Day #6    Robert Leverett
   Sep 06, 2006 07:57 PDT 

ENTS,

Day #6 of our trip:

On day #6, we awoke in our small motel in Hot Springs, SD. In my last
installment, I didn’t say much about Hot Springs. I should point out
that it is a small resort town in the southeastern Black Hills that has
special charms. Hot Springs has a current population of around 4,200,
making it my size town. It has a lot of adobe-type architecture very
appropriate to the natural surroundings. It also has some dubious
attributes. Hot Springs lays claim to being the warmest inhabited spot
in South Dakota with an average annual temperature of 64 degrees. If the
statistic is true, then that is an amazing place. It is located at 43.43
degrees of latitude, about the same as Concord, New Hampshire. It sits
at an altitude of over 3,400 feet. The combination suggests a cooler
climate, especially considering that, as a whole, the state of South
Dakota averages around 45 degrees. The average temperature for
Massachusetts, which is a little south of most of South Dakota, for the
period of 1971 to 2000 was 47.9 degrees. So what does an average of 64
degrees compare to elsewhere that might further arouse one’s suspicion?
The average temperature for the state of Georgia (however NOAA computes
it) based on the period 1971 to 2000 was 63.5 degrees. It boggles the
mind to think of Hot Springs average temperature as equal to that of
Georgia’s. Yes, I realize that I’m comparing a small area to a very
large one, but ……. I remain skeptical about the Hot Springs claim. Maybe
the local weatherman was recording the daily temperature while
comfortably immersed in a nearby hot spring. He/she probably had a cool
drink in one hand, a copy of Weatherwise in the other, and a
thermometer in some kind of appropriately shielded container suspended
from a nearby fixture.

The area in an around Hot Springs does have hot springs, making the name
of the town authentic. One spring called Evans Plunge holds a
temperature of 87 degrees Fahrenheit. But there is more than the springs
to attract interest. Hot Springs has an extraordinary ice age mammoth
site that was discovered in 1974. Evidently, the huge animals slide into
the hot spring with no way out, perishing. Their bones have been
preserved over the millennia.   www.carlwozniak.com/earth/Mammoth.html
has excellent pictures of the mammoth skeletal remains. An advertisement
for the site reads as follows:

“You can go on a guided tour, visit a working paleontology laboratory,
watch films, and simply explore till your heart's content at the Mammoth
Site of Hot Springs. Learn all about one of the greatest creatures to
roam our continent, the mammoth. Discover how scientists work a dig and
find out the history behind the Mammoth Site itself; from the mammoths
to the early peoples who inhabited this beautiful area. You can even
visit the areas where portions of the movie "Hidalgo" were filmed! This
is not an experience to be missed!”

Beyond springs and mammoths, the town of Hot Springs has done well to
establish itself as classy place. In this aspect, it distinguishes
itself from the gaudy, inappropriate displays of the town of Custer.
Monica was duly impressed with the feel of Hot Springs. She loved the
architecture, and very importantly, she was able to get her first coffee
latte of our trip, and according to her, it was a good one. You see, for
Monica, lattes are a necessity of life, like watermelon is for me.
Monica without her morning Latte is nobody to be trifled with. However,
our day’s destination prevented us from dallying, so after an
unconventional breakfast, we hit the road.

As we headed northward, we drove through Wind Cave National Park. The
central attractions were scenery and abundant wildlife. We saw bison,
pronghorn antelope (not actually an antelope, but a relative of the
goat) and prairie dogs. The bison provided us with our best viewing.
That great beast of the plains never disappoints. It is the most
compelling symbol of the American West. But what of Wind Cave, itself?
Uh, well next year. That is when we will actually visit the Cave. I had
visited it years before, and while it is geologically interesting, it is
not one of the more spectacular caves from the standpoint of large
formations. Ed Frank may have something to say about that.   

Heading on into adjoining Custer State Park, we saw more bison, perhaps
the best that we’ve seen. They were beside the road. And the scenery
continued to be topnotch. In that part of the Black Hills, the land is
only slightly mountainous and the undulating ridges consist of alternate
meadows and forests of ponderosa pine. It is about as pleasant as a
countryside can get. However, the views were about to become wildly
spectacular. That was my surprise for Monica. We were approaching an
especially scenic area of the Black Hills called the Needles. The
website http://pic.rhuseth.com/Dakotas/Needles.htm gives some
outstanding images of the granite needles. Another excellent collection
of needles photos is at
http://www.teresco.org/pics/north-20030707-22/18/needles.html. Visitors
who remember the Black Hills after years of being away from them often
remember the Needles over all else, except perhaps Mount Rushmore –
always a dubious memory for me. The only negative to the Needles Highway
is that summer traffic and become very annoying.

