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The camping area was full, so we pulled over to the side of the road and made up the back area of the van to sleep in. After we had curled up into our bedrolls, and doused the overhead light, our eyes slowly became accustomed to the dark. I looked out a side window, up at the stars, and dark blue silhouette that blotted out part of the Milky Way. I elbowed my wife and said, "There's the Tower. I guess they turn the lights off early on Saturday night." Next morning, I awoke
early and washed up and brushed my teeth. There were no showers at this
particular campground. Upon returning to the van, I noticed five or six
yellow jackets buzzing around the grill. I woke my wife. "Go wash,"
I told her. "Go out the back, quickly. I'm going to move the van;
we've parked on top of a yellow jackets' nest." "I didn't either. It might be in that old log over there, or that tree. We're making them nervous. Go wash. I'll move the van." After washing, we drove back up to the parking lot where we fixed our bedrolls. We didn't want to get caught by the ranger camping where we weren't supposed to be. Two young men nearby were unpacking ropes and water bottles from their car and waited for two other companions. They were going rock climbing - to the top of the Tower. My wife and I opted to walk around it. The Tower is lava that cooled and hardened inside a volcano. The outside of the volcano wore away, leaving the core, the Tower. There were signs along the path to the foot of the tower that read, "This Tower is sacred to Native Americans. Please do not disturb the prayer bundles left along the trail." And we did see a few. Small cloth sacks as big as your thumb, tied up with string. Between the foot of the tower and the pinewoods that surround it is field of giant boulders, which have broken loose and fallen from the tower over the centuries. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper from rock to rock, playing hide and seek with the tourists. It takes about an hour to stroll around the base, snapping pictures and gazing down on the Belle Fourche River as it winds its way northward through a lush valley to meet up with the Little Missouri. We caught up with the young rock climbers on the cooler western side, where they were halfway up the tower, and appeared no bigger than gnats. One was stuck in cul-de-sack, and his buddy was climbing down to help him. There were two other climbers who had reached the top. The only way we could pinpoint their locations on the face of the Tower were to listen for their voices and follow the sound and watch for their scant movement. We left the Tower and got on State Route 24,eastward towards South Dakota. We passed a farm five miles out, and backdropped against a wheat field, the Devil's Tower stood tall against the sky. The first thing this farmer saw every morning as he stepped outside his door was the Tower. I wondered if it still excited him, or had it become so commonplace that he didn't notice it any more. We drove back roads through rolling farmland and brushes of woods. Every so often, we saw a cliff, where the earth had shifted millions of years ago. The landscape stopped at the head of the cliff and continued uninterrupted at the foot of the cliff, as casual as a shrug. The two-lane blacktop wound around hills and passed through shaded glades, and it became apparent why the Sioux had considered the Black Hills sacred. We breakfasted at a fast food place in Rapid City, and then headed south on route 16 to Mount. Rushmore. The road wormed through the deep-green pines, and snaked up through the hills. Thrown-together signs hawking, "Black Hills Gold!" stood intermittently at the side of the four-lane blacktop, spoiling the scenery. The Black Hills seemed like the Appalachians, in that they were round-shouldered; not as craggy as the Rockies. The Hills were high, yet gently sloping and closer together than the Appalachians. While not as awesome as Yellowstone, they were more intimate. The parking lot in front of Mount Rushmore was a busy place. Buses parked and departed; children scampered; senior citizens became separated from their tour groups. The visitor center spilled on the hill facing the majestic sculptor of four presidents was choked with people. Down a flight of stairs was a workshop of the artist with a display of how the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were blasted out of the rock. The project was almost finished when the artist, Gutzon Borglum, died in 1941. At first, his son planned to complete it, and then decided to leave it, as it was when his father died. The statue was impressive;
beautiful. And yet, remembering the tragic history of the Black Hills,
it seemed out of place. We took some pictures, and my wife found a block
of stone on the ground, which we smuggled back to our car. We drove through
winding roads to Custer State Park, where we got a campsite. After we
had set up our tent, I told my wife that I felt funny taking the block
of stone out of the Black Hills, and we decided to leave it there. |