Dakotas

Finally, after four months in the mid-west, the humidity is gone and the wind has given way to dry lips and a dusty bus. We’ve reached the grasslands or “prairie” as they say in Canada. We’ve had a few adventures along the way such as mining for Indian pipestone, discovering abandoned homesteaded houses, catching crickets and such.

So much of these past few days seem familiar to me as I have read about them through the likes of Willa Cather, Jane Kirkpatrick and Ivan Doig for years now. The sod houses, the wind, the natives, the Badlands and grasshoppers have reminded me how difficult it was for the homesteaders to earn their 160 acres here by surviving and taming their land in five years. Everything is dry and parched in August and yet I know the winters in the Dakotas are the coldest in the country every year. But knowing this land is harsh, you can also see the beauty of the big blue skies reaching right down to the prairie grasses blowing in the wind. The colors are more subtle than the mid-west as the dirt and grasses compliment each other without screaming any particular hue.
Harsh lands often give way to the bountiful gift of wide open spaces. The Dakotas are not a huge tourist destination and so lucky for us, the trails are empty and campgrounds easy to find.