Just Words, Cross Country Edition: The Badlands

The infinite plains and soft hills go on for so long that we would begin to believe the Badlands are a myth, if not for the fact that Mike had been there eight years ago on a family trip. He says he remembers the Badlands being more magnificent than the Grand Canyon. We think he is delusional. Doubly delusional, actually, because there is no way that any substantial rock structures can coexist with infinite plains and soft hills.


The realization of my lack of faith exposes my cavernous mind like God seems to have taken the lid off 244,000 acres of caverns and bestowed to man the gift of the Badlands. It is at this juncture that I feel as I have only one other time in my life: I am in absolute, elemental awe. The first and all subsequent times that I've been to Niagara Falls, I've felt that I could stay in that one place forever. And so it is in this land of infinite plains and soft hills and rocks, rocks, rocks. Some resemble mountains; others hills; still others stalagmites, prehistoric animal skulls, and down-turned, dusty ceramic cups of Shut The Fuck Up.


It's so quiet it's almost vulgar, especially as I fall behind on the Notch Trail, where a ranger piques the interests of Brian, Mike, and Shane by divulging that the trail features rope ladders which lead to better views of the landscape. Meanwhile, I'm steady taking pictures as if I'll never return to this place – and as I become surrounded by a sound that would make a toddler sleep straight through to its death – I begin to think that I never will. I stand frozen and feel infantile amidst the resonant rattling in the calf-to-knee length grass, surrounded by evidence of things unseen. Faith and fear are coaxial. My head spins, remembering the enmity that God forged between Eve and her offspring and the Serpent and his. With the God-ignoring stubbornness of Adam, I snap a few more pictures before creeping my way back to the main roads.


Damn you, Eve, for tarnishing another Eden. And you, Satan: STFU.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Transition

Like three impatient children standing in front of an unlit Christmas tree, Mike, Brian, and I stand in a darkened Minnesota rest-stop parking lot and exchange pleasantries not too far from something grand. What surprises await near our feet will have to wait as it's 3:30 in the morning and the Mississippi River of literature and lore laps inside the gift wrap of darkness, forcing Mike and Brian back to their dreams and me back to driving lonely interstate 90.

Sunrise opens a box of coal-black bugs and then vanishes like an irreverent parent, leaving in its departure a most deceitful fog twelve times thicker than Santa's beard. As visibility decreases to less than an elf's foot, I persevere for two more hours before pulling into another rest-stop, where Shane, who says he feels good, takes over. At this point, the windshield and front grille are decorated with dead bugs. Bugs. Bugs. Bugzzzzzz...

***

I wake to infinite plains and soft hills and to a sky that seems to be a national park unto itself: a monumental, cloud-quartered chess board in the midst of a four-way civil war for the most beautiful section of cerulean to loom over the infinite plains and soft hills of South Dakota, where the mundane doesn't make one insane.

Something approaches on the right – an erection at once austere and extravagant: a metallic human figure leading a metallic dinosaur by a leash. We pull into the nearest town, 1880 Town, to get a better look, but we don't get any closer because it's wire-fenced inside an infinite plain. The town itself is a motley of relics; of restorations; of replicas; of references to “Dances with Wolves”; of recordings by John Barry; of travelers dressed as Western settlers of old; of portraits of Native Americans looking, ironically, both reserved and stately.

The definition of the structure becomes plain: In the frontier west, the past is presented.

Just Words, Cross Country Edition: Chicago

The dusty, cracked, almost yellowish road shortly reveals a skyline like I have never seen. One after another, majestic skyscrapers reach toward Babylonian heights; the sweltering summer sun sears the Willis Tower as its finger-like antennae vainly reach for the aquamarine lake of Heaven. The Trump International Hotel and Tower, the Aon Center, and the John Hancock Center are not far behind. With four of its buildings fraternizing in the top thirty tallest on earth, Chicago's mass architecture equals mass appeal.


Yet even ground level maintains small wonders: sufferers of claustrophobia can walk the streets with ease; darkened underpasses provide shade for pedestrians and transients; elevated walkways span over the emerald Chicago River—proof that Oz once lived here, just as the spinach pizza is proof that Popeye once visited the city by tugboat to deliver the prized recipe he procured in Italy by punching out Bluto.


Chicago reaches mythological heights and it also falls to abysmal lows. Fireworks tower above Lake Michigan, squealing across the nine o'clock sky, silencing the millions of submerged South Side souls still squealing for independence.