The elevations on the Needles Highway build up to around 6,000 feet. The
Highway is narrow and closed in the winter. It is extremely scenic with
its abundance of granite spires. As we left the Needles Highway, we
passed by an aptly named Lake, Sylvan Lake. But development around the
small lake partially compromises its character. It can get very crowded
in the summer. So on we went, approaching famous Mount Rushmore, the
National Shrine, However, I avoid Mt. Rushmore like the plague. When in
the area, I only take friends there who beg me on bended knees. I see
the carvings and the surrounding development as the desecration of a
great mountain. We would have been better off to have created Rushmore
as a Disneyland type place with amusement park rides, people dressed in
presidential outfits passing out buttons and acting foolish, cotton
candy, and fireworks. The current Rushmore may not be that gaudy, but it
seems more like a little American ghetto than a shrine or maybe a zoo
without any interesting animals. The multi-deck parking facility with
all its concrete is a particular eyesore. It may have had some redeeming
features when first created, but not any longer.

Fortunately for me, Monica had no interest in Rushmore for similar
reasons to mine, so by it we went and eastward on U.S. 16, to an old
haunt of mine – Joe Dollar Gulch. That is the location of a small
wilderness area and the wilderness part is adjacent to an area managed
for timber by the Forest Service, so the greater region is a mix of
areas with very old and very young pines, but all of it is esthetic. We
parked and walked up an old road, leaving U.S. 16 behind. We then
slowly climbed upon a small ridge to a spot where the view to the south
was inspiring. I had chosen the spot to do a private ceremony for my
deceased wife Jani. I had been waiting two years to do the Black Hills
ceremony in her honor.

As a brief digression, I met my first wife in October 1966 in South
Dakota when I was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. We quickly fell
in love and were married the following April. Jani was of Indian
descent. She had many friends on the nearby Pine Ridge and Rosebud
Indian Reservations who later become friends and acquaintances of mine.
In later years, she was regarded as a Native elder, revered by many, a
leader. She once spoke at the United Nations. As I stood there preparing
to do the ceremony, my life with Jani seemed so long ago and yet so
recent. There we were, standing among the ponderosa pines, with the
large form of Harney Peak rising in the distance. I was visiting sacred
ground with the second love of my life and the two of us were honoring
my first. It was a noble act that Monica was doing, but then, I will
always believe that Jani’s spirit helped to bring Monica and me
together. I have many reasons for believing that.

On the way back down the mountain, Monica and I were caught in a sudden
downpour with flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder. It was a
little worrisome, but then I thought to myself, Ah, this is Jani and the
spirits of the land having a little fun with us. We quickened our pace
and arrived back at our car a little wet, but no worse for the wear. The
ceremony and rain had caused me to forget to show Monica a small
outcropping of the mineral staurolite that we passed on the way down.
Staurolite is the state mineral of Georgia, and when I lived there, I
assembled quite a collection of high quality staurolite crystals. I have
them in two basic forms: singles and twins. But it story is in the
twining. Staurolite crystals twin at either 60 degrees or 90 degrees.
The latter form the famous fairy crosses. The legend being that when
Christ was crucified, the tears of the fairies fell as crosses. There’s
a park in Virginia established for the protection of fairy stones. Well,
missing the fairy crosses in Joe Dollar Gulch gives us another reason to
return to the Black Hills.

Retracing a small distance of our steps and then turning northward, we
passed by Pactola Reservoir, a water source for Rapid City and other
communities. I mentioned to Monica that on occasion I swam in Pactola
when stationed at Ellsworth AFB. As we passed over the dam, I was lost
for a brief period in thought. I mentally reassembled a past period of
my life – my initial connection to the Black Hills. They were to become
one of my spiritual haunts. They were important to other G.I.s as well,
but not always in the way I saw them. Pactola brought back that
realization for me.

