Golden Eagles circled far in the heavens over the places where I stopped, cycles upon cycles reflected in their path, each of them leading further and further skyward. It was both beautiful and solemn in equal measures.
Low, brown hills covered in short grasses lay upon the stone and stretched out in infinity towards the horizon. The clouds hung low enough to touch with a ladder and scraped the belly of the snake with their passing. The air was completely quiet, inhaled in poised silence as if something important was about to be said. It’s always on the fringe of release, the wind. It can force you to be wait, to think, to reflect.
I spent two days in South Dakota and began my time driving to the site of Wounded Knee in the early morning sun. It was marked with just a simple plaque in the middle of a roundabout, bordered on both sides with souvenir shops. I had expected a metal and stone monument much in the same way as other war monuments, American war monuments are presented, or a large sign pointing to it from the road. Instead, there was only that and nothing more.
These were the lands of Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations where the Dakota and Oglala Sioux First Nations people lived on reservations, places that rang with tragic history. I talked to a few people there who were visibly struggling, bought some items from the roadside stands, but in the end knew this was not a place for me to sightsee. I was an unwelcomed presence, and rightfully so. I turned north, knowing that the experience would affect me for the rest of my life.
The Badlands spread out in striated wonderfulness and I began through slow meditation to release some of what has muddled my thinking. By the time I had passed through Wall (Wall Drug. Worth the visit), seen the prairie dog villages, and watched giant Galapagos tortoises in the Reptile Gardens of Rapid City, I was walking somewhat in a daze, still thinking about the why I am doing what I am doing and what I want to get out of it.
Hours later, on a lonely road in the middle of Custer State Park (horrible irony), I stood amongst the deer, singing quietly a chant that calms my heart. Venus bore through my forehead from her perch atop the Black Hills. The wind urged me to listen. My life laid out before me, a path with no charge, only spinning in circles. My stories dissolved like pine needles over the gorge into the void of darkness. New tales sprung in their place, pleading with me to stop all this wandering and get to telling the truth, their truth. Old myths screamed at me to return.
Seattle is very far away still and I begin to wonder if I should just make for the ocean and begin rather than continue with another week’s worth of rambling…. but beyond all that, in my spirit and in my soul, I remember the flash of memories on a similar Columbus night two weeks ago and part of me yearns to return to that chaos.
Tomorrow I carry on my journey, always looking upward, wandering the spiral, seeking the signs that will call me home, but finding most times only the echo of the cry.
Route: Day 1 : 29N from Sioux Falls and then 90W with many side trips, ending up in Kadoka, South Dakota. Day 2 : 90W to 16AW through Rushmore ending up in Custer, South Dakota.