Into the Badlands

When, on a westward journey, you approach the Missouri River on Interstate-90 in South Dakota for the first time, the sudden change of scenery strikes you as stunning, as it promises to set an abrupt end to the hundreds and hundreds of flat Midwestern miles that you were passing for the last four hours or so, a welcome distraction to the endless farms and fields on both sides of the highway. Over millions of years, the river has gouged itself a bed through the relatively soft (so I assume) rock right in the middle of what we today call South Dakota, splitting the state into a bigger western, and a smaller eastern portion. And as the waters have gradually retracted over this incomprehensible period of time, the riverbed has turned into a fluvial valley featuring two long humped and hilly slopes on either side of the smoothly winding stream. Therefore, when you reach that peak on I-90, right at that point where it makes its sudden and unexpected drop into the valley, it is hard to keep your eyes on the road instead of gaping and wondering at this beautiful landscape that has just opened up before you, a veritable gate to the West.

I made up my mind to set out on my first Iowa-based road trip about two weeks ago, but the destination had already been set in the spring semester, when Kirk, teaching assistant in my Editing and Publishing class, had told me about the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Since I've come to the United States not only to meet people, but also to get away from them, not for the city but for the country, Kirk couldn't have made a better suggestion.

So I checked the Badlands' camping regulations and, hooray!, they allow backcountry camping! Which I'd never done before, except for a couple of summers many years ago with my friends, on the fields outside our home village, where one night, I swear, we'd had a wild hog rummaging in our trash bags right next to our tent. Anyway, that's not quite the 'backcountry' experience I was looking for this time. I ordered a tent and some other essentials that amazon promised would be here until last Thursday, walked out all the way to the Hy-vee (I need some kind of a vehicle! Cedar Falls is just too big) to get some supplies, and rented a car online. Luckily, enterprise has a pick-up service, so I did not have to call a taxi to get to my car. I then got some other tings I still needed--sleeping bag, insect repellent, sun screen, hat, knife, etc.--at Walmart, and left Cedar Falls around 9:30 on Friday, May 23. The ride did not appear as long and dull as I had expected, partly because there is a lot of beauty (often overlooked) even along a dead straight highway like I-90; the hundreds, maybe thousands of black cows grazing placidly on their huge pastures, or the occasional abandoned farm consisting of one or two empty grey little houses and a huge decrepit barn whose immense roof came tumbling down many years ago, and right next to it that small grove of knarly old trees. Also, I listened to Florian Illies' 1913: Der Sommer des Jahrhunderts (1913: The Year Before the Storm; thanks to my buddy Steffen for that!) for about six to seven hours, a very interesting and entertaining account of Europe's cultural (and a bit political) history just before the dawn of World War I, with a huge ensemble of protagonists ranging from Sigmund Freud, Oswald Spengler, and Karl Krauss to Franz Kafka, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and Else Lasker-Schüler to Pablo Picasso, Oskar Kokoschka, and Alma Mahler, to Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Franz Ferdinand (the archduke, not the band). Anyway, after crossing the Missouri and looking at the bumpy hills that continue for three or four miles past its western shores, I had to restart listening to the last chapter because I noticed that I hadn't been paying attention at all to what I was hearing. It was easy to focus again because the initially mentioned scenario is tricky in its promise of a change of landscape: after a few miles, you are right back in the typical flatness of the Midwestern fields. And by now, you've kind of gotten used to the pretty cows and romantically shabby farms. Very gradually, however, the rectangular fields and pastures yield to more and more open grasslands, and the dark brown and green planes are replaced by brighter hues of green, stretches of swaying grass, sometimes streaked by a grey or beige hint of sandstone and dotted by small lonely trees; you approach prairie and the Badlands.

