DEADWOOD SD

It was August 11th. We rolled into Deadwood on the way east from a gig in Montana, and in that neck of the woods at that time of year the road is heavy with swarms of Harley Davidson owners heading to or coming from Sturgis; Harley Mecca, whose summer festival draws Harley owners in the hundreds of thousands.
Deadwood sounded like a good place to brush some road off just like so many ranchers, pioneers and gunslingers of the old west had done before.
The horses had been replaced by minivans and bikes, but the roadside pastimes of drinking and gambling are still intact, albeit in a more generic form ; the gut rot that once passed for whiskey has thankfully been replaced by a cold beer, and the sometimes violent poker games the like of which brought Wild Bill Hickock to meet his maker in this very town are only reproduced in museums. If you want to lose or win money here, your options are slot machines in the bars, slot machines in the hotels or , across the street, slot machines in the.......ummm......slot machine......place.
The town itself is laid out on old cow paths, lending a relaxed, ramshackle feel as you mooch around the winding streets of historic buildings, shop fronts of western memorabilia, and bars boasting exhibits and some or other claim to various snippets of Wild West legend: "here's where Wild Bill was shot" , "Here's where the guy that shot him got shot", "Here's where he had his last drink".

Although that might be a little too hokey for some, for anyone with even a passing interest in the lore of the Wilds West, there are plenty of opportunities as you browse the crumbling photographs and artifacts to revert to the wide-eyed days of childhood, when The Lone Ranger not only saved the day, but rode the coolest horse ever.

It was a hot summer night, and after a cold beer to ease the saddle sores, me 'n' my pardner tipped our hats to Wild Bill and the town of Deadwood, and hit the trail........

New York Mills, MN

New York Mills in North MN is small, quiet and interesting - a truly blink-and-you'll-miss-it, kind of place, it is the home of the ANNUAL GREAT AMERICAN THINK-OFF. Now in it's seventeenth year, the Think-Off ooccupies one summer night to pose one question for debate to three rounds of debaters. The audience chooses the winner. The 2009 Question: "Is it ever wrong to do the right thing?"

The Think Off is the brain child of the New york MIlls Cultural Center , and more specifically it's founder John Davis. The center is responsible fror bringing touring musical acts into the community as well as art exhibits and crafts from the surrounding area, and acts as a sort of Arts Oasis in this heavily agricultural town with vast expanses of corn fields in every direction, and at the time of my visit in October, huddled groups of deer hunters in flatbed trucks were either hitting the town's one bar for a beer on the way out to the woods, or hitting the town's one bar for a beer on their way back in. We watched them come and go from our bar-side perch, and as the cheap beer flowed and the loud '80s hair metal blaired from the jukebox it was hard to imagine that just around the corner on the main street stood the home of the GREAT AMERICAN THINK-OFF, but there it is. The competition logo is Rodin's "Thinker" sitting atop a tractor. It's motto:
"bringing philosophy from the ivory towers of academia into the lives of thinking americans."

I enjoy a place like New York Mills for the peace and quiet and the pace of life, where the main street is quieter than my back yard, and given that the town has one bar , two coffee houses and a bowling alley, with little else protruding from the landscape, not to mention a place to hear music and absorb art and craft, i'm guessing the locals enjoy it for pretty much the same reasons.

Old Faithful

As North American National Parks go, Yellowstone is pretty high in the popularity stakes - everyone has heard of it, so everyone comes - the hard-travelling, long hiking nature advocate rubs shoulders with the clueless nose picker who's only here 'cos they followed the dog into the car.
I fall somewhere betrween those two : to be surrounded by the uninterupted grace and serenity of nature is pretty much my favorite place to be. On the other hand, I'm only here because I'm on my way back from a gig in Montana.

Within Yellowstone, Old Faithful is the star performer, delivering to sell out crowds numerous times a day for about a century.

