Discovering the Undiscovered

   The air was crisp but I knew that it would rapidly warm as the desert sun rose above the jagged peaks  to the east. There had been frost lining the edges of small, leafy plants nestled in the shade of tall desert trees not but minutes earlier. The sand beneath my feet was cool and damp from the rain and melting mountain snow from the previous days. As I walked slowly through the lowland desert landscape, weaving between huddles of dense Mesquite trees I felt alone. The only other footprints were those of small white tailed deer that crisscrossed the barren sand where the dry, golden grass refused to grow. The morning sun reflected  from small pieces of white and rose quartz that dotted the red, gritty earth. It is hard for me to walk in the wilderness with my head raised to the horizon, years of archaeology training has forced my eyes to scour the ground for signs of past inhabitants. Hundreds of years ago, men from Portugal and Spain came to this desert as well as many other lands, claiming it a "New World", an entire continent now discovered and ripe for the taking. One after another, my steps led me through the low canyon; something caught my eye and I stopped. The distinct rust red of an ancient fragment of Hohokam pottery stood out just enough from the sand and rock to be noticeable to anyone who was looking. I had somewhat of a revelation just then...perhaps not so much a revelation as a realization; a sinking in of sorts. I had known for some time that there have been people here far longer than we know. I suppose being involved in archaeology had led to a kind of disassociation with the world. Maybe this was something I had thought before, or known all along, or some repressed notion hidden away by my romantic ideas of discovery. Whatever it may have been, it was apparent now that there was no real discovery here, not even when the Conquistadors and colonists came. Thousands of years ago this land had already been seen and settled and tamed. It had all been stamped out or forgotten and now I realized what I was discovering was no more a discovery than the New World. It is but a rediscovering of the lost. Maybe this is the true discovery.
    The question of who the first "discoverers" of the "New World" has always been a point of contention.  It has been taught for decades that those that would become what we call Native Americans traipsed here over the frozen Bering land bridge during the the thick of the last Ice Age. Popular opinion would have you believe that these people migrated from Asia by following giant Mega -fauna, mammoths and their ilk, through a convenient ice free corridor that existed in modern day Canada. Over the decades their has been numerous pieces of evidence that place people in the Americas long before 10,000ish B.C., when this corridor "would" have existed. Now it appears that there were multiple waves of colonization from Asia. It has been proposed that it one wave made their way along the western coasts and finally settled in South America long before North America became inhabited. This is shown in a number of artifacts found in the southern jungles that date well before any artifacts in the United States. These people would have been the first men and women to see these new continents, they were the first discoverers.*
      Not far from where I stood, perhaps only half and hour's walk, I knew that that long ago, maybe one thousand years or more someone had stayed for a night, I had seen it before. A few years ago, my wife, good friend Abraham and went hiking down a canyon while researching the legend of the lost Escalante Mine in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The trek was quite arduous, their were spots in the path heavy with deep sand, in other places large boulders blocked our way. Abraham and I scaled the northern slope of the canyon in order to see if we were still continuing on our intended path and on the way back down I slipped and nearly slid into a large diamond back rattlesnake that did not take kindly to the handful of loose rock I had just kicked his way. We eventually came to the end of the canyon as I we hoped we would, although unfortunately it did not perfectly fit the story we were following. Here we were met with a very steep and well worn cliff where water cascades when the winter snows are melting. Pools of green tinged water where clusters of wasps hovered and drank. Atop the dry falls we met a couple of women who had followed a trail alongside the canyon and had been watching us. This was rather disheartening as we had thought the canyon would have led farther into the mountains or would be more remote. Never the less, we talked to the duo and offered some insect sting ointment from our first ad kit to one who had been bit by some crawling thing or another. Before we parted, one of them told us we should investigate a small area jutting out above the canyon. She claimed she "felt an old energy". I am not one to readily believe claims of being psychic but what we found there left me thinking.

