Trip West: Absence

I've been gone a while. I had lower capacity and needed to take time to recuperate. I'm back now, and the first edition of Mycelium will be sent out by the end of next week. Here's a story about some things I did in my absence.

My fiance and I departed for the West mid-day on Monday, July 6th. I drove first, getting us through busy Chicago, heading north up to Wisconsin and then Minnesota, trying to avoid driving through Iowa and Nebraska. The weather turned brutal as we crossed the state line into Minnesota, where lightning bolted horizontally across the sky and rain pounded the windshield until it was clean from bugs and smudges. In Minnesota and the eastern parts of South Dakota, I was thankful for the darkness, as it allowed a clearer view of the lightning and I feared that the flatness of the land would dull my brain too severely.

Starting around 4:30 in the morning on Tuesday, July 7th, shadows of large rock formations started to loom above us, making their presence known just barely through the moonlight, but enough to give my stomach a stir. We made it to the Badlands in South Dakota. It’s a strange feeling, to drive on flat land for nearly 15 straight hours and suddenly buttes of silty, delicate rock start to rise all around you. By 5:00, as the sun was starting to peak over the horizon behind the buttes, we got out of the car and walked along a short trail. We watched as the sky got lighter, curled into ourselves to protect against the bitter wind. When there was enough light, we got back to the car and resolved to search for our camping spot.

Somewhere in the White River Valley, near Bigfoot Pass Overlook and Fossil Exhibit Trail, my fiance took the car off the road and along a lightly sloping ridge of dry grasses. A small plateau spread itself out in a half-circle of buttes, the moon still hanging in the sky, and we decided it would be our spot. We could hardly see the road, it was silent, and it was ours. We parked the car and hopped out, laughing at the way the thing looked in the deep grasses. The air and wind were both still cold, and we wore fleece with jeans as we set up our tent. Behind us rose tall, pale red buttes after the drop-off of the plateau, and in front of us sprawled the rest of the White River Valley. The day was clear and the air was thin; it felt like we could see to the end of the Earth. In the low light, the buttes far across the way looked a deep purple. We felt safe, exuberant, disbelieving.

We watched birds fly around our plateau, catching bugs in the morning air. We speculated as to why the Badlands were named as such, why such a seemingly false moniker was given to a pleasant and easily live-able landscape. It’s hard not to believe that the sun was laughing at us as it peaked over the buttes and revealed the dead-pale colors of the valley. From the bleached color alone, I began to understand that the land we were on was not meant for us, that human folly and hubris alone would drive someone to want to conquer it. blake asked what the temperature in the valley would be like, and when I saw the prediction for a day that would breach 100 degrees, I shrugged it off. I had felt hotter temperatures, had experienced the sun in its most drastic form in places like Miami, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Arizona, and New Mexico. The sun broke into hysterics, lurched into the sky, and unleashed a heat and intensity unlike anything I have felt before. The sun rose to tell us this is how people die here. The sun rose to tell us I dried out this valley and I’ll do the same to you. But we are human, and thus we are stubborn, idealistic, and foolish.

We stayed in the sun, finding shade only in small slivers next to the car. The tent had become an oven, even with the tarp reflecting most of the sun. The sunscreen we applied seemed to just sizzle off of our skin. We drank water until I thought I would be sick from it. But we were determined, remembering romantically the cool breeze of the morning, waiting eagerly for the sharp downturn in temperatures that would come at 6:00 PM. By 9:00 AM, it was already 90 degrees. In the heat, we explored our area, blake much more sure-footed than myself and my fear of heights. After descending into the ravine between the plateau and the buttes, she started climbing, looking for a place to set up and draw in her nature sketchbook, a little brown and worn edition of The Hobbit that she’s been drawing in since April 2019. On her way up she found bone fragments buried in the sediment: a ball-joint socket, a vertebrae, and more. She looked beautiful on her perch, green hair contrasting starkly against the pale, crumbling buttes. While she drew, I laid in the shade and read Into the Wild.

