Those Badlands Ain’t So Bad!

Driving across South Dakota is a revelation over and over of unexpected landscape. Just when one is  thinking, “Uh-huh: grass, grass, grass. Dotted cows, dotted cows, dotted cows,” one tops a little rise and finds spread out in all directions these incredible swirl-y, mound-y hills that layer and flatten out and rise again. Then it all gets flat. Then it’s not. Back to flat, back to not. Then one notices something different in the far distance and one starts humming, “Out in the west Texas town of El Paso,” to oneself, even though one is far from Texas, and one starts thinking about words one only has a vague notion of like mesa and butte and thinking perhaps those words fit those formations and perhaps a few hours later one will reach that place and find out.

But, instead, the GPS directs one to turn off the road and, whoa! Like Nature planned the surprise for weary I-90 travelers, there are the Badlands around a few bends and out of sight of the highway and the grasslands and suddenly — really! — one is in an alien place, a layered place, a place of dry clay and strange shapes, and potential rattlesnakes and broken ankles, but a place where one is compelled to get out and walk and pick one’s way and even climb a bit.

Astonishing place. And I kept thinking, “I would have been so daunted by this if I had come upon it on a horse or in a wagon. How to get through it? Or, must it be gone around? I’m still astonished by every thought of it.

We had dinner in the home of some friends in Rapid City, which is astonishing in its own way, as one finds oneself suddenly back in civilization after many hours of seeing few cars and few people. We attended Bible study with them and the friendly group of brethren here, had a restorative ice cream from Dairy Queen, and fell into our beds.

What astonishing places have you seen?