Tag Archives: road trip 2024

WRT V, Part 3: Of Sorrow and Triumph

This is the third in a three-part series. | Part 1 | Part 2

On the second to last day of my road trip, I cross South Dakota from southwest to northeast, almost entirely on back roads. I start in the Pine Ridge Reservation, which I expect to be jarring. It is.

The first markers of the new world I enter are the roadside markers reading “Think” and “Why Die?” While they are part of a statewide program to memorialize drunken and other reckless driving deaths, they are legion on Pine Ridge. Trailers begin to appear alongside the road, almost all in a state of decay, some fitfully patched up, others crumbling into these hard, rolling hills. In the town of Oglala, they just densify, each yard collecting broken down vehicles, mined for parts to keep one running. Drivers honk at the stray dogs who run in front of cars. A few men walk down lonely stretches of highway with no obvious aim.

The town of Pine Ridge stirs to life on this Sunday morning, a few kids ambling up streets and a group congregating outside a church. The reservation’s schools and health center at least look shiny and new, and the town now manages to offer some basic necessities in business and a few apparent research operations or other outposts from the outside. But it is still a tenuous borderland, still struggling to resist the entropy and despair that hang like a pall over Pine Ridge. There is one growing type of business that shows sign of new entrepreneurship: cannabis shops.

A few miles further east, I come to Wounded Knee. Here, in December 1890, over 140 Sioux camped beneath a white flag were slaughtered by the US cavalry. The massacre was the final blow in the Plains Wars and the end of an era, the frontier closed and reservation life made universal. Whispers of a mobilizing ghost dance spooked the Army, and after a single mystery shot, the guns above the creek blazed indiscriminately, killing Native men, women, and children, along with a number of US soldiers through friendly fire in the bloodbath below.

Today, a single sign by Wounded Knee Creek marks the site of the massacre, and a still-active cemetery atop a hill hosts the mass grave at its center. All is quiet when I pull up, but my arrival sparks some activity. An older man walks up the backside of the hill, introduces himself as the cemetery’s caretaker, and shares its history. His great grandmother, he says, is the one who showed another Sioux chief the blood coating the snow a few days later. He is reverent, adds some words in Lakota, though he also laughs easily as he talks of his grandchildren, for whom he needs to buy some Pampers.

Next, a younger man in a well-loved Seahawks jersey joins him. He adds some details on the 1973 occupation of this site by the American Indian Movement and subsequent standoff with federal forces. He had broken out of here to go live and work in Pipestone, Minnesota, but he is home to help restore water to his mother’s trailer down below the hill. He sells me a dreamcatcher. As I leave the site, two women with a young child arrive and begin setting up a table to peddle additional wares. For a variety of reasons I normally avoid giving handouts, but I leave Wounded Knee with a lighter wallet and no qualms about it.

Over these past two hours I have borne witness to an American moral disgrace. In some ways the tales of Native resistance and a delicate dance with an unbeatable government power take me back to the highlands of Chiapas in Mexico, right down to the vendors profiting off queasy, sympathetic tourists like me. But the affluence not far up the road seems to have particularly perverse effects on Pine Ridge, where residents can buy into one or two of the markers of modern American life but none of the rest, or are left with the detritus of a throwaway consumer culture and the accumulation of failing junk. I could haul in statistics on astronomical unemployment or obscene maternal mortality or life expectancies in line with the bleakest corners of sub-Saharan Africa, but my eyes are enough to capture the depths of the perdition here. Forget becoming great again: the US will be great when it can prove Pine Ridge is not a permanent state.

When I drove west in 2020, I struggled with questions about the state of the world, wrote moody fiction about a struggling soul who brushed up against the horrors of Pine Ridge. This time I drive freely, unburdened by what has been. I have borne witness, know I will find the words to capture this time on the edges of American life, a solo traveler drifting through and blending in with different worlds. I have a job in which I help chip away at the troubles in these lands, such as an outsider can. I am easing through, in control, pushing at edges and turning my eye my one great looming doubt, the place where my pursuit becomes tentative, comes up short.