The sun moved teasingly slowly across the sky and gave us no relief. To pass the time, I started reading my book out loud to blake. It was her book, actually, but one that was important to her, giving me a determination to read I haven’t felt in some time. Chapters passed slowly as we sat under the open trunk of the car, chugging water and trying to eat juicy oranges. During one of our breaks, with blake on the other side of the plateau and out of sight, I looked up to one of the buttes surrounding our open field of heat waves and saw a ram standing precariously on a ledge hardly perceptible from the distance I was at. I snapped some pictures, felt oddly exposed with the way the ram was staring directly at me. As it started to descend the butte into the ravine, I noticed how exact his movements were, how sure he felt on his feet among the crumbling sediment-rich rocks. The ram went out of sight, and blake came back to camp. The ram was a curious creature, though, and while we weren’t watching, he ascended our side of the ravine and poked his head above the crest of the plateau, less than 30 feet from us.

He inched closer, curious to see what we were. Seeing rams in the Badlands is exceedingly rare, as they were reintroduced in the 1960s, but only 14 of the rams they re-introduced actually survived. Now there are somewhere between 70-100 of them in the entire park. And here was one, inching closer to us, making eye contact, trying to make sense of the scene before him. We stood still, watching, as the gap closed to 10 feet. He was gentle and slow, eating grass along his way, making it clear to us almost immediately that he meant no harm and would not deal us any blows if we simply reciprocated the respect he showed. He stayed with us for a while, making his way across the plateau, munching on grass, until he swiftly and easily descended on the other side of the ravine where the ledge was steep and tall.

We didn’t see any more rams, but the experience left us both enamored, newly revitalized to stay in our camp until nighttime, when hopefully the cool breeze and air would bring more rams to our camp. It seemed a romantic notion, to share a spot we claimed for a day with the animals that must live there, always, under the sun. But that ram was the only one we saw, and the energy the encounter gave us didn’t last very long.

I’ll admit, sheepishly, that by around noon, we decided we needed an extended break from the heat and sun. We climbed into the back of the car and cranked the air conditioning as high as we could. The relief was unsatisfying, but we were determined to stay the night, to see the Milky Way sprawl out above us. I continued reading out loud, trying to distract from what was clearly early heat stroke or maybe sun sickness. My whole body hurt and my skin stung under my clothes. On the few times I had to venture from the air conditioning back to the tent to retrieve something, the heat fell on me like a weighted blanket, wrapping me in a hug that was meant to pull me down to the ground. The sun felt hungry, heavy beyond my ability to describe. Within the minutes I spent outside looking through the tent, I understood clearly and absolutely that the Badlands were not a place for determination or stubbornness. How anything lives there is beyond me. It seems a place abandoned by God himself, ruled by the apathetic hatred of the sun.

The Badlands are a beautiful place, terrifying in their foreignness, somewhere you simply must visit and spend a day if you find yourself over-confident in humanity’s ability to live anywhere. Down to the sharp blades of dry grass that poke and slice your legs, you will be humbled, exhausted, made more intimate with the idea of your own death. We came to understand more clearly than ever that the Earth is our gracious host and she can make us leave whenever she pleases. The sun is her most powerful confidante and we did not stand a chance. By 4:00 PM, we could no longer take the heat. We packed up, drove off of the plateau, and continued on highway 240 Westward. The highway is much like the land it cuts through: dangerous, winding, steep. We drove out of the White River Valley, across basins and overlooks, then turned north to follow 240 out of the park. We saw bison and wild sheep peppering the landscape as we headed out. We stopped briefly at the top of the Yellow Mounds Overlook, heard from a ranger about two search and rescue missions that had been undertaken that day. With the weight of that knowledge, we fled from the park towards a small town just north of the highway we would then take to get to Devil’s Tower.