      Nestled between rocks and dry desert grass was a small ring of stone. Abraham was curious as to why I was so interested in the anomaly. I explained to him that it this was what archaeologists call a rock circle; this had once been an ancient campsite. Upon further investigation we found a great deal of pottery sherds* and lithic* fragments scattered about the area. Abraham expressed that he would have simply written it off as an abandoned hiker's camp site. By that time, I had seen many features such as this during archaeology field school and the evidence here was enough to say with a great deal of certainty that this site was left behind by the natives of Tucson River Valley quite some time ago.
      This is not the only place in the world where the sands of time have washed away memories of the past. Humans have been on this planet for over 200 thousand years; while a mere blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things, this is a massive amount of time and during that time span humans have walked over nearly every place on Earth. Again I stood amidst the desert landscape, the spirit of ancients, settlers and legend danced on the winds around me, the high granite peaks loomed above and at my feet lie the shattered memories of a forgotten people. Now I fully realized that I was not discovering the undiscovered but in fact remembering the unremembered. That is not to say that there is nothing to be found that hasn't already been seen; the woodlands of Canada, the Amazon, the Himalayan Mountains, all fortresses still resisting the advance of man...or are they?

 

*For more information of the pre-contact Americas, check out 1491 by Charles C. Mann
*For whatever reason archaeologists deemed it necessary to say pot sherd instead of pot shard
*Lithics are simply worked stone tools

Books and Maps

     It has been a very busy Christmas vacation and I haven't had a lot of time to write a new complete blog but I promise there should be one up in the next couple days. In the meantime I want to leave you with something to think about. My wife, roommate and I have just returned from seeing The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey (a fantastic movie by the way) and there was something that Gandalf said that I found very poignant.

"The world is not found in your books and maps."

Just something to keep in mind.

                                        -LDW

Explorer of the Month for December, 2012: Tyson Meyers

     I wanted to start off my first Explorer of the Month post with someone that is not in text books or Wikipedia pages and who had also had great influence on me and my sense of adventure. This man I speak of is named Tyson Meyers. Tyson and I met as wayward baristas in a lonely coffee shop on Tucson's Broadway boulevard. He is a giant of a man with a sense of humor and a love for beer. We immediately hit it off. He is the progeny of two very friendly rocket scientists (really, that's a real thing) and very talented with computers. We hung out and talked about treasure, archaeology and places to go for awhile and eventually we settled on our first real foray into the wilderness. There is a fairly popular cave on the soft backside of the Catalina Mountain Range in near Tucson, AZ named Peppersauce Cave. It is said that the there was once an old prospector out in the Catalinas searching for gold who had settled down to eat dinner at his camp fire in front of the wide cave mouth. He had a prized bottle of hot sauce that he had bought from a old Indian woman that he used at every meal. He had set it on the rocky ground next to his pack and mule and went to relieve himself in bushes. Upon his return the pepper sauce was no where to be found.
     The cave was very dark and the inside humidity kept the rocks covered in a thin layer of water and muddy dust. The entrance is large but rapidly narrows, a squeeze that I struggled with due to the size of all the gear I had, Tyson, ever fearless dove in and forced himself through. The next section of the cave opened up into a large dome with a rock slide that led to a level below, and if we happened to miss the small hop at the end of the slide there was the ever welcoming blackness below. We climbed through various tunnels and up and down boulders until we arrived at the first of a series of underground lakes. In the 90's a couple of divers from California came to explore the tunnels and lakes and see if what the uncharted regions of the cave system had to offer. They discovered in a second underground lake and small row boat tied to a rock and a ladder propped up against the side of the cave showing that at one time the water had to have been much lower. These couple of artifacts must have been there since at least the end of the 1800's, the last time the water level was recorded that low.
     Tyson is also a connoisseur of the abandoned; an avid urban explorer. Urban Exploration is somewhat of a subculture of people who live to see what they aren't supposed to; be it subway tunnels, abandoned factories or drainage systems. These are all places built by man and eventually forgotten or roped off from prying eyes for whatever reason. In my youth I had a similar hobby of exploring abandoned houses in the Nebraska countryside. For the sake of not incriminating anyone and maintaining the sort of secrecy that the Urban Explorer community prefers I will not go into any details of where we had gone or what we had seen. While these places are not the product of nature like what I usually write about, they are prime examples of the roads less traveled, the real point of my blog. I have seen Tyson pouring over maps, floor plans, blue prints, diagrams and planning trips so he could dare see what others did not choose to see. This is an individual that embodies all that the explorer truly is, a drive to see and to do, to go where others haven't dared, and for this I would like to deem him honorary Blank Spaces Explorer of the Month. In a world where the easiest paths are heavily trodden, when no one cares to see what lies beneath their feet, here is a man that is truly an explorer like those of old, in mind and spirit. I raise a glass to you my friend, for boldly going where none have gone before.