Weekend boating visits to Pactola in the summer and Terry Peak Ski
Resort in the winter were the outdoor recreational mainstays for most of
the G.I.s and their families who frequented the Black Hills. A few
fished the other reservoirs in the Black Hills, but Pactola and Terry
Peak were the names you heard most. However, a few of us on the base
were mountain climbers, hunters, wilderness explorers, or a combination
thereof. I fit the latter category. I was Ellsworth AFB’s unofficial
wilderness guide and took small groups to some isolated box canyons that
got no other visitation. I took people off the beaten path and some
liked it and some didn’t. To my mind, we were the elite, the ones who
truly loved the Black Hills. We appreciated their natural beauty, their
wildness, their colorful western history. I recall that some of us
looked down on the conventional recreationalists. Yes, it was snobbery
on my part, but I freely indulged in it. We were the keepers of the
faith, of the spirit of the Hills.

As we approached the towns of Leads and Deadwood, I gave Monica a
ten-cent account of the western history associated with Deadwood,
especially the murder of Wild Bill Hickock by Jack McCall. Those were
wild times in the Hills and they have been dramatized by Hollywood in
entertaining, but seldom authentic ways. No surprises there. Hollywood
has a way of capitalizing on the West and exploiting it, including the
actions of individual actors and actresses. As an example, I imagine
many of you remember the movie Dances With Wolves with actor Kevin
Costner. But mention the name Kevin Costner to a Lokota warrior type on
Pine Ridge Reservation and you’d better be ready to run unless you are
lambasting Costner. The following is an excerpt from a Native American
website that illuminates the kind of exploitation that rides on the
coattails of Hollywood western sagas.

“Kevin Costner: big name, big films like Dances With Wolves and JFK --
but apparently, just 'cuz one acts like a hero, fighting the good fight
in dream-town celluloid Technicolor dramas, doesn't mean one lives that
way in one's own life. The two articles below -- from The Circle, News
from a Native American perspective... and the London Independent --
tellingly indicate where such "real life" stories like the Costner
brothers perpetuation of the White Man's trashing of the Lakota's sacred
Black Hills fit in to the hi-rollin' media cavalcade of "news" and "all
things considered" important to the landed aristocracy. Truly ironical
that, along with the subsidies given them by the state --
"... To help the Costner brothers build their resort the state of South
Dakota voted to raise the betting limit at Deadwood casinos from $5 to
$100, and has given them $14 million to develop their Dunbar Resort
plan."
the very people who helped Kevin get rich by playing the "red parts" in
"Dances With Wolves" are now the ones hypocritically disrespected and
ignored out of his yen to make more green on their sacred lands with the
erection of "The Dunbar." How can white people so consistently live out
in their own lives the repeated betrayal and disrespect of the peoples
of Turtle Island who knew this place as home LONG before europeans ever
arrived? Where is any understanding of The Family Of Man in this
broken-record story?”

Before leaving the Black Hills, I should mention that one of the key
areas of the Black Hills is the Black Hills National Forest. It covers
over 1,200,000 acres, and is in my opinion, well managed. I have not
always held this view, but the more I see, the more I feel the
management is doing the best it can. To my tastes, the Black Hills
National Forest is a little short on its wilderness acreage, and its
management pitch stretches the value of keeping the forest in a
perpetually juvenile state, but the Forest Service cleaning up the
logging operations well, and most importantly, it is staying on top of
the outbreaks of the Pine Bark Beetle, for which I am grateful. After
seeing some very heavy damage in old growth section, I have come to the
conclusion that I would rather see a forest in which insect damage is
controlled, as is being done in the Black Hills, than look helplessly at
a standing dead forest of once beautiful mature trees.

Passing from South Dakota and into Wyoming, we reached the historic town
of Sundance, made famous in the past as the place where Harry Longabaugh
(or Longbaugh), alias the Sundance Kid, once spent time in the Sundance
jail. The Wild Bunch, headed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, were
notorious and were very colorful. Two films have been made about them
that I know of. Of course Hollywood distorts history, but then so does
the passage of time. The public comes to see these characters in a
heroic light. Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Jack Slade, Jesse
James, etc. become heroes standing up for the little guy. They take on a
Robin Hood persona, which in reality they never even contemplated.

From Sundance, we turned north for a rendezvous with Devils Tower,
America’s first national monument, created by Teddy Roosevelt on
September 24, 1906. The drive from Sundance to Devils Tower is very
scenic, and other than thin line of cars on the road, the country is
virtually devoid of humans. Although, there are no stark changes on
landform, the mountain region transitions from the Black Hills to the
Bear Lodge. In the distance one sees a remarkable sight. It looks like a
giant stump on a ridge. It is Devil’s Tower. Native Americans refer to
Devils Tower by names roughly equivalent to Bear Lodge, Bear’s Tipi,
Bear’s Lair, and a few others. The name Bear Lodge is Lakota.