The town is called Wall, and its central location is a store called Wall Drug. We saw signs for the store starting 30 miles south of the town and decided we simply must stop. As we entered the town, signs for the store appeared on every corner, including corners with houses on them. When we arrived, the place was packed with red-faced tourists, many of whom seemed to be looking around only for the sake of enjoying the air conditioning. We bought some pins, more sunscreen, and made our way back to Interstate 90 West. Leaving the town, there is one sign that reads “Thank you for visiting Wall Drug!” Our laughter at this was boisterous. That’s like if when you’re leaving Lansing, you see a sign that says ‘thanks for visiting Walgreens!’ blake said between laughs. With the heat of the sun still making my brain feel sludgy and slow, the whole thing felt almost like a dream. But I have the pins I bought to prove it.

By the time we left Wall, we were less than three hours from our final destination: Devil’s Tower in the Northeast corner of Wyoming. As we closed the distance, sharing disbelief at how long we stayed in the Badlands under the sun, we felt more at ease and less on the edge of death as coniferous trees and green grasses started to paint the landscape around us. Foothills rose from the Earth and the sun felt more bearable as it went down. Still 13 miles away, we rounded a corner and saw the Tower looming largely in the distance. Its size astonished me. I was driving this time, making sure blake could take in the scene completely, as this pilgrimage was one she had tried to make in the past. By the time we arrived at the Tower, the sun was below the horizon and the air was cool again. We walked up the trail swiftly, craning our necks and hoping for an easy spot to stray from the path. blake, being more experienced in the outdoors, found a spot and led the way.

We came to some boulders, large and covered in lichens, that had fallen off the tower some many geologic years ago. There we sat, alone, together, feeling like the tower had breathed life back into us. There, on a boulder near the foot of the tower, I asked blake to be my wife, and she graciously obliged.

We left in the dark, exhausted and too worn down to make camp anywhere. We called some nearby hotels and only got an answer from the Best Western in the small town 10 miles from the tower. A drunken clerk checked us in, we turned the air conditioning in our room to 68, and climbed into a bath to try and soothe the stinging of our skin. I’m embarrassed to admit that my skin was a color I previously thought impossible, so bright red that blake and I could do nothing but laugh at it. I resolved to wear long sleeves the next day, regardless of the weather. I prayed for a swift recovery, and then fell into a deep and merciful sleep.

We got to the Tower the next morning at around 7:00 AM, two hours before the trading post at the park entrance opened. It was cool and the sun seemed less hell-bent on our destruction. We took the Tower Trail to the Southeast corner, found a shady grove of trees far enough off of the trail that we could hardly see it, and set up for the day. The comfortable familiarity of pine needles crunching under our feet told us that we would have an easier day, that it was okay for us to be there.

The Tower curls out of the ground, reaching a height of 867 feet above the foothill it lives on, and is bleached by the sun but still adorned with faded reds, greens, and yellows. When clouds pass over it, the colors become more vibrant. The breeze stayed with us all day, but we had to work for our shade, moving our hammock and supplies constantly as the sun found new branches to poke through. There is no complete repose in nature: the sun will still touch you, and the wild vultures that circled us and the Tower throughout the day were a beautiful and ominous reminder that we, too, are only made of flesh that can easily be picked apart in the wild. Here, we came to realize that nature is not there for us to relax in. Calm can be found in the mountain breezes, but vultures ride the updrafts. Boulders offer places to sit and lean back, but at the eventual protest of your bones. Even places in nature where humans could reasonably live are places where you can still easily die.

The tower shows us what the interior of the Earth looks like, as geologists and indigenous peoplehave discovered that the Tower rose from the Earth, pushed up by boiling magma. Indigenous people concluded that the strange rock formations, the long cracks and columns that coat the sides of the Tower, were caused by a great bear using it as a scratching post. From the way it looks, this is perfectly reasonable. I spent the entirety of the day staring directly up at the tower, feeling an almost magnetic pull to watch as climbers ascended the smooth, vertical sides. I stared for so long that I still saw the Tower with my eyes closed, each line, each crack, each variation in color. It made my heart rumble, like it, too, was trying to push out a spire.