We sat waiting for the next appearance by the volcanic phenomenon, along with 250 or so nature enthusiast, nose pickers and their families and significant others.
About twenty minutes into our wait, from our place in the circled seating, we heard and saw from the circle's center the first gurglings from beneath the earth.
I have to admit, after spending about a day and a half in Yellowstone I had started to feel like this place was my own and that the droves of people were eating into the solitude and quiet that I value in these natural oases; "How dare they," the devil on my shoulder would whisper "don't they know you need your space?" .
My selfish surliness, however, was soon quashed as Old Faithful steadily rose into a shimmering plume of water and vapor, over a hundred feet into the air, flanked on all sides by open blue prairie sky, distant mountains and proud, towering pines. In an abstract way, the most famous geyser in the world does resemble a stage performer, like Lily Langtry in a shimmering gown of pearly white sequins, shoulders broad and held high as she sways seductively. And there I sat - her Judge Roy Bean, slack jawed and bug-eyed like a foolish school boy, transfixed by her unadorned beauty.
After about 5 minutes, she slowly brought the show to a close , retreating to her underground dressing room. No encores, and the kids, dogs, families and loners dispersed, making room for the next audience, and finding the occasional pearly white sequin in their hair.

Incidentally, if you are planning a trip to Yellowstone, pack a lunch - the food available within the park is over priced and terrible. Pity, but the stunning diversity of the scenery and wildlife more than makes up for it, and although a lot of folks focus on the volcanic splendor of the parks west side , do not leave without experiencing the north east corridor - wide open grassland that the bison call home.

Badlands

Interior, South Dakota - a frontier town on the edge of the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation, and less than a mile from the Badlands National Park, was going to be home for a few days. Larry, the ranch and campground owner, checked us in and warned us of the 105 degree forecast for the day. Warning duly noted, we headed for the desert.
The stillness here is intoxicating, and it's a tonic for body and soul just to immerse oneself in the quiet barren tranquility. Peach cactus sprung at our feet, kingbirds seemed to guide us, perching a few yards ahead, then fluttering on only to be found further down the trail, and swallows made there homes in the baked desert mounds.
The temperature did climb as predicted, and after a few hours in the sun and constant hot breeze, the idea of an ice cold beer in the shade started to sound pretty good - time for a stroll to the Wagon Wheel , downtown Interior , where a few of the locals along with some passing bikers, sat in the quiet one-room bar shooting the breeze, while the friendly barmaid swatted flies. A crock pot full of burgers , along with some fixings were set on the pool table with a handwritten sign that said "all u can eat, $8.00".
The bikers were just a few of literally hundreds of thousands that were heading to Sturgis that week for the annual Harley Davidson Rally, and the road west would soon turn into a long stream of chrome and beard from morning to night and as far as the eye could see into the horizon.
The locals were just a handful of Interior's population, which totals at 67.

After washing the dust down, it was back to the Campground for "Cowboy Stew", and here a word of warning for the vegetarian. If you are heading this direction, and I recommend you do - be prepared; options are slim, and in some cases, non-existent.
I keep to a vegetarian diet , but come dinner time, I found myself with a choice; stew or no stew, and after a few miles hiking in the desert heat, I knew that my road-food stash of nuts and berries just wouldn't cut it, so with a shrug of my shoulders and a belly that just needed filling, i grabbed a plate.
The stew was cooked slow over 8 hours- steak chunks and nine vegetables. Hearty stuff. Uncomplicated and delicious. Barb, the quiet spoken woman of the house, made sure the plate was full until I said stop.

Laying in the tent in the growing dark, I listened to the constant wind across the barren land and drifted off with images of ancient peoples with their ancient songs and stories shimmering in my mind's eye.

In the mornings, the sourdough pancakes and coffee formed the foundation for a good days hiking, and a sign in the kitchen proclaimed that the sourdough starter for the pancakes was used on a frontier wagon train over a hundred years ago. I'm glad they left the recipe here. Barb was once again at the ready with coffee pot and watchful eye for any empty plates and cups that needed filling, while in the background the matriarch, a small slight grey haired woman, hovered at the stove with a pitcher of pancake batter.
Bleary eyed bikers and fellow road trippers filed in from the morning sun, and we ate our fill before heading out to explore.



Jeremiah Smith , in 1823, gazed upon the badlands for the first time and was the first white man to do so.
One hundred and eighty six years later I looked out onto that eery moonlike landscaoe for the first time, but how strange it must have been for Jeremiah. I at least had heard and read about the badlands and so had an incling as to what I could expect, but for Jeremiah, he may well have wondered if he'd somehow slipped into another world.
It is at once prairie and desert, submerged and elevated; canyons formed by ancient rivers long dried up, and hills eroded over centuries of inexhaustable winds, blindly taking everything but the hardest substances with it. Jeremiah could have been forgiven for turning and running.