Hearts Dreaming in the West

    In honor of my excitement for once again being able to see the western skies I thought I would write a special post about what exactly the west is, or perhaps what it is I see in the west. Before starting, like any good academic drone, I must define my terminology. The West: a land both real and mythological, residing somewhere between the pacific ocean and the Appalachian Mountains; a land both alive and in throes of death. Above all, I feel that the idea of "The West" is a metaphor for adventure, freedom, and the unknown. I started my day off by Google-ing pictures "The American West" and I was greeted by beautifully rendered paintings of cowboys on cattle drives, plains natives in full regalia, a stop along the Oregon Trail and photographs of men and women of that misty age shrouded in a haze glorification and popular culture. The West is all of these things, but also none of them and more than them all at once. In the Golden Age of Western cinema, crowds were treated to larger than life characters portrayed by the likes of John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper. Here were heroes, good to the core, taming a savage land. Later, the revisionist western was born with Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone, culminating in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West. These depicted a melodramatic, dark, and gritty west where there was no black or white. Later viewers would be treated to sympathetic westerns like Dances with Wolves, where the heroes we once cheered for were now the enemies and the Native Americans were the "Noble Savage". As much as I love all of these films, and the western genre as a whole, none of them are all that accurate. And so here it begins...the West.
     There is much more to this land than cowboys and Indians as any true historian will know. For eons, the North  and South American continents were separate from the rest of the world. Then, sometime before the end of the last great Ice Age, man found this undiscovered country, when to them it was the East. In waves people came in boats and on foot, across the land bridge and skirting the pacific coasts until eventually they would be driven inland by a want for more. These people would give rise to the Toltec  the Inca, Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Anasazi, Hohokam, the great states of the Mound Builders and all other peoples that we call native. Just the first set of immigrants to this wayward place. Natives are often portrayed as skin and feather clad nomads that roam the country on horse back and sleep in ti-pis. This vision most accurately depicts a variety of Plains peoples on middle America at about the time of the 1800's. In truth, the people that populated the Americas were diverse in many ways. Some built great cities of adobe or stone, some were farmers of cotton and the first to tame corn. Many of these cultures are long "vanished" and remain mysterious. Only small clues left in the dirt give us small hints of a greater history. The Maya were the first people to understand the concept of zero, and did so long before the Chinese, Muslim philosophers or Europeans. Many of these cultures had a firm grasp of high mathematics and astronomy, things that are still not fully understood today. The mysteries of these people are the first layer in the allure of the West
     The West was first conceived by Europeans as a place across the Atlantic Ocean, for where did Columbus sail but West? What they found there was not the Kingdom of Prester John, or the Garden of Eden but a place where those things, and much more COULD be. Here was the first glimmer of that mythic place I call the West. Upon their return they told stories of a land untouched and ripe for the taking as so came more. The conquerors, the Conquistadores, the explorers, the pirates and colonists, all searching for something more. Orellana search the jungles of South America for El Dorado, Cortes destroyed the Aztecs and the Triple Alliance, Coronado pressed further into New Spain in search of The Seven Cities of Gold. What he found there were the Zuni and their pueblos; he was the first European to see the Grand Canyon, the Rio Grande, The Great Plains, The Arkansas River. With all this discovery came death as well. These were the first step in the destruction of the first peoples. Eventually, European colonies would be established on the Eastern Seaboard and the the West would shrink. Now beyond the ancient Appalachians was this land undreamed.
     Mountain men and trappers would cross the vast expanses to the Rocky Mountains and beyond. People would slowly trickle west searching for fame and fortune and a freedom long unremembered. With each step the West grew smaller. Then came the great trails, the Oregon, the Santa Fe, the Mormon; mass migrations from the east to the west that brought men and women of all sorts. They would fill the valleys, farm the lands, and mine the mountains and destroy the world that was here before them in their wake. The natives and the Europeans would become enemies, one atrocity after another afflicted both sides of the battle. However, in the end the war was one by Europeans. I by no means am attempting to dismiss decades of brutality inflicted upon the natives, but there is much more to the story than that. What happened here was two, very different worlds meeting for the first time, two worlds that vastly misunderstood each other and what ensued was a long, bloody conflict fought by some of the dirtiest means possible and neither side was innocent. Unfortunately when someone wins a war, another side loses. That is part of the cycle of man's life interaction on Earth and so it will be till man is no more.
     What is left of this land called the West? Now we see movies and books that depict a glorified time where good was good and the bad were loathsome, a few were just ugly. We see mysteries of a time that we really know little about and think of what it would be like to ride across an untamed land on horseback eagerly anticipating what is just over the next ridge. There are stories of lost gold, badmen and gun fighters that give us a sort of half fantasy. The West has long departed from our world. Now cities spring up where once there was only desert; the tops of mountain peaks are adorned with crowns of cell phone towers. When I think of this time I think of the adventure, the excitement of seeing things for yourself for the first time, of treading a land untrod, of that freedom they must have felt. I know there are places out there still, silent and longing, where there is still a shade of that time, that place. I have a longing for such places, where the air still blows clean and fresh, where the spirits of the past still roam and where that freedom still waits for the one who has the drive to find it. It is a bitter sweet quest, for if it is found, it is simply another bastion destroyed. Whether we can find them or whether we ever do is not the point however, it is simply the knowing that someplace, somewhere, it is still out there in the West of every man's heart.

