Buckhorn Duckies and Birmingham Wisdom.

I made my way to Theodore Roosevelt National Park immediately after breakfast. Coming around the curve, looking out over the Northern Badlands, I almost cried. I annoyed truckers by going five miles under the speed limit just to take it all in. At a scenic overlook I tried to take a picture, but what showed on the screen was a shoddy misrepresentation of the majesty just over the guardrail. Huge striped rock formations, called coulees, stretched all the way across the horizon, dotted with scrubby juniper trees and tall pines. The valley below was in bloom, goldenrod and prairie roses flooding the ground like bubbles in a tub. The muddy Little Missouri River snaked through the valley like a dirt road that moved. From the overlook, I could see longhorn cattle, one of the only wild herds in the country.

I took Dean's advice and passed the entrance at the North Unit, instead driving up to a scenic overlook on the other side of the valley, a taller one. He was right, I could see for miles, but again, my camera refused to do the landscape justice.

I used my beloved National Parks Pass to get in for free, and decided to hike the 4.5 mile Coulee Trail. I was going to hike the Buckhorn Trail, but 11 miles seemed a bit daunting. The Coulee began near a self-guided nature trail and then kept going through a series of steep climbs up the coulees. I set out armed with two cameras, a can of peaches, a bottle of water and an emergency flare in my backpack, ready to do battle with my lack of endurance and hike the entire trail.

Unfortunately, some of the trail markers were faded and I ended up on the Buckhorn Trail. I was about two miles into the middle of the Buckhorn, deep in the valley between the Cannonball Coulees, before I pulled the map out of my pocket and realized my mistake. Still, I didn't care. It was a great hike and I saw many bison droppings, enough to get me excited to see some actual bison, although I didn't this time. I also came near what I think was a big horn sheep cave, because the crevasse was quite deep into the side of the coulee and I could smell some animal markings.

Probably the best part of the hike was coming across a prairie dog community -- for those of you who have never come across prairie dogs, they like to pretend they are hardcore. They come out of their holes and bark at you when you come near, as if to say, "Watch it, man! I'm dangerous! What makes you think I won't cut you?" Unfortunately for them, their bark sounds like a rubber ducky, which just makes it cuter that they're trying to put on this big tough-guy act, which makes you want to get closer, which makes them squeak more, which makes them cuter, until you're just having a Wild West-type standoff with this small animal to see if it'll let you pet it or just give up and go back in it's hole.
I
turned back after two miles, knowing there was no way I'd make it the entire way. Disappointed, I cheered myself up by taking a drive to look for bison. At the River Point Overlook, one of the most spectacular venues in the park, I donned my Orioles baseball cap that Greg gave me as a going-away present and tried to pretend I wasn't lonely. Walking up to the overlook, an older gentleman was walking back to the parking area. We intersected halfway. "Is this not an amazing view?" he asked in a thick Southern drawl, motioning towards the open canyon.
"It sure is!" I said.
"Now where are you visiting from?"
I pointed to the big O on my cap. "Baltimore. How about you?"
"Birmingham."
"Wow! You're a long ways from home!"
"Well, so are you!"

His eyes grew curious as he began to notice that no one was coming out of the brush towards me or walking from the parking area to join me. He looked around, then back at me saying, "I know you're not here by yourself, are you?"
"Yessir! Just me."
"Well, my my. What are you doing here all by your lonesome?"
"Um, I'm kind of a writer. I'm writing a book on traveling the country and stopped here for the scenery."
"Okay, well now how would you describe this?" he asked, motioning again towards the immense view.

It was the hardest question I've ever been asked. How could I describe it? How can you hold a rainbow in the palm of your hand?
"That's something I'd have to sit with for awhile, to think about it."
"Oh, careful now," he warned, in his Alabama drawl. "You won't remember it the same as you're seeing it now. You'll remember it, but it'll be just the tiniest bit different."
He paused. "I know for me," he said slowly, "it moves my insides. It takes me back one-hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, when explorers were first seeing this land. When it was pristine. It just moves my insides."
Did I need a better description than that?

An elderly couple from Michigan were walking up the trail and heard our conversation as my friend and I were trying to figure out how the explorers made it through the brush and over the coulees before there were roads. The area is called The Badlands for a reason, originally named so by the French, who called it "Mauvais Terre Pour Travais", literally "Bad Land to Cross". The elderly gentleman offered these words of wisdom: "You think this is bad, you should go to Hawaii! There's brush there that's a foot around at the base and so thick you can barely see through it! Can you imagine having to run through that with a Jap shootin' at you?"
No, I couldn't.

I put on a Puccini CD as I made my way across the rest of the park. I passed a snake sunning itself on the asphalt and stomped near it to make slide back into the grass, to avoid getting run over. I made up a little song as I stomped, singing, "Come on, come on, get out of the road! Why aren't you moving? What's wrong with you? Go! Go! You're really stupid! Go! Go! Unless you want to get squashed!" The ways I amuse myself on the road are pretty sad.

Speaking of which, one of my few regrets on this trip is that, driving down the road, I say some of the funniest shit out loud, to no one, and it's lost forever. No one will ever hear it, although fellow drivers will see me laughing my head off alone in the car and speed up to pass the crazy woman.