Travels West
"The prairie is like a daydream. It is one of the few plainly visible things which you can’t photograph. No camera lens can take in a big enough piece of it. The prairie landscape embraces the whole of the sky. The sensation of its image is globular, but without the distortion that you get in a wide-angle lens. Any undistorted image is too flat to represent the impression of immersion, which is central to the experience of being on the prairie…
The essential feature of the prairie is its horizon, which you can neither walk to nor touch… We are helpless as babies about this: whatever we can see and do not understand and must acknowledge, we make over in our own image. The moon, the sea, the prairie all present insurmountable barriers of distance. We cross them on the craft of egocentricity. "
- Paul Gruchow
This quote, which actually comes from The Nine Nations of North America, paints perfect imagery for most of South Dakota. Your eyes will glaze as you struggle to find natural references in your field of vision. The prairie manages, barely, to roll in enough points for you to acknowledge its physique, and yet the lack of centrality produces a strange form of emptiness: an overabundance of nothing.
In the center of the state, for a moment you are confronted momentarily by “the river,” cleaving the state into one side of phlegmatic farmers and the other into western survivors. It’s not that the farmers of the east do not face challenges but one look into the vast emptiness that is the west tells you that this land will never forgive its settlers. The Missouri River Trench is aggressive, harsh, and arbitrary. You can’t miss it but you can tell the importance of its division by the emptiness that appears as you head west.
In the far west, you see a part of the state that totally changes your understanding of this place. A few weekends ago, Al, K, and I packed up the car and headed there. We ran short of time to see the “Badlands” but we spent a long weekend seeing Custer National Park, Spearfish, and the other sights of western South Dakota. 
In terms of sight seeing, I liked the national park most of all. Being outside among the enormous rock formations, hiking trails by a waterfall (albeit a small one), and walking around Sylvan lake was eye opening to how unique and beautiful the landscape of South Dakota can be. My only lament is that I shared the experience with hundreds of other overweight tourists. If only I could have zapped them out of the experience.
The best moments, however, didn’t come from a tourist destination. They came as I sat on the deck of our cabin, trying to memorize the vista before me: two hills, covered with trees and in the center a beautiful, still lake. I'll be back to climb Harney Peak and see the Badlands up close.
By the way, you can find photos of the Badlands here.
10:21:04 PM 
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