This was a hunting ground of the Lakota, who had named it "White HIlls"- a neighbor to the Black HIlls further West. French trappers referred to it as "les mauvaises terres a traverse" or "bad lands to cross". The name " Bad Lands" stuck. So much so that the Lakota began to use the term, due to the new trading relationships that were cultivated with the trappers.

Once again while laying in a tent in the shadow of the main ridge later that night, my mind wandered to the bare feet, moccasins and bison hoof that had trod right where my head lay , now part of a working ranch with a campground attached. How many had woken as I had that morning to a sunrise over an open grassland, the distant landscape eroded over aeons; the quiet , eery mounds pressing into the sky above ? And over how many centuries? Once again, the constant, gentle wind lulled me to sleep.



The wind seems to own the land here; 20 million years of it rushing across the sandstone and prairie had created it's unique moonlike character, and I 'm guessing it must be a force that man and beast has to reckon with every day out here - the flat landscape lending itself to snowdrifts in the winter, and rapidly changing conditions in general, but of course these are the very things that bring us here - the unique serenity, the bejeweled night sky unlike anything a city dweller can possibly see, and the wide open window to another time.

Snowshoe Country Lodge

Up in the north woods of Minnesota, about an hour from Two Harbors on the north shore of Lake Superior, is he Snowshoe Country lodge and log cabin building school.

We headed there from Lake Itasca and met some friends for the weekend. The plan was to build a fire, hang out , grill food and enjoy the cabins.
The cabins had electricity and the water was hand drawn from a well nearby.
Outhouses were also close by, as were the ever-present mosquitoes, who seemed to have a particular liking for my chosen brand of bug spray. We had all arrived there about 3 ish, and it was early evening, after some napping and quiet time, before the silence of the woods had really soaked in.

We lit a fire. The sun was beginning to set and the bugs all came out of the pines to feast on our juicy city skin, so we figured the smoke might keep them at bay.

We had finished a dinner of corn on the cob, potato salad and asparagus grilled on a barbeque pit outside one of our log cabins.As we sat around the fire , frogs began their evening chorus, and the wolves' call and response floated in and out of the deep blue sky around us. it seemed that they were talking to each other from miles apart, and that we were somewhere between, like accidental eavesdroppers.

We put the fire out and headed for bed. Outside the window, the frogs' lazy chirping began to fade and the occasional wolf howl would break the growing silence inside, a bug or two had found their way in, ready for seconds. Some of em got lucky. Some of em didn't.

Lake Itasca

Lake Itasca, where the mighty MIssissippi takes it's first trickling steps on it's two and a half thousand mile journey south, has surrounding it some stunning Jack Pine forest and wildlife and, thanks to the State Park and Department of Natural Resources,some fine family camping and outdoor facilities a the ready - pontoons and bicycles are ready for renting and the trails are breathtaking.

The headwaters of the Mississippi, flowing from Lake Itasca, are a great attraction, partly because it's one part of that great river that can be crossed on a few stepping stones before it gradually reaches it's massive girth many miles south.

The lake was given it's name by Henry Schoolcraft, who took the latin words "verITAS" (meaning "true")and "CAput" (meaning "head") to form Itasca - there had been many previous claims of the headwaters' discovery from many sources, including the Spaniards in the 16th century and many others, but the true head was found when Mr Schoolcraft employed an Ojibwe native as his guide - of course the Ojibwe knew where it was all along, but no one bothered to ask. Henry, however, had been a long time friend of the native peoples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Schoolcraft

Also found in abundance along Elk Lake are Minnesota's State Flower ; Lady Slippers:

Thanks

From across the sunny street, I heard "'Scuse me, sir?". She was pretty - late 20's/early 30's maybe, blond with blue eyes, and a tanned, weather-worn complexion in old dirty clothes; an over-sized yellow sweater and raggedy jeans.
"Would you have fifty cents for the bus?" she asked as she crossed the street towards me.

As I fished in my wallet I asked "Where you headed?". "Grand and Fairview - my sister's".

I handed her a dollar; "There you go". She said "Thanks." and walked on.