the badlands

i don't think there are words fully capable of recounting the beauty or strangeness of the badlands. science tells me that they exist on every continent, and that they are created by soft stones being extensively eroded by wind and water. i know that the badlands in south dakota used to be underwater, that they have found lots of fossils there to prove it. but seeing the badlands in person, really experiencing them, was like little else i had ever seen before. *note, if the pictures seem lackluster, it is not only because it threatened to rain all day, but because pictures in no way do the area justice.

we started off with a fairly easy half mile hike to what is called the door lookout. this involved walking a short way on a boardwalk, and then following markers as we meandered around on and among the stones themselves. we discovered that they look like they are going to crumble because, well, a lot of them do. while there are harder stones in addition to the softer ones, a lot of the badlands is crumbly sand. the picture to the left above and the one directly to above and to the right were taken on this hike. this lookout is also an extremely popular area, along with the window, because they afford such views and are accessible to just about anyone.
from there we headed out to saddle pass, where mum dropped me off at the bottom. saddle pass is a quarter mile very, very steep climb up to the top of a formation. i only barely managed to make it all the way up, and that may have just been because the idea of going down was even more terrifying. part of the trail i took is to the left, and me and the view from the top is just above. it was quite a hike, and i stopped at the top for a little while to eat an apple (it was lunch time) and drink some water. i was now on what was essentially a plateau at a higher elevation than the area behind it.

i started out hiking back towards the door, following markers and the footpath trod by those before me. i ran into a few other hikers, most of them over 60 and using walking sticks or ski poles, having taken an easier way to the trail than i had. it was about 4 miles from the top of saddle pass to where castle path met the road, so i knew it was a decent, but not overly-long hike. the first half of it looked much like the picture to the right--a path through the grasslands. i pressed on pretty quickly, for while i had my raincoat with me, i didn't want to try and maneuver the sandy paths after they became gooey mud.
walking around up there was very serene. except the few times when i met other people, it was just the sounds of my footsteps combined with the grass blowing softly and the crickets and birds chirping away to their hearts content. i also realized a few other things on my hike, like how odd a place the badlands really are. this is a place where quite a lot of endangered animals live, like the black-footed ferret, which is the most endangered mammal on the continent and had to be reintroduced to the area. at the same time, there are these giant pinnacles sticking up out of the ground. this is a place where the ground literally flakes away and there is little water, and yet it manages to sustain beautiful flowers and magnificent animals. what a place of contradictions.
eventually, the landscape became less green and more like the picture above. it was neat to get to see both the grasslands and the badland formations everyone thinks of when they think of this park--but it definitely has both. one of the coolest things i ran into was the formation at left: nowhere else did i see such a multicolored rock. this part of the hike became increasingly rocky and was harder to manage, but still not so difficult.

maybe a little before these colored rocks i decided to take a video, so that all of you could appreciate the 360 degree view from the particular point i was standing at. the video is linked below, and while it like the pictures cannot do the area justice, it is better than nothing.

after mum and i met back up on the road, we decided to take a back road to drive through more of the buffalo gap national grassland and another section of the badlands park. we didn't realize until we were already on our way that this meant an hour of unpaved roads. nonetheless, it proved to be worth it. not only did we get to see views like the one to the right, but we finally got to see what my mum had been looking forward to: buffalo! we happened upon a whole herd of them by the side of the road, which is actually somewhat unusual since they normally stay away from people. we also got to see a prairie dog village at the same stop--one even popped its head out for us, though it doesn't make as cool a picture as the buffalo. this alternate route also led us to such views as the one at the top of this post, which appears on a lot of the badlands postcards.

all in all we spent about 6 hours in the park, and i loved every minute of it. i think that john muir, one of the great champions of the national parks, was on to something when he said that 'everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.' my suggestion for the day: go find yourself a park, whether a city park, national park or something in between, and enjoy the beauty that God has given us.