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.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Westward to Seattle
Our new apartment, just north of the center of Fremont, Seattle, perches two stories above the street on the windowed west side, overlooking a steep hillslope. On the east side, the building's pushed into the hill, so that the door to that side opens one story below ground level, and one must mount stairs to reach the parking lot. Along the third, south side, our apartment's windows look out on the upwards slope. Trees and thick, spiny blackberry bushes grow there, and deeply colored ripe blackberries tempt the eye, mostly beyond reach, or outside windowscreens that do not open.
I walked around the building today, to see if I could scale the southeast fence that would have allowed access to the blackberries. Vines overgrow the access, alongside signs that proclaim "DO NOT TRESPASS". I would, though, if it weren't for my knee, injured playing ultimate earlier this summer. Perhaps Paul will crawl over for me.
We arrived here last Wednesday after a cross-country drive, stopping in the Badlands, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Yellowstone, and the Cascades in Washington. We saw wildlife: bison walking along the road in the prairieland of Custer State Park, flanking our car. We sat motionless and breathless as that vast bulk of animals passed - twenty of them or so, with calves. The bull brought up the rear, ruffed by dark brown fur, his head hanging enormous on that hump-shouldered frame, his eyes deep-set and calm.
In Yellowstone, on the steep slopes of Dunraven Pass, we stopped amid a traffic jam. Fifty onlookers crowded the narrow pass, binoculars or long-lensed cameras pressed to their eyes. A mama black bear and two cubs wandered just below, no further than 100 meters from us, wandering the steep pine woodlands in search of pinecones. One baby, about as big as a - a what? a coffee table? a golden retriever? so hard to define that rotund bulk of childish fur, black, endearing and playful with nose and ears sticking out - stopped atop a boulder with a big cone between his paws, chewing on it with the gleeful, unselfconscious and awkward delight of childhood. The mama flopped on her back awhile to relax and scratch her chest.
And then the wolf, who lay in spotting-scope range, barely visible in the shadows of the scraggly trees in the prairie down the hill. We waited until at last he rose. After a moment's stately retreat, he turned, and I had an instant's glimpse of his grey profile, tongue lolling, body rangy and lean. Then he vanished up the hill, where, onlookers told me, the rest of his pack waited. Patient watchers had seen the whole pack earlier in the morning, both pups and adults, but Paul and I arrived only ten minutes too late to spot them.
We spent two and a half days in Yellowstone, camping at the crowded but relaxed campsites in the cold nights. In the days, we took walks through the backcountry - past an alpine lake where gilled salamanders swam, up the slopes of Mt. Washburn, and along the heat-soaked canyon of the Yellowstone River below Tower Falls. Around us, the yellow and white and red rocks - the osprey sailing and screaming - the pines clinging to their cones and their stiff needles in the dry weather. One evening, we began a walk along the top of the canyon. But a dry and ominous fog swept in, reminiscent of smog and smelling of ash: the lingering breath of a forest fire in the northeast of Yellowstone. We had to turn back, since we didn't know where the fire was until we asked a waitress about it back at Roosevelt Lodge.
I should mention, too, the geysers and pools. Bright waters, blue and green, surreal and smoking, covered in fog. The bursting mud-pits, bubbling and spitting, as though some beast lay uneasily sleeping beneath. Dragon's Mouth Spring, exhaling hot steam with a dragon-like roar. Fountain Geyser, which enthusiastically and impressively spouted a huge tower water for minutes on end, repeatedly splashing us where we stood on the walkway. It stood near little Jet, which spat water from small but artistic calcite spouts. And Grand Prismatic Pool, deep and shrouded, blue and red like a baleful eye, its rainbow of colors reflected in the fog overlying it.
Now, after the last of the journey through leaning mountains, after our picnic along the cliffs beside the shining Madison River rippling over the rocks, and after the cool moist stillness of the mossed Cascades, I sit in the sunlight in our living room. And it's time for dinner, so I'll bring this entry to a close.
I walked around the building today, to see if I could scale the southeast fence that would have allowed access to the blackberries. Vines overgrow the access, alongside signs that proclaim "DO NOT TRESPASS". I would, though, if it weren't for my knee, injured playing ultimate earlier this summer. Perhaps Paul will crawl over for me.
We arrived here last Wednesday after a cross-country drive, stopping in the Badlands, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Yellowstone, and the Cascades in Washington. We saw wildlife: bison walking along the road in the prairieland of Custer State Park, flanking our car. We sat motionless and breathless as that vast bulk of animals passed - twenty of them or so, with calves. The bull brought up the rear, ruffed by dark brown fur, his head hanging enormous on that hump-shouldered frame, his eyes deep-set and calm.
In Yellowstone, on the steep slopes of Dunraven Pass, we stopped amid a traffic jam. Fifty onlookers crowded the narrow pass, binoculars or long-lensed cameras pressed to their eyes. A mama black bear and two cubs wandered just below, no further than 100 meters from us, wandering the steep pine woodlands in search of pinecones. One baby, about as big as a - a what? a coffee table? a golden retriever? so hard to define that rotund bulk of childish fur, black, endearing and playful with nose and ears sticking out - stopped atop a boulder with a big cone between his paws, chewing on it with the gleeful, unselfconscious and awkward delight of childhood. The mama flopped on her back awhile to relax and scratch her chest.
And then the wolf, who lay in spotting-scope range, barely visible in the shadows of the scraggly trees in the prairie down the hill. We waited until at last he rose. After a moment's stately retreat, he turned, and I had an instant's glimpse of his grey profile, tongue lolling, body rangy and lean. Then he vanished up the hill, where, onlookers told me, the rest of his pack waited. Patient watchers had seen the whole pack earlier in the morning, both pups and adults, but Paul and I arrived only ten minutes too late to spot them.
We spent two and a half days in Yellowstone, camping at the crowded but relaxed campsites in the cold nights. In the days, we took walks through the backcountry - past an alpine lake where gilled salamanders swam, up the slopes of Mt. Washburn, and along the heat-soaked canyon of the Yellowstone River below Tower Falls. Around us, the yellow and white and red rocks - the osprey sailing and screaming - the pines clinging to their cones and their stiff needles in the dry weather. One evening, we began a walk along the top of the canyon. But a dry and ominous fog swept in, reminiscent of smog and smelling of ash: the lingering breath of a forest fire in the northeast of Yellowstone. We had to turn back, since we didn't know where the fire was until we asked a waitress about it back at Roosevelt Lodge.
I should mention, too, the geysers and pools. Bright waters, blue and green, surreal and smoking, covered in fog. The bursting mud-pits, bubbling and spitting, as though some beast lay uneasily sleeping beneath. Dragon's Mouth Spring, exhaling hot steam with a dragon-like roar. Fountain Geyser, which enthusiastically and impressively spouted a huge tower water for minutes on end, repeatedly splashing us where we stood on the walkway. It stood near little Jet, which spat water from small but artistic calcite spouts. And Grand Prismatic Pool, deep and shrouded, blue and red like a baleful eye, its rainbow of colors reflected in the fog overlying it.
Now, after the last of the journey through leaning mountains, after our picnic along the cliffs beside the shining Madison River rippling over the rocks, and after the cool moist stillness of the mossed Cascades, I sit in the sunlight in our living room. And it's time for dinner, so I'll bring this entry to a close.
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