The formation of Devils Tower or Bear Lodge occurred during the period
of mountain building that dates back to about 65 million years ago when
the oldest of the Rockies and Black Hills were being formed. The
material of the rock itself is purportedly around 40 million years old.
Although of volcanic origin, there are conflicting theories on exactly
how the Tower was formed. Its composition is phonolite porphyry. I’m
sure that will mean something to Ed and maybe he can give us an
explanation of the rocks composition. The Tower is widely considered to
be an intrusion into the surrounding sedimentary rocks, perhaps a plug
of lava, which cooled while still subsurface. According to the
prevailing view, the softer sedimentary rocks eroded from around the
harder igneous rock leaving it exposed. The cooling of the magma, while
still subsurface, led to the classic 6-sided columns. The displays at
the visitor center show three possible models of formation. Take your
pick.

Bear Lodge, as Monica prefers to call it, is incredibly impressive.
Standing at its base, I got slightly dizzy looking upward to its full
865-foot height. The sensation seldom happens to me was surprising.
Standing and gazing at the sheer size of the Tower, I could well
understand why it was used in the movie Strange Encounters of the Third
Kind. The film needed a structure that directed the eyes upward along
parallel line. Bead Lodge was the perfect land feature.

Monica and I walked the trail around Bear Lodge, frequently gazing
upwards and taking an occasional picture. We also enjoyed the old growth
ponderosa pines around its base. There had been a recent forest fire. I
remember hearing of it in the news. Some of the pines exceed 300 years
in age, at least that was my guess by looking at them. I later confirmed
the age with a surprised junior ranger at the visitor’s center who took
out a cookie from a 310-year old pine. Neither he nor his companion
seemed to understand that the ring of pines around the Tower supported
many in the 300-year old age range. Their focus was on the surrounding
rock, not the trees.

At a location near the mid-point of the trail, one can look eastward
toward the Belle Fourche River valley that lies about 400 feet below.
The bands of red and maroon siltstone, yellow sandstone, and white
gypsum lining the valley create a color scheme the envy of any interior
designer. Here was nature at both its grandest and its most mysterious.
The lowest point in Wyoming lies on the Belle Fourche as it flows into
South Dakota – 3,100 feet. To put that elevation into perspective, Mount
Davis, the highest point in the entire state of Pennsylvania, is only 13
feet higher than the lowest point in Wyoming.

Our walk around the Tower gave me pause to reflect on what such an
imposing monument might mean to the people visiting it. Of course, there
are many reactions and levels of appreciation as there are visitors,
depending on one’s love of nature, interest in geology, and receptivity
to natural beauty, or lack thereof. However, something told me at the
start of the walk that such folks were in the minority on the day of our
visit. I could see it in their eyes, the way they walked. So only after
I short distance, I started to listen and observe peoples’ responses to
the Tower. I didn’t tell Monica that I was doing this. I didn’t want to
intrude on her enjoyment of the great Bear Lodge. So my little
Tower-appreciation experiment continued mostly in secret.

Many of the athletic-appearing young males seemed intimidated by the
sheer size of the Tower, so they proceeded to talk loudly about sports.
That is to be expected from young males. Nothing to hear there, so I
shifted my attention to their seniors and got something of a surprise.
Several of the middle-aged to slightly older men, who I suppose fancied
themselves in charge of something, wore slight grins and a judging look.
They seemed to be trying to think of something clever to say that in
their minds would reduce the giant Tower that stood over them down to
their size, render it powerless, make it just an over-sized stone. That
would be something they could deal with. Break that sucker up and haul
it away as road fill. Make something useful out of it. A couple of
comments that I overheard reinforced my belief that they dealt with
their feeling of intimidation by envisioning it as crushed into gravel.

One couple in their 30s seemed to be engaged in a kind of power walking.
As they pressed on, they hardly glanced at the Tower. It was as if their
purpose was to show the rest of us that it was really about physical
conditioning. The trail network existed for their conditioning
convenience. Human activities ruled. They reminded me of my military
brethren in Quantico, VA who would run in the median of U.S. Route #1,
gulping generously from the cloud of automobile exhaust fumes, but
showing the rest of us how whimpy we were. I’ve never forgotten the
image of those G.I.s. Did they really think the rest of us admired their
athletic prowess? The operative word here is think.

