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Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12
We stir from our sleeping bags and part the tent flat to greet a morning draped in fog. It’s forty-five degrees when we break camp and wind our way back onto I-90. It’ll be ninety-five degrees when we coast into Badlands National Park. First though, we drive through treeless landscapes, over the Missouri River, past the world’s only corn palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. It’s a straight highway hemmed in by billboards proclaiming free water and twenty-five-cent coffee in Wall Drug, the kind of roadside spectacle of empty spaces.
The badlands rise from flat earth like mounds of melted wax. There’s a certain static to the air, an empty, ghost-like buzz. You step into the rock formations and you could be on another planet. Without trail markings, you’d be lost in a smattering of rattlesnake nests in a desert rock terrain that at one moment rises into jagged cliffs before dropping into a gulch. I can’t see the bottom.
“I don’t feel right here.” Lilly says, “This feels like a place no one should be.”
We debate whether or not to go on a hike out onto an area of white stone flats, but decide we don’t have enough water. We reserve a campsite on the fringe of the park. The wind tunnels through the rocks and across the plains with such force that we have to wrestle the tent in order to stake it down.
A label at the bottom of the [water bottle] reads: may contain levels of arsenic above safe standards.
We drive just down the road, out of the park to Interior, population 67, to find a place to eat. There’s a bar with a pickup truck – sporting three wheels – and a scattering of motorcycles. It’s located near the city jail, a whitewashed and boarded-up shack that couldn’t fit more than a handful of pissed drunks. There are decaying houses with rusted jungle gyms, many of which have been uprooted by the wind. We’re not hungry anymore, but stop at a corner store to buy water.
The only bottled water they carry showcases a photograph of Mt. Rushmore. A label at the bottom of the plastic container reads: may contain levels of arsenic above safe standards. A Native American decked out in American flag regalia rings us up at the register, nods to us as we leave.
In the badlands, you want to go to bed early, praying sleep comes easy, morning comes quick. The stars are low and bright, but I still take the headlamp with its red beam to guide my way to the bathroom, scanning the earth in front of me for rattlesnakes. They feed at night and as a result of unseasonable rains, their population has exploded.
In the morning, we hike Notch Trail before the sun’s high in the sky. A metallic lettered sign warns us: not meant for those with a fear of heights. At one point we scale a kind of loose ladder up the side of a sheer white rock, the cables and rungs clattering against the cliff face with each uneven step. At the end of the trail, we overlook a vast valley populated by herds of cows and a few horses.
A storm collects itself on the horizon and we can see the front roll in over the prairie. Right at the edge, where cloud wall meets open sky, meets rock ridge, twin rainbows cut through the dark backdrop. We stand on the precipice of badlands, a landscape cradling snakes, bubbling up undrinkable waters, enveloped by a static hum.
“Look at the rainbows,” Lilly says.
My father carved his way across this country, westwards for faith and horizons and sundances. (It’s a story I hear in fragments that I piece together into the myth of a man.) Here I am cutting across a plateau that swallows empty missile silos – hallow coffins – nearing the geographic center of America. The road to Rapid City curls under tire, following footsteps.
It’s an empty town, hushed and outcast. Firehouse Brewing Company occupies a proud brick building on Main Street. Lilly hums the National Anthem as we wait for our sandwiches and sip Eagle Pale Ale. Badlands erode into this sleeping city, and on the other side the Black Hills unfold further west.
Lined with state flags, the pathway towards Mt. Rushmore ushers in a welcome splash of color. The taught standards pulse in the summer breeze. Washington stares down at us; Jefferson at open sky; Roosevelt at the Ponderosa Pine; Lincoln at the horizon, pensively. Lilly sports a red-white-and-blue cap she found in the basement of her parents’ home.
“Love yur hat,” says a grizzled man in a Vietnam-veteran T-shirt. A sweat stain seethes down his upper back.
“I love America,” Lilly responds. The man cocks his arm, stands tall, clicks his heels, salutes us as we leave.
Prospectors seeking gold palmed mud through shallow buckets on this land. Custer tore through, seeking scalps. History named places on the map Keystone and Deadwood. Gulches left trees leafless and skeletal. But waste and violence have now been buried in this earth and give rise to plastic-looking log cabins holding up signs of a smiling Yogi Bear.