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old--

This knight so bold--

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be--

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied--

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

-Edgar Allan Poe

A Walk Beneath the Long Dead Sea: or "My Trip to the Badlands of South Dakota" Part 3

     Following the series of stone monuments that had been left for travelers like me, I made my way through the tall emerald grass accented with the brilliant whites, yellows and purples of the native wild flowers. The trail edged along a eight foot or so drop off that acted as a kind of barrier between the viewer and a gallery of strange sculptures carved from the ancient stone. There were windows and doors and twisting pillars and a whole menagerie of petrified creations. It is funny how time changes things, changes all things, even those that seem the most solid, the most resistant. These monuments were once grand and imposing, part of another much more mammoth work of creation. Now they are little more than the size of us. Wind, water, and the flow of time had already sealed their fate long before the sea tides ever peeled away and revealed what it hid to the world. As the layers chip, crack and fall the remnants of ages undreamed reveal that all things are born, crumble and are born anew.

In this age of concrete, steel and computer chips, it is easy to see that humans are dominate in this world. We have managed to conquer nearly every environment, defy gravity, travel continents in hours. It is easy to think that we are unstoppable, invincible, that the tides of fate do not apply for we are the chosen ones, masters and creators of our own destiny. For countless eons this planet has harbored lifeforms great and small, they engulfed the Earth with enumerable species of all kinds. And yet here we, a product of the continuing cycles of life. It is foolish to think that humanity will last forever, despite the towers, the technology, we too will pass with time and in the wake of our going, it will be the turn of another.
     As I continued down the trail I came across something that I had not really expected to find. Atop a small island raised above the ground was a small patch of Prickly Pear cactus. Out west this type of cacti and its brethren are everywhere, in the Great Plains, not so much. Cacti are native to the central corridor of the United States and can be found in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. When thinking of the plains many envision endless prairies and fields of corn, perhaps some cattle ranches thrown in the mix. There is actually a great number of smaller ecosystems interspersed, such as the Badlands and the Sand Hills of Nebraska. Some of these areas have the kinds of stuff Cacti love to live in. My grandfather actually grows one in a garden and it manages to live throughout the often harsh Nebraska winters. I have many less than fond memories of pulling spines from my calves and forearms after trudging through the desert on survey. When in the desert it was normal, perhaps a tad mundane to see this plant, as common as grass in Nebraska. Here it was somewhat of a gift. An unexpected reminder that within a world of lines and grids and barbed wire fences there are some things that can transcend the arbitrary boundaries that we assign to the world we live in. I recently listened to a piece on NPR that spoke of a a journey to the sea floor in Antarctica. This particular voyage was searching for a an elusive three-eyed tube worm that colonizes around volcanic vents on the ocean floor. Instead of these worms, they found fields and fields of yellow "fluff". This fluff turns out to be one of the oldest organisms on the planet. The piece ended with a very poignant statement, that nature does not care what we expect to find, it will be where it is whether we want it to be or not.