After finishing my audiobook, I decided to go full-scale emotional and listen to Eddie Vedder's great soundtrack for Into the Wild. Just then, an impressive sandstone bluff that appeared on the horizon behind that endless stretch of grass to the left of the road finally heralded the vicinity of the Badlands. Gradually, more strange-looking peaks and oddly shaped sandstone formations came into view before I finally reached the Park's eastern entrance. I paid my $11 entry charge (which is good for 7 days!), asked the park ranger if my information on backcountry camping was correct--basically anywhere you wanted as long as it is at least half a mile away from the road--and it was, and then explored the park a bit along the road, getting off at every scenic view parking lot to have a closer look at those weird little--well, mountains (for in this portion of the park's Northern Unit [there is also a Southern Unit in which camping seems to be entirely forbidden, as I was about to learn in two days from now], the formations are very spiky, unlike the more hilly prairie of the western part) that rise out of southwestern South Dakota's prairie. Since the soft sandstone is highly vulnerable to erosion, this landscape changes quickly as it is exposed to constant shifts of weather from thunder storms to dry heat waves to severe winds to cold winters. Some parts look like a desert, or even Mars (if you have a fancy imagination); the sandstone seems to be everywhere, from the deep canyons up to ground level and all the way up to the pointed peaks. In other places, the prairie dominates, and only the sides or tops of hills break through the pallid green sea of grass. As I drove farther along, I continued looking for an area that would allow me to pack up my things and leave the car for the night in order to hike out for a mile or so. Easier said than done; in most portions that have a parking lot, the impassable bluffs and cliffs are so close to the road that I did not see how I could pitch my tent at least half a mile off of it. And all of that as the sun was already close to disappearing behind the western horizon; I think I had about an hour or so left until sunset.

As I eventually spotted an area that looked penetrable, I parked my car, got my backpack, tent, and sleeping bag, and crossed the street northward, walked across a meadow and down a steep slope, squeezed in between some bushes, and found a really nice spot. There I saw that this place was still closer than it had appeared from the road. Not half a mile yet. I went a bit farther until I reached some slopes that I had no way of descending safely, so I decided to stay here and hide behind some bushes in order not to be seen from the road which, although I could not see it from here, I knew was not yet half a mile away. Then, as I was pitching my tent, I heard a kind of hissing, a snarling, or was it the animal's burrowing in the earth?, of something in the bushes, probably the size of a porcupine, a weasel, or a badger. Could have been a bobcat; many animals live in the Badlands, and while most of them are not that dangerous, I've heard a lot of them can be pretty aggressive if you give them a reason. And what did I know of animal reasoning?! I must have invaded someone's territory here, definitely a pretty good reason to be pissed. Well, I waited a few moments as the hissing continued, not quite sure what to do, and then carefully finished putting up my tent, and my neighbor didn't seem to mind all too much anymore; the hissing eventually stopped. We would be on good terms for the rest of the night.

At dusk I sat on top of one of the nearby slopes that granted me a great view on the wide open prairie of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland that stretches all around the Badlands. Next to all the cicadas chirping in the grass, a couple of birds tweeting in the bushes, and some bats flying past, I had a simple but good dinner of water, bread, crackers, and cheese spread, and read a few pages of The House of the Seven Gables. After that, some more reading in the tent, and then lights out before 10; I'd wanted to get up early the next day. Not even 15 minutes later, I heard footsteps. A park ranger fining the hell out of me because I violated park policy? I lay perfectly still, didn't budge an inch, tried to breathe evenly, to calm down my pounding heart. No speaking, no knocking, so nope, wrong. Conclusion: animal. Did not really help against my strongly pounding heart; I did not exactly wanna mess with a bighorn sheep now. Whatever it was, it continued walking around, slowly, now right behind my tent, in the small space between two bushes. It then started picking grass, and later made some noises remotely reminiscent of a sheep's baa, but unlike any sheep or goat I'd heard before (not even like these goats!). Anyway, the eating probably meant the presumed sheep had accepted this big blue thing in her/his dining room. Good for me because after a while, I could not bear lying in this position anymore, I had to roll over. I did, and my new neighbor didn't care. A bit later, s/he lightly kicked against the tent once, but that was the closest we got. I eventually fell asleep with the sheep's occasional soft and melancholy 'baa' in my ears.

My next post will relate the rest of that weekend; I spent the next day and night in the Black Hills, and then returned to another part of the Badlands for the last night.