This parched flatland

Aug. 30, 2006

Badlands. Spires of rock, the green and grey siltstones and ribbons of shale. The mounds of red and yellow paleosol.

Everywhere the lunar surroundings, the climbing towers, the thin cliff faces.

Junipers clustered in the narrow valleys; and then, beyond, the flat prairie, cut by rock. Plateaus of green amid the sliced, eroded landscape.

Bison dark and hunched on the green landscape below. The upper plain, where prairie dogs stood straight as reeds, or rested in yoga pose, rounded bodies relaxed atop their burrows with small feet sticking out. From time to time they kicked back their little squirreline heads and yelped out shrill reasonless calls, paws outstretched, resting on their black-tipped short tails.

The road wound up through the strange rock formations. Around each bend a new landscape, a series of wrinkled hills like elephant's feet, or stacked spires like icing. All ashen grey, cut by long, even red-beds, which formed recognizable and perfectly flat lines stretching across the shattered landscape.

A few pronghorns; horned larks; a brown thrasher among the junipers. Turkey vultures floating above the backbone of the hills.

And sunlight, evening light gradually dropping down, clear and still and quiet, with the prairie wind blowing harsh against the car doors as we paused, and drove on, and paused again, to look out from under our bucket hats at the lonely, fierce landscape.

Now I'm here in the motel room outside Rapid City. Remembering the day, snippets of it -- like the tiny tumbledown gas station with its gutted atmosphere. "Hilltop," it was called; it looked as though it had been bombed; a faded sign with peeling paint proclaimed a mostly effaced welcome; canvas covered the interiors of the windows, and the sidedoors were broken and abandoned. The signs over the gas pumps flapped in a hot, dry wind. I entered with trepidation.

But within, the shelves were cheerfully stocked, and a middle-aged woman sat placidly reading at the cash register, and offered me a friendly hello. Outside, the wind shoved the door shut so hard it was tough to open. "Oh, about once a week," said the woman mildly, when I asked how often it was so windy.

"Hilltop" formed a mere mound above the surrounding flat, commanding a view of the dried landscape, that has suffered record drought, this summer.

South Dakota - this is it, this parched flatland, cut by the abrupt crumples and valleys of the Badlands.