     After pulling myself back up to the trail I continued to walk in peace. According to the map I would soon come to a cross roads that would lead to a parking lot in one direction and a path back towards where I came from in the other. I had not seen any people thus far and enjoyed the solitude although there were times it was somewhat eerie. In my everyday life it is very difficult to come across loneliness and silence. It is true that while in nature I had still not found neither loneliness or silence but I had found an escape. Here there were no cars, no television, no computers, even my phone was off (I always carry it in case of an emergency). Being without these things are nearly heresy in modern times. There was still the wind, the birds, and insects all around me but I would gladly take them over sirens, traffic and commercials. Regardless, I knew it would not be long till someone ventured across my path and lo and behold, I had found them. At the cross roads were an older couple, probably late fifties or early sixties, the wife peering through a pair of binoculars and the husband scanning a wrinkled brochure.
     I walked up to them, looking what I would deem imposing with my large pack, knife strapped to waist and black bandanna wrapped around my head. This couple saw me and waved vigorously and I returned the wave with a smile. We greeted each other with handshakes and smiles although our names were never shared. This couple was lively and friendly, on a road trip across the U.S. vacationing from Canada. They were searching for the Big Horn Sheep that were supposedly roaming this area and asked if I had seen any. Unfortunately I had not, they seemed somewhat disappointed but still undaunted. They inquired as to how far I'd walked and we shared a bit of conversation about the great outdoors. I noticed the portly man red and sweaty and they were both lacking in water. Anyone who knows the first thing about hiking knows you need water, dehydration is a very serious thing. Being an Eagle Scout I am always prepared and had ample amounts of water bottles in my pack and they were grateful to have some. After a bit more chatter we parted ways and I wished them a safe and enjoyable trip. Before I left they thanked me for both the water and for being interested and caring about the outdoors. They said that far too many people my age just aren't interested. I thanked them and left with a feeling of pride. I am glad I had met these strangers and that our brief intersection had meant something to all of us.
     The last leg of this section took me to the edge of  the plateau where I could look out into the bulk of the Badlands. It was a barren, wasted land. Rocky spines and crags lifted above deep, shear gorges where little grew. At the bottom of these canyons were pools of muddy, brackish water. It was beautiful and terrifying as I looked out over the blasted heath and stared down into the crevasse below. Far off in the distance was a sea of green, a safe haven from this little patch of hell. This had been a rewarding venture for me, a chance to walk through time, to imagine the ages that came before, to see a still wild place nestled in the farmlands of Middle America, to meet people that I have never met and to share something with them. There was more that I saw and experienced in this almost alien terrain, but if I told you everything there would be nothing left for you to experience if you have the chance to go and see it for yourself. In nature some are driven to see God, others peace and the sublime, for others like me it is beauty and realization of place.

 
 Thanks you for following me on this journey, I hope you enjoyed it and continue to read.

-Logan

A Walk Beneath the Long Dead Sea: or "My Trip to the Badlands of South Dakota" Part 2

     I pulled my sunglasses from my face, lifted my hat from my head, and wiped away the sweat already beginning to bead just beneath my hairline. The dark clouds that had blotted out the sun had now ventured forth to lands unknown and the sun shown full bore in the hazy blue sky. The air was dry and warm but a cool breeze found its way to my skin intermittently. I looked on as the the gentle breath sent the green grass waving like an emerald ocean. A trail of almost non existent footprints led into the open prairie where they would soon disappear and the trail would be up to me to decipher. Narrow lanes of barren, dusty earth snaked their way through the field, looking like a maze of trails that led to nowhere and everywhere all at ounce. Not so far off in the distance was a small orange marker, just like the ones that led me up the cliff face, I put one foot forward and off I went. I wished greatly to be able to explore the areas off the trails, but out of respect for the wildlife and their home I opted to stay relatively close to the mapped path. In a place like this, be it State Park, National Park, game reserve or whatever, it is important to not disturb what little patch of ground we have designated as wilderness. Haven't we as humans taken enough from what was already here?
     I walked slowly through prairie imagining the bygone years. Once this was home to number of great beasts; rhinoceros, North Amercan camels, a variety of horses that would later migrate to Europe and Asia before being sealed off from this continent, only for their descendants to find their way back here aboard great Spanish galleons. Giant land tortoises once munched on reeds growing alongside muddy watering holes. Tall, spindle legged birds would watch carefully and quietly, the diminutive deer ever wary of the the scimitar-cats stalking through the tall grass. Just below their feet lay dormant the fossils of a once teaming sea. Time marches on and in another epoch, man has found its way here. Now great Mammoths are hunted by roving bands of nomads, travelers from Asia far from their homeland. And farther on still, their memory erased, no sign left except chipped stone spear points and scenes of a fresh kill. New waves of people immigrate to this land, the Lakota, the Dakota peoples, all travelers journeying through space and time only to once again be displaced as settlers from Europe claim America as their home.
     As I walked I looked carefully at all the earth formations and  along the ground, part habit from my days in Archaeology field school, part desire to find some sort of fossil, some tangible proof that there was once something else here, that there is more to the story than the cover. I walked between two small bluffs with barren sides and hats of bright green grass, the layers of sediment were stacked high like a tower of crepes on a breakfast plate. My map warned of two animals that I might encounter: the American Bison, and the Mountain Lion. I had seen both before, albeit behind fence and plexiglass. I knew the size a Bison could achieve and that that can be ornery, but I relished the idea of seeing some of the last wild Bison on the continent. What really gave me a case of the chills was the idea that a Cougar could be watching me, just like the saber toothed cats of old.