Other walkers were lost in a continuous stream of social chatter. Some
were reliving business and others were discussing the behavior on
neighbors, friends, and relatives. They too scarcely glanced at the
hulking form of the Tower. Still others were clearly bored. They usually
were part of a group and from the expressions they wore, they clearly
preferred to be elsewhere. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. But
what of the young, the curious? Weren’t they interested in this
incredible monolith? I struck out on that score too.

Children accustomed to passing hours in front of a television set or
enamored with the constant action of video games were whiners. One boy
balked when encouraged by his parents to catch up. Another young boy
felt so out of place, so alienated from his surroundings that his
sympathetic mother sat down with him on a bench, took out some kind of
word puzzle and they went to work finishing it. The lad sounded bright,
but felt no curiosity about the Tower, just intimidation. He would not
look up at the Tower. My cynical side imagined that if he couldn’t move
a joystick and watch as the image in front of him digitally
disintegrated by some superhero fighting an alien life form, then there
was no purpose to the endeavor, but a feeling of sympathy wafted through
me. I did realize that the giant physical object before him had no
relevance for him. An image flashed in my mind. I saw him as a frail boy
who would have been one of those little souls who would have perished on
a long trek westward across the Oregon Trail. Holding that image, I cut
him some slack and moved on.

Weren’t there any visitors there who were enjoying the Tower on its
terms, who sensed its awesome power? Well, a few. Precious few, but a
few. I saw a couple of women gazing upward in obvious appreciation of
the Tower. Perhaps they were new-agers, imagining the giant rock to be
extraterrestrial in origin. If so, while I wouldn’t have shared their
beliefs about the origin of the Tower, I definitely could appreciate
their appreciating it. So, I said silently: “More power to you and say
high to the aliens for me, when they arrive.”

Well, after multiple observations about the take of others on the Tower,
I was on the verge of becoming a complainer. But, I managed to keep most
of my thoughts to myself. Monica was able to drink of the essence of the
Tower and didn’t deserve to have her meditative moments soured by
criticisms of my fellow humans. However, for me, the end of the walk
didn’t lead to any improvements. Back at the visitor’s center, I was
clearly bothered by the lack of appreciation or understanding by the
public of this place as sacred to the Cheyenne, Lakota, Crow, and
Arapahoe. Bear Lodge is their church, their cathedral. They understand
its spirit. What do they think of the larger non-Native society that
seems so materialistic, so shallow, so self-absorbed? I could imagine
many expressing their dismay to one another saying: “Why do these
pale-faced tourists even come? What’s the point? They can’t hear the
voices on the wind. They can’t feel the great bears breath on them. They
are lost. We cannot save them.” But, I suspect the majority of Native
Americans who make offerings at the Tower wait for the off-season to
come. Then they visit the great Bear Lodge.

But thinking back to my past four visits to the Tower, none had been
this way. Maybe I could tune it out better then. Maybe I wasn’t as
attuned as I think I was. But, I had not remembered as many tuned-out
people on any of those earlier visits. Maybe it was our luck of the draw
on this particular trip, the way the averages work out.

Back in our car and on the road, I desperately needed to dissipate the
negative absorption from the fog of human presence that surrounded the
base of the Tower along the trail. Monica and I had negotiated our way
through the fog and she had emerged unscathed, but I bore wounds. I had
no doubt that the Tower was fine. The raw power of the Tower was more
than enough to weather the daily invasion of the humans, including
periodic concentrations of the unappreciative. But I wasn’t up to the
task. I needed space and was finally getting it. The stark scenes of a
past forest and grass fire that had raged on both sides of the road
captured my attention. A column of smoke rose on the distant horizon and
reminded us that Wyoming suffered from extended drought. I focused on
the horizon and that smoke. It had a cleansing effect.        
        
Before long we intercepted Interstate 90 and were on our way westward to
Buffalo Wyoming. To get there, we needed to cross the Powder River
Basin, an area of vast energy resources that is rapidly being developed
by our energy-hungry country. From my earlier recollections of it, I
could see that the lonely character of the Powder River Country is
changing. Looking at the unmistakable signs of human encroachment in the
forms of oil and gas wells, I wondered if the ghosts of Indians,
pioneers, and soldiers still retained a presence, albeit a fading one.
If so, I feared that within a generation their impressions would be
erased to all but the most psychically gifted. An integral part of the
Old West would have disappeared forever. I feared that the wild land
that the early transients knew, there were never any permanent
residents, would pass and be replaced with newcomers, settlers who knew
nothing of how it once was, nor cared save one here or there.

