March 2nd, 2012
Another day, another adventure. More aptly, another series of adventures. When you are going a mile a minute, life tends to change fairly rapidly. Situations arise and pass away, like so many sensations during a good meditation.
Sleeping in for want of rest, I woke up sometime after the sun. Not what I was hoping for, but ultimately a wonderful thing. South Dakota is a beautiful state, and it would be a shame to waste such an viewing opportunity in darkness. Generally speaking, it is all down hill from the west end of the state as you move east. I remember looking at the political/geographic maps of the U.S in elementary school, admiring the changing colors, wondering what they looked like in real life.
The landscape here is essentially prairie. Soft rolling hills with lots of grass. The Black hills are kinda short and frumpy, and yes, they look black from the dense thickets of trees growing on them. Just outside of the Black Hills region, one will catch glimpses of badlands in their infancy. Severe slopes carved by sudden storms, combined with variegated layers of natural colors, simply amazing. Before they become water sculpted and wind crafted masterpieces, the formations seem to start as dumpy round hillocks. Much less wondrous to be sure. They kinda look like a scoop of cafeteria mashed potatoes with grass on them. I surmise that the badlands start to form via extreme saturation leading to slumping, and then mass wasting. This exposes the friable and loosely accumulated rock, thus making it more susceptible to physical weathering. Over time and repeated rains, little differences in elevation become more and more exaggerated until we are blessed with the badlands we know and love today.
Elsewhere, rivers cut deep swathes thru the hills, bringing another interesting element into the equation: trees. By and large, trees are hard to come by out here. They tend to hunker around water and human settlements (probably because they are brought in and watered). Despite winter's tenacious grasp on this corner of the country and lack of signs of spring, there is much beauty to be had in the trees here.
To my surprise, many of the trees were dead, bereft of the greater portion of their bark. Still, the skeletons were bleached white in the blustery cold, partially bent by wind in their living years. I'm not sure I could even find the words to describe how graceful these ex-trees were in their state of mummification. It is as if they were dancing to a tune long since gone, frozen in mid stride.
In more mundane news, I will certainly be putting my truck into the shop upon arrival tomorrow in Edwardsville. I was a bit on the fence about it until now. You see, the fuel output sensor goes on the fritz occasionally. Well, that infrequent occurrence has become so frequent that I have to actually keep track of how much fuel I use. I've got that down though, I simply track how much I've put in, and multiply by the average MPG and viola... I have a good and safe guess of when I should get fuel next. What ever happened to using floats anyway? Everything is all electronic now. Probably hackable or something I'm sure. Somebody get on that.
The clincher happened today at a rest area. The winds in South Dakota were a steady 25 to 30 mph, which was great for me since it was a tailwind. Woe to the poor slobs driving west! Parked at a rest area, I open the door, and it flies out of my hands from the wind. Now it won't shut. I slam it a few times. No dice. Putting gloves on my very cold hands, I lift the door a bit and slam it closed again in hope it will shut. It does, but not quite all the way. So I try to open it again. No dice. Now, I am climbing in and out of the passenger door, for which I am extremely grateful. I shudder to think what it would be like if that door went on the blink as well. In the meantime, I have lined the crack with socks to keep the cold at bay and noise to a minimum. I'm certainly not putting up with that for as long as I've put up with the fuel gauge.
Like everyday, there are some bits of mundane, and some sublime moments. Perhaps the hardest part is remembering to let myself be human the whole time.
View Larger Map
No comments:
Post a Comment