     In Arizona there have been a number of fatal lion attacks in the mountains, and I had read heavily about how to change your status as prey if need be. First off, mountain lions mark their territory heavily and if one is in the area you should recognize it by its pungent urine odor. If you should happen to see one, the idea is to make yourself look as big and loud as possible. Wave you coat or shirt in the air, hold your backpack high above your head, yell and jump around. What do predators generally prey upon? Deer, young cows, gazelle in Africa, all animals that are quiet and skittish, much like bears, they are not looking for a fight, they want an easy meal. Note that these methods are not guaranteed but have been shown to improve your likelihood, if the need should ever arise.

      The grass gave way to a scene that I found very interesting, here on a barren patch of ground lay scatter hundreds of small roundish rocks. To me it looked very much like they had been washed ashore on a beach. Much to my amusement, some travelers coming through this place long before me had written messages with the stones. One greeted me, one told me I was on the right track, another was just simply a smiling face. The messages weren't big, and for that I was grateful, it could have been relatively easy to eliminate this sight by moving the rocks around. It was also nice to see there was nothing obscene written in tiny rock messages. Don't get me wrong, I am by no means a prude, but I find it infinitely distasteful when someone simply has to scrawl vulgar words or whatever in places that are public. I like to think of it as preserving the innocence of a child just a little a bit longer.
     Once again, I found myself off the map, and wandering only where I thought the trail was leading. I stood atop a small mound and peered through my binoculars partly admiring the scenery, partly wondering where the hell I was, when something caught my eye. A small pile of rocks, deliberate, placed conveniently where someone looking would be able to find it. Then I saw more. The little stone cairns were left to help those lost to find their way...

    
     I was going to attempt to write more, but I felt like I might be getting long winded, plus I love cliff hangers. Instead I am going to opt to put up a few pictures of what I have seen on my trip thus far. Hopefully you will keep coming back for more, there is an end to this trip, I promise!

The Badlands Plateau

Above the trail

Thousands of pebble strewn on the shore

The Mourning Giant

This is only a fraction of the Turkeys I saw

As requested by a reader, here are two pictures of the Prairie Dogs

Peeking up to say hello

The Jagged Horizon

A Walk Beneath the Long Dead Sea: or "My Trip to the Badlands of South Dakota" Part 1

     Over last summer I found myself with a distinct excess of time. My wife was away in Greece, my job super flexible and the money was ample. There were few places for me to travel to that I was interested in and only a day's drive away so I fixed a course to the Badlands of South Dakota. I had been there once before, as a child mind you, a child so young as to not remember a damn thing. This was the perfect opportunity to return and see what I had missed. I am somewhat of a cheapskate and I was going alone so I opted to book a room online through Econolodge in the small town of Wall, South Dakota. This is home to the famous tourist trap Wall Drug and also the town my family and I stayed at when I was a child. I loaded up my Jeep Liberty with food and snacks and a suitcase full of enough clothes to last me the weekend. I left my home in Lincoln, Nebraska early in the morning so as to be in Wall just in time for dinner, and also allowing me enough time to visit my favorite attraction in Nebraska, Ash Fall Fossil Bed (expect a post on this in the future). I won't bore you with what was most definitely a very long, monotonous drive through the central plains.
     It was nearing five o'clock in the evening, I had just rediscovered where I was on the map, and I was driving down the a lonely stretch of highway when I saw it.