While the Badlands are aptly named, Devil’s Tower carries a misnomer. Sitting in silence at its foot, blake and I felt an overwhelming protective presence. According to Indigenous stories, not to be taken lightly but to be understood as their own truth, the Tower rose when people prayed for protection against the giant bear chasing them. The Tower rose from the Earth to save its people, and that energy is undeniable. At the tower, you will come to know clearly that the Earth is a protective spirit if you listen to her, but you are not the only thing under her wing. The tower may protect you spiritually, divine energy radiating off, but your body is still yours to keep safe. The vultures are children of the Earth, too, after all.

During our many hours in the pinetree grove under the tower, we drew, I wrote, and blake painted. There was hardly a moment in which I wasn’t looking up at the tower, so writing was a slow task. After blake started a page in her sketchbook, she asked me to finish it as she painted. I knew this would not be the last time I drew the Tower. The collaborative piece turned out beautiful and wild.

In the late afternoon, we returned to our hotel and ordered a pizza from a tiny deli in Hulett, where we were staying. The town has a population of about 300. The deli, run by a mother-daughter duo, served fresh pizza with home-made crust. It was delicious, revitalizing to a ridiculous degree. To celebrate our engagement, I also stopped at one of the local bars to buy a couple bottles of wine. A merlot and a white zinfandel, bottom shelf stuff. Across the bar sat the drunken clerk from the night before, and it was clear from the reaction of the gruff, old men that my blue hair, face mask, and long-sleeve shirt with a weed leaf on it were quite jarring. I bought the wine, not having been carded, and swiftly headed back to the hotel where my fiancee awaited me.

We resolved to allow ourselves to sleep in before heading to Fort Collins, Colorado the next day. A quick, five hour drive directly south led us to the beginnings of the Rocky Mountains. We met up with one of blake’s old friends, walked around his neighborhood and caught up. During this time, I felt a swelling in my heart, like the mountains of the West were calling me home. Bordering us below was New Mexico, and an energy I hadn’t felt in some time stirred in me. Although I didn’t live there for long, and I remember none of it, it is where I was born, and it implored me to stay.

After our visit, we headed South again, another hour long drive, until we came to the hotel we were staying at for the night. The historic Hotel Boulderado is located in the downtown of Boulder with a view of the mountains and the city. The place opened in 1909, and housed a speakeasy that still operates in the basement. For dinner, we ate in the hotel restaurant, both enjoying Rocky Mountain Trout. Not long after arriving, I told blake that I now intended to focus my job-search in universities in Colorado, hopefully UC Boulder. After seeing the city magazine, detailing the high number of art galleries, literary culture, and social justice ingrained in the town, we felt an overwhelming sense that Boulder is where we belonged. I also sheepishly admitted that, after watching the climbers at Devil’s Tower, I felt compelled to look into rock climbing. Just don’t tell your parents, blake said. I promise not to free-solo, I said in response, trying to provide any comfort at all for the dangerous undertaking I had resolutely decided to pursue.

On our way home, we headed East through Nebraska, stopping in Omaha to visit blake’s Aunt and grandparents, her late Father’s side of the family. They are beautiful people, talkative and kind, funny and loving. I felt welcomed immediately, and they were elated at our engagement. They fed us happily, listened to our tales of travel, and wished us a safe journey home. We made it home at around 7:00 AM the next morning, exhausted beyond belief and ecstatic to see our cat, Grendel, again. The low-elevation air was easy to breathe, and the recent rains made Lansing more green than when we left it.

We had added nearly 3,000 miles to the car, amassed souvenirs for our friends, and gained a sense of peace from being in the outdoors. I still see the Tower when I close my eyes.