left with a sense that when it comes to the natural world and where humans fit
it, the majority of European Americans just don’t get it and never will. Bear
Butte is a natural cathedral. It is every bit as sacred as the most elegant of w
hite churches. In fact, I’ll take Bear Butte in the batting of an eye.
At the visitor’s center, I met a park custodian who turned out to
be a retired Lieutenant Colonel who was stationed at Ellsworth AFB more
recently. He had also been stationed at Minot AFB. We had much to discuss and
as we talked I felt a resurgence of the sense of pride I had often experienced
when in the active Air Force.
The scenes from Bear Butte were most memorable. We continued to
feel its pull and resonate with the aura it emits. We were not inclined to want
to leave its powerful energy field for the artificial surroundings of a motel.
We noticed a sign alerting us to a nearby campground on a small lake a short
distance from the Butte’s southwestern base and in full view of the great bear
– a site replete with sights and sounds of the prairie.
We checked out the campground, searching for a site with the
backdrop of the Butte. I didn’t feel all that well, but I knew Monica really
wanted to sleep under the stars, so I agreed and we settled on a camping spot
and set up camp.
The Black Hills served as our window to the west. Bear Butte stood
over us to the northeast. The lake was immediately to our south and the
mosquitoes were everywhere, but not as bothersome as what we were willing to
experience in the Northeast. The evening was calm and we heated up soup and had
a light dinner.
As night fell, a prairie wind arose and we were treated to the
sound of the wind as it blew steadily through the cool night. Our tent flapped
constantly. The experience reminded me of my first night in South Dakota in the
Air Force when I slept in a metal building that creaked with every gust of
wind. The experienced was repeated my second night and then the third. Nightly
winds became the norm. I learned to like the sound and appreciated its cooling
effect in the summer and its power to hold insects at bay.
Throughout the evening I found myself having to get up an relieve
bladder pressure. Out from the tent, the night sky was brilliant. I had
forgotten how beautiful a starry night can be when there are no close by,
artificial polluting light sources and the air is dry. Although the altitude
was only 3,200 feet, that is 3,200 fewer feet of atmosphere for the stars to
shine through. It was a great end to a great day.
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