As you can see, this was taken from a moving vehicle, not advised.

     The jagged peaks rose from the flowing fields of emerald grass like a worn saw blade. The sky was a deep blue hue and and behind me were hundreds of miles and a soon to set sun. The sight was impressive but I was dead tired and my left arm was sun burnt from hanging out the window all day so I drove through park on a winding highway and called it a day. I ate at a BBQ place across the street and walked down to the Wall Drug store for some overpriced sun screen and I hit the hay.
     The next morning I rose, stopped at the gas station for a doughnut, picked up some protein bars and headed back towards the remnants of the prehistoric ocean. The morning was a little humid and clouds still lingered from the storms the evening before. Driving south, I passed the park entrance, which was closed and had a sign posted advising to come back later and pay upon my exit. Good deal. After about ten minutes of driving through bright green prairie I came to the edge of a shear plateau that looked down into the valley of spires and spines, to the east the sun was attempting to peer through the ashen clouds that slowly meandered along the horizon.

     State and National parks can be hit and miss when it comes to that feeling of true wilderness. I was happily surprised when I was greeted by a massive, dare I say herd, of wild turkeys that seemed to care very little of my presence. Just a little farther up the road I encountered a large field of prairie dog burrows. I sat and watched for a while and saw the heads of the residents poke up from time to time. I have seen my fair share of turkeys but never had I seen wild prairie dogs before. I was giddy, my adventure was off to a good start. I found a parking area nearest the trail head of the longest trail where signs warned to not venture to close to the wild bison and bighorn sheep. After stepping onto the asphalt I took a deep breath of fresh air, looked at my map, and headed in. I was standing at the base of a cliff much like the one I had previously looked down from. The way up snaked through a series of tall, rocky columns. The earth looked hard packed but to my surprise it was soft and loose. The spires and rugged landscape are the product of the ancient inner sea drying up and leaving the sandy floor exposed to the elements and time. I scrambled up the steep slope, almost slipping once or twice, it was less of a hike and more of a climb and the trail was nearly non existent, only marked vaguely by orange markers. Wind and water had whipped to and fro through the slots and crevasses of the rugged range, molding shapes out of the barren soil; all around were tiny petrified toadstools sprouting from the ground.
      Higher I climbed  until I pulled myself up and over the final ledge. Before me was a wide open prairie half encircled by the almost alien crags. Millions of years ago I would have been standing upon the bed of a shallow sea; a home to a multitude of prehistoric sea life.I stood and imagined the the depths above me, a metaphor for the depths of time that also encompassed my surroundings. One of my favorite authors, H. P. Lovecraft, capitalized the theme of feeling insignificant and alone in the universe with his tales of cosmic horror. I sat for a moment and basked in the remoteness I felt. Eons have passed through this place, through all places, and there at that spot, I was alone in the vastness of time, like being adrift on an endless sea. 

     That ancient sea once teamed with life of all kinds; primitive sharks, pleisosaurs, mosasaurs, a multitude of fish and crustaceans. This inland sea, also known as the Cretaceous sea way, existed over 100 milllion years ago, when North America was divided into two small sub-continents. Time and Earth however, are always changing and eventually the rise of the Rocky Mountains lifted the sea floor through 2,500 feet of water along a 2,000 mile expanse. All that remained of this once great sea were a series of brackish lagoons that would eventually give way to the Great Plains. With time it would be decided that the age of reptiles would end and give way to the a new kingdom of mammals. While the great sea way is impressive and worthy of note, the Badlands are highly recognized for their fossils from the Oligocene, another remnant of the a age long past and another reminder that we are but a scratch of the the surface of the Earth...

     I am going to opt to end this here and make this a series of two or three posts. During my trip I saw nearly all there was to see of the Badlands National Park and there is quite a bit for me to talk about and think about. I thought this would be an appropriate cliff hanger, leaving you just before I begin my trek into the interior of the the Badlands plateau. I would also like to state that this is my first time writing something like this and if any of you readers have any questions or comments, maybe tips on writing and keeping interest, please, don't hesitate. Thank you very much for taking the time to read of my travels, I hope you have enjoyed it so far and that I have left you a little something to think about.

