We drove over to Crazy Horse Mountain, a work in progress by the late sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski. I first noticed Crazy Horse's head intently staring out of the side of the mountain about two miles from the site. As we got closer, my wife noticed that a sketch of a horse's head burned into the side of the mountain. Ziolkowski died in 1982. His wife and children (5 boys and 5 girls) continue the work he started in 1947, when he was almost forty years old. In 1939, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear invited Ziolkowski to carve a giant likeness of Crazy Horse, because, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too." Ziolkowski has said, "The treatment of the American Indian is the blackest mark on the escutcheon of our nation's history. By carving Crazy Horse, if I can give back to the Indian some of his pride and create the means to keep alive his culture and heritage, my life will have been worthwhile."

On the road approaching the mountain was a tourist trap called something like, "The Outpost", with signs at the entrance offering, "See the Statue for Free". We passed it by and came to the entrance of Crazy Horse Mountain. There was a $15 per carload admission fee, but Crazy Horse Mountain is not a federal or state project. Ziolkowski believed in free enterprise and felt the funds should come from ordinary citizens. Progress was slow; that summer the work had been going on for 48 years, and only Crazy Horse's face was emerging from the pegmatite granite.

Passing from the parking lot though the Black Hills Nature Gates, we walked into an outdoor sculpture gallery, made up of busts and sculptures of Italian marble made by Korczak Ziolkowski. The noses on the busts were broken off. I asked inside about them. A woman told me, "Vandals", and I remembered G. Magpie's heavy steel plaque in the Indian room at Little Big Horn.

There was a theater in which we saw a film of the project. The last forty-five years of Korzczak Ziolkowski's life spun out in a short film, highlighted by dynamiting, jackhammering, deep snows, friendly mountain sheep, hostile bigots, and always the mountain. As a fellow artist, I wondered what he thought every morning when he first stepped out into the fresh Black Hills air and saw all those homemade steps leading up the mountain to where he would work. Did he see it, as it would be? Could he really hold that vision for so long? What drove him?

We were tempted to hike to the base of the mountain, about a mile off, but it was nearing sunset. We had to remind ourselves that we were still in the West; what kind of wild animals could we run into? Bear? Mountain lion? We weren't sure, so we passed on the hike. Before we left, we were invited to take a chunk of the mountain from a file of blasted rocks. It now sits in our living room, and will be passed on to family members as the years go by.

On the way back to camp, we stopped at Custer for food. Some hotdogs, marshmallows, quasi-wine coolers made from malt ale, and flashlights. We congratulated ourselves on being prepared this time. We were experienced campers now. The tent was already set up and waiting for us back at our campsite. When we arrived, it was pitch black. We used our flashlights. I went to build a fire and realized that we had no firewood.

Some campers.

I stumbled around in the woods, picking up sticks and what I hoped were dry logs, but it was tough going. Kindling was scarce, and I tried to avoid the poison ivy. Finally we had enough gathered for a fire. It took an hour of pleading and cursing to get the wood to light. I was running out of old newspaper to get it started, and began to rip blank pages out of my spiral note pad. When the fire was finally lit, I put the metal grill over it, but I guess it wasn't as level as I thought, because the hot dogs rolled right off it into the fire as soon as I put them down. I fished most of them out of the fire and tried again. It was like trying to cook a live eel; the wieners had minds of their own and rolled this way and that, no matter how I placed them on the grill. My wife rolled this way and that, laughing. "You'd make a terrible Indian," she said. Considering my fear of heights and my inability to spear half-cooked food, I had to agree with her.

Supper was finally cooked and eaten, and we sat silently on a log watching the fire burn out. It was very dark; the sky was overcast; yet we could feel the Black Hills all around us. We slept well that night.

In the morning, we awoke to an overcast sky. There was no rain, but a very wet dew; so wet that the pines dripped with it. Usually when it rains, the dry spots are under the trees. Here the earth was dry with wet spots under the trees. We gratefully showered. We had not bathed since we had left Gardiner Montana two days before.

After breakfast, (wisely eaten in a restaurant where someone else could light the fire and do the cooking) we drove south on Route 87 to Wind Cave National Park. The Wind Cave was called that because it whistled. Depending on the atmospheric conditions and temperature, the air would either rush out from the inside or rush in from the outside. Some Indians believed that the Wind Cave was where the buffalo originated. Some white men believed there was gold inside it. The original entrance to the Wind Cave was a small hole that a person had to twist and ease himself into like a pair of tight long johns. Once inside, however, it opened up.

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