The Badlands; Photos and Words (part 1 of 2)
Friday, January 2nd, 2009On Science and Spirit
~Spirit~
There are many places in this world which are magical and sacred, the South Dakota Big Badlands is a preeminent place that embodies this mystic nature. Here a man can converse with the gods themselves, here strange energies flow through your very soul and energize it, vitalize it. In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, “I was totally unprepared for the revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands…What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal…, an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it.”
~Science~
The badlands act as one of the greatest biological laboratories in the world. One of the last refuges for natural grasslands. The most successful species reintroductions ever with the black-footed ferret.
It is a geologists playground; gem hunters will be amazed by the fairburn agate, rattlestones, and fluorescent opal that can be found. This area has nearly the highest concentration of fossils in the world. As one travels up through the layers the evidence for evolution become apparent, you can watch the early changes in mammals as they adapt from subtropical to steppe like conditions. The ones that didn’t adapt died off, those that survived became the ancestors of today’s modern mammals. Cats, dogs, bears, pigs, horses, camels, deer, their evolution is plainly written in the rock layers of South Dakotas Big Badlands.
———————————————————————————–
As I sat and watched the sun begin to set the melody of leopard frogs wafted up from the fractilated ravines below. Soon the coyotes began to wail in counter point and the whole of the cacophony was emblazoned on the wall before me in stark and vivid golden hues. Life springs from the cold of winter if only for one day in February when the temperature climbed to 81 degrees fahrenheit. Only 2 days before it was 10 below zero.
Burns Basin
———————————————————————————–