-Logan
    

The Search Begins

     We are deep in the midst of an age of vast technologies. Men and women all across the world can be connected to seemingly any information that they could want with a mere press of a button. In seconds as an interactive map of the world can be brought up and nearly any place on the globe can be pinpointed, brought to within spitting distance and rendered in 3D for your viewing pleasure. It seems as though there is nothing left to be found that hasn't already be mapped, charted and placed on a grid. This easy access to a constant flow of information can be deceiving. It can make the world seem small. I am looking out my window right now and see houses and yards with doors and fences. I by no means live in the most populated of urban jungles, but I feel trapped. As I said before, the world can appear small; it is in fact OUR world that is small. I feel I must make a distinction between the world that we, as members of a technologically advanced western society, live in, and the world that remains free and wild.
    When I was younger I was very much a product of the technological age, I loved television, computers, movies and video games. I saw very little reason for me to venture into the realm outside. My father, an avid lover of all things western, would show me classic movies about man's struggle to tame the savage land. There was a beauty existing in the rugged mountains and arid desserts that truly escaped me. I once saw a film by my all time favorite director, John Milius, called "Jeremiah Johnson". It is the story of a man. That is all. No villian, no main set pieces, no sub plots; just a man and his life and how he chooses to live it. I am sure you can see how, as a child, I would find this boring as hell. More on that later. I joined the Cub Scouts in first grade, there was camping and hiking and all of that scouting jazz and, looking back, I feel this was my first real experience with that other world. Albeit I was on the controlled, self contained fringes of where our world meets the other. However, the fact of the matter was that I still didn't appreciate what was out there. In a Rocky-esque montage we can see my life change through a failed Criminal Justice 101 class, a bad break up, a move across the country and a couple of classes in field archaeology. Things were about to change.
     During a summer interlude I made a decision that would change the rest of the course of my life. I picked up a book. I had always been an avid reader although not a very fast one, but this particular book was somewhat out of my realm. My usual genres stayed firmly in horror, fantasy and sci-fi. This was a western. Well, sort of. My father, who I owe much to, sealed my fate long ago when he named me after a character in a Louis L'amour novel. That summer I vowed to start reading the Sackett series so I could discover the man of my namesake. The first novel "Sackett's Land", is not even a western at all, but a historical adventure about a Welshman that leaves England to head to the New World, all funded by a sack of Roman coins he found in a dyke by accident. There it was, treasure, the ultimate goal, the one thing that would pull me out of my cage. Don't worry, this is all leading somewhere.
     I was now living in Arizona, a land filled with tales of outlaw loot and lost Spanish gold, I was going to find some. This is what led me to the outdoors, the promise of adventure and fortune. Well, I haven't found that gold yet, but I have learned what has probably been the most valuable lesson of my lifetime. There is more. More than pink houses with white picket fences, more that business degrees and part-time jobs, more than action movies and video games. There was something out there to see. I stood alone on a mountain top, much like the unnamed character in Bob Seger's "Roll Me Away". I was triumphant but also vastly unsatisfied. Now that I had found the gateway to this other world, I needed to see more of it. I had once turned to Jeremiah Johnson (told you I would get back to it), for its sense of loneliness that comforted me during that terrible break up, now I finally understood what Robert Redford and John Milius had wanted me to know. There was freedom away from the world we created, and now that is what I felt. Freedom.
     Now I sit at a shoddy desk in an unkempt room staring out at the Sparrows in my neighbor's tree and procrastinating on the studying for finals I should be doing. I am still deeply embroiled in the world that society has created, but now I know that there is a difference between here and there. I long for a time when I can once again make my way through groves of ancient oaks, climb atop the red rocks of the Santa Catalinas, swim through the crystalline ocean, and maybe even find some treasure. This is the story of my adventures and how I see the world. I encourage all to go and find out for themselves. But if all you can manage to do is read what I write and look at some pretty pictures I feel as though I have done my part in showing you that there is more to the world than what Google Earth can show us.

- Logan


Coming soon: "A Walk Beneath the Long Dead Sea, or My trip to the Badlands of South Dakota