As we approached Gillette, Wyoming, my worst fears were reinforced.
Those hideous housing developments were spreading like a giant cancer,
gobbling up space. I noticed the difference from my last visit two years
ago. The glorious open spaces are diminishing. Yes, there is still
plenty of physical space remaining, but a single modern human with
multiple vehicles, power mower, power tools, and a boom box can shatter
the tranquility of hundreds of acres. Increasingly, the surrounding
hills will be pierced by the sounds of dirt bikes and all terrain
vehicles. The Powder River of old will disappear. I had just come
through an emotional bashing at Bear Lodge and now I was getting a
second round. I needed respite. I turned my thoughts to the distant
horizon where I expected to see the outline of distant peaks with
patches of remaining snow, but the haze from the wild fires blocked what
would have been a beautiful scene, that of the Bighorn Range of the
Rockies.

The Bighorns, or Big Horns as they are also spelled, rise just west of
the small town of Buffalo. When living in South Dakota and driving
westward to climb in those fine mountains, I had generously drunk of the
scene of distant snowcapped summits rising boldly from the wide expanses
of the grasslands. The Rockies. Yes, the mighty Rockies. We had made it,
but I regretted that I could not share the captivating scenery with
Monica. The persistent haze blotted out much of the outline of jagged
granite peaks abruptly rising 8,000 feet from the surrounding plains.
That unforgettable scene would have to wait for another day. The view on
the following day would be from a much closer vantage point. Monica
would be robbed one of the sweeping scene of the truly huge uplift that
characterizes the Bighorns as one approaches from either east or west.
Ah, but there was next year.

As we approached closer to Buffalo, I pointed out the bold summit of
Cloud Peak to Monica. At 13,167 feet, Cloud Peak is the highest summit
in the Bighorns. It is one of only two summits that exceed 13,000 feet.
The other is Blacktooth at 13,005 feet. But there are many summits that
exceed 12,000 feet and mountains over 11,000 are common over a long
stretch of the Bighorns that run for 200 miles. I will discuss the
Bighorns at length on Day #7.

We eventually rolled into the pleasant little town of Buffalo, Wyoming,
location of the historic Johnson County cattle war, we found a
convenient motel on the west side of town and settled in for the
evening. The cottonwoods along parts of the main street had an
especially western character. As the sun sat and darkness gradually
enveloped us, I looked forward to day #7. I especially wanted to share
with Monica this most elevated of my spiritual homes, the Bighorn range
of the Rockies.

Bob


Robert T. Leverett
Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society
Re: Day #6   Lee E. Frelich
  Sep 06, 2006 10:26 PDT 

Bob:

The 64 degree average in South Dakota sounds suspicious, and if you call up
the climate statistics for Hot Springs SD on the Weather Channel Website,
you find that they have a record low of -41, and a January mean of 24. The
cold winter temperatures balance out the warm summers for a mean annual
temperature of about 47. The 64 degrees must be from a site right over one
of the hot springs.

Regarding Devil's Tower, I'll bet a lot of those people who appeared not to
be paying attention were actually big city people giving the appearance of
being cool and uninvolved when they were actually impressed by the
experience. Big city people do that a lot. They have perfected the art of
looking up at buildings (or trees or mountains) without looking like they
are looking, since anyone who conspicuously looks up at skyscrapers in a
big city is immediately branded as a small town hick, which is the worst
possible label that could befall someone.

Lee
RE: Day #6   Robert Leverett
  Sep 06, 2006 11:00 PDT 

Lee,

   You could be right with respect to the composition of the visitors to
Devils Tower. I hadn't thought of the explantion that you proposed.

   With respect to being branded a small town hick, Boy, don't I know
how that feels. Been there, done that. On my first visit to New Yorck
City, I was perpetually looking up, exclaiming, and then stumbling over
my own feet. I couldn't help but catch some of the glimpses sent my way.
I'm sure some of those New Yorkers were convinced that they were seeing
a real live Jubilation T. Cornpone, not merely a stage character from Al
Capp's Li'l Abner.

Bob