As I go I listen to Hillbilly Elegy, now as good a time as any. The politics slip in here and there but the book is fundamentally an account of a broken boyhood, of one kid’s escape from a predetermined fate. JD Vance is the grandson of migrants (the irony drips through here), uncouth Appalachian Kentuckians who lit out for opportunity in an Ohio factory town, endured culture shock and their own demons but found ways, built lives. Two of their children lit upon upward trajectories, but Vance’s mother was the exception, the one who ran through men like tissues and lapsed into drugs. Young JD endures a constant rotation of father figures, jerked from place to place, unstable (despite some clear, precocious talents) until he finally lands in the place that has always been his most stable home: in with his Mamaw, the no-bullshit grandmother who sets a standard and holds him to it. She gifts him a world stripped of its ambiguities, clear in its expectations, no fleeting figures drifting through.

I feel stories like this deeply, am fascinated by how scars in youth can imprint themselves upon people. My own childhood was much happier than Vance’s, punctuated by a few acute jolts of pain instead of the near-constant anxious dread that probably made him the reflexive fighter that he is. Some scars linger, though, and he and I are not unaligned in some of our loose theories around the need for stable guides in a fluid world, of raising children to high standards, of the utmost importance of family life. How we have lived out that belief is very different.

I do not know if Vance has found the stability he craved with the choices he has made, will make no effort to judge his success or failure. But for my part there is no policy platform I would seek to impose on Pine Ridge to cure certain troubles of the soul, no rant about people whose views are different than mine. For me, before I ask what scenes like this demand that I do, I ask how I should be. In this case, the answer is to be a witness, to listen first, and then an attempt to uphold a faith in humanity through steady, daily work.

I have more pride than ever in the work I do because of some of the steps my office has taken over the past year to two to make good on some of these promises of greatness for people who deserve it. But the ties closest to home are still the ones that matter most. Trips like this one with an extended family are part of that work, bonds forged with people who are often not physically close but are some of my favorite humans. This whole year has been full of those journeys, and I cherish them all. And then there is my life in Duluth with my parents. Forget all the philosophical blather, forget the various expediencies: the foremost reason for my homing instinct in early adulthood was to live in joy with the two people who birthed me, even though our family unit is no longer. On that front, I have succeeded.

My project, however, is an incomplete one, and a gnawing void still looms as I dream of my own family life, my own investment in a future. What does it mean to want what I’ve been unable to find more than anything? It means I will pursue it with ever more vigor, with all the hunger, the joy, the panache, with everything I’ve articulated across all these journeys I take. I had thought this phase of life of outward journeys over the past few years may have been a distinct phase but now I understand it is in fact the project of a lifetime, an insatiable thirst for my world that will course through everything I do. I have built many of the necessary habits, slowly and fitfully over time. Whatever I might have believed before, I was never really ready. Now, I believe, I might be getting there. With that revelation I turn off the audiobook and coast into a Western sunset, my peace complete.

WRT V, Part 2: Into the Towers

This is part two in a three-part series. Part one is here.

For a sixth straight year, I am off on a western hiking adventure of overpacked food, bourbon, deep debate, and dramatic scenery. Stalwarts including Uncle Bob, cousin Rob, and friends Amy and Ed are here once again. Our numbers have swelled this year, as van-dwelling cousin Alex and his wife Meghan have timed their meanderings of the American West to join us. Jim, too, is back for the first time in three years, making for perhaps the largest party in the history of this crew.

We gather at Big Sandy Lodge, a resort at the end of a long, car-killing road high in the foothills of the Wind River Range in west-central Wyoming. A collection of spare cabins arcs around an opening in the pine forest, and a small lake frames the view to the nearest peak. The small lodge serves up hearty communal dinners and welcomes in exhausted hikers, and the proprietors’ toddler pulls books from the shelves and insists that I read them. (The first one he hands me is in French.) We lay out our meals on the single table in one of the cabins for the annual debate over necessary supplies, and we later enjoy drinks by oil lamp. We are at the edge of civilization, a final homely house on the frontier.

Eight hikers set out from Big Sandy Lodge the next morning, but a mile in, Jim concedes that physical ailments will keep him from enjoying this trip, and he makes the difficult decision to turn back. Nurse Meghan escorts him, and Alex and I hang with her pack while the other four press on. When we are reunited, Meghan, Alex, and I turn on the jets to catch up, but in our haste choose not to look at a map at the first fork. We thus end up on a path parallel to the one we want, and we are two miles in and beyond some pleasant lakes and mountain views before we appreciate our error. A backpacking backtrack ensues, and our first day adds four extra miles. For a second year in a row, this alleged master of maps has seen his group get hopelessly lost just a mile in. I hereby forfeit my credentials back to the National Geographic Society.

The correct trail is closer to the spurs of the mountains, up rises and past parks with nascent creeks, down a busy trail to Dads Lake, where we finally catch the waiting group. The Winds, we can see here, are not a secret: plenty of families roll in on fishing trips, including a horde of loud kids on the bluff right above our eventual campsite on Marms Lake. But some passersby tell us there is solitude just a bit onward, and the first steps on day two are promising.

The second day has generally become the most aggressive of these trips, and this year is no different. The sheer exhaustion may not match the Colorado Trail’s offering two years ago, but this one may be the most technical. It starts out innocently enough, as we make our way up a valley with a glittering creek that bubbles downward and swing past a series of lakes with sandy beaches, tempting us to stop for a swim. Sheer alpine beauty. We rise above the trees, skirt the aptly named Barren Lake and swing up to Texas Lake, the source of the stream nestled deep in a small cirque. Harsh peaks line its sides, but up one scree field a few figures slowly climb. This is Texas Pass.

After a lunch break and ample incredulity over the path ahead, we make the slow plod up the 800-foot pass. Rob and I pick out the route up, call some guidance back downward. The adrenaline surges at the wind-blasted crest, and after some recovery we step forward into the Cirque of the Towers, the destination this trip, a beauty of a high-country bowl beneath stunning peaks and a haven for rock climbing virtuosos.

The Cirque’s serrated jaws wrap around Lonesome Lake, invisible in the depths below, and we traverse a small snow field and detour to an overlook above another stellar lake before we begin the descent. At first it is lovely, down rock ledges and past another dancing stream, to the point that we entertain camping up here before wisely choosing to plunge downward. This is a treacherous stretch of loose dirt and tentative footholds, less physically exhausting than the climb but perhaps more taxing, and the shores of Lonesome Lake can’t come quickly enough.

We make camp a quarter mile down the North Popo Agie River, Lonesome Lake’s outlet, amid some scrub where forest meets meadow. To the west, the Cirque, dominated by Pingora Peak just right of center, a striking granite pinnacle reminiscent of Devil’s Tower. Beyond it, a jagged ridgeline of rock-climbing conquests wraps southward to the sheer-faced massifs of Pylon, Warrior, and War Bonnet Peaks. To the east, a long run down the valley of the Popo Agie, peaks and cliffs lining the route and closing us in to the north and south. The last remnants of snow cling to the nooks where sheer faces meet boulder fields below, some of them permanent enough to count as glaciers.

We spend two nights on the doorstep of the Cirque. A day hike on day three takes us around Lonesome Lake and into the upper reaches of this great bowl, on and off a semi-formal trail past additional tucked-away camps and a curtain waterfall. One thousand feet higher up, past a labyrinthine boulder field, is a mini-cirque with its own little lake and walls up to the heavens. Atop the jagged Shark’s Tooth, we pick out two ant-sized climbers summiting the peak. When in shade some of the spires look ominous, the guardians of some dark lord’s land in a fantasy series, an otherworldly sinister beauty that has me thinking this may be our most stunning single destination on any one of these trips.

On day four I wake to a drip of water in the face, condensation seeping through the rain fly and dropping to touch the tent fabric. I step out and gaze up at the fog hanging over the Cirque, coming and going as it obscures peaks and slowly lifts. In moments like this nature kills any sense of time, just invites a steady gaze until the magic breaks. After breakfast we push up Jackass Pass, the tamer southern gateway to the Cirque, and bid its spires farewell. Arrowhead Lake poses a choice: either clamber back up a promontory and slide down a Texas Pass-type slope, or swing west along the lakeshore through a boulder field. In keeping with our theme of the trip, we choose the boulders, swinging across gaps, sitting to sink into a passageway or clambering to rise above the furtive crevasses.

Next is a long plunge down to North Lake, followed by yet another rock scramble. On a spire to the right, climbers work their way up a sheer face. Up the trail come all manner of hikers seeking the Cirque: backpackers with bold itineraries, young couples with climbing ropes, day trippers from Big Sandy Lake, teenage fishermen, and a bachelorette party of 11 in matching Wild Women of the Winds hats and their five dogs. One last big drop brings us to the tent-dotted shores of Big Sandy Lake, and we pick out a campsite atop a small rise over the lake where we polish off the bourbon and play cards deep into the night.

The final day of hiking is, after the past few days, an easy stroll downhill, though thick forests and the occasional pleasant meadow along the Big Sandy River keep it lively. It is easy, that is, until the final half mile. Over the course of this trip Rob’s CalTopo app has saved us at numerous crossroads where the paper maps fall short. This time, however, it outdoes itself, and we are left picking our way through a bevy of downed timber and over awkward rocky knobs. Juicy burgers and beer await at Big Sandy Lodge, however, and we unwind, reconnect with Jim, trade stories with three hikers who have been in deep over the past week. It has been another hiking triumph, another journey well-spent, and I head east again in full belief in the power of these wildernesses to take us to new heights.

Part 3 is here.

Western Road Trip V, Part 1: Blank Space

This is the first in a three-part series on a western road trip.

I go east for civilization, for history and culture and the roots of memory. I go west for new beginnings, for the freedom to make sense of that jumbled inheritance.

And so westward I go once again, across Minnesota and eastern North Dakota, back across these roads I am starting to know well. A road trip across the Dakotas and eastern Montana and much of Wyoming may invoke thoughts of monotonous and dullard landscapes, and there is certainly some of this. But some part of me is now drawn to this seemingly blank space, these hardscrabble towns, to people on plains that go on forever, once a frontier but now planted in the middle of an expansive land.

I fly across Minnesota and eastern North Dakota with few stops and spend an unremarkable night in Bismarck. The next morning I pay my respects at Salem Sue, the silent sentinel at the entrance to the West, and take in the first tentative buttes hinting at the hills and mountains to come. After numerous past visits to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I swing off the freeway in Belfield and head for the North Unit. The basics here are much the same, badlands lining the floodplain of the Little Missouri River, scars and pockmarks interrupting the flatlands and beckoning the visitor in. Bison clump along the road and sometimes in the middle of it, and the campground is maybe half full on a Friday night.

I subject myself to a four-mile loop hike in triple-digit afternoon heat. The trail is mostly exposed, shooting straight up the sides of a coulee to vistas of the Little Missouri, where a few bison have taken refuge from the heat. Mercifully, the back side of the loop tucks into some juniper thickets that provide a reprieve from my blossoming sunburn, and I’ve found a campsite that has trees on all sides. Even the scattered sun hitting the hammock is miserable, so I park my camp chair atop my cooler in the shade of the trunk of the largest cottonwood I’ve ever seen and slowly rotate it to stay out of those cruel rays. My new camp gear is enough to earn me some sleep despite the heat, and I do not linger long the following morning, shooting west through the bleak impermanence of North Dakota oil country and down a long stretch of the Yellowstone River before a dive south into the Bighorn Basin.

Behind the Front Range of Colorado and the Bighorns in Wyoming, in front of the great ranges of Utah and Idaho and Montana and Yellowstone, is one of the emptiest corridors in America. It stretches from the Four Corners region in the south to the Yellowstone River in the north, 600 miles of parched country, some of the driest in the nation except along its ribbons of river: the Colorado and the Green in the south, the Bighorn in the north, these powerful waters punching through mountain ranges that separate the basins in this lonely land.

The Wind River Range is a protrusion into these inhospitable climes, thrusting south and east from the Tetons, and it is the 2024 destination for my annual hiking party. The Winds are not really near anything, and that is part of the allure for our journey this year. I spend my last night in the relative lowlands in a town selected because its name sounded fun. But it turns out to be more than that.

Thermopolis, Wyoming strikes me as a triumph of what the West can be. A town of just 3,000 people, it has the good fortune sit right where the Bighorn River slips out of the Wind River Canyon (the Bighorn and the Wind are, in fact, the same river), and the world’s largest mineral hot spring bubbles up beside it dumps on in. The area around the hot spring is a state park, guaranteed free for use by an age-old US government treaty with the Shoshone and the Arapaho, and I happen to visit during Discovery Days, which has a host of Native families picnicking on the sulfurous grounds around the spring. On this 100-degree day I am not too enthused about a dip in 105-degree water, so I make do with a stroll about to drink in the scene, and am too late to see the town’s top-notch dinosaur museum, too. Downtown Thermopolis has bustling shops and a surprising degree of culinary variety and a respectable brewery, where I post up at the bar and meet a couple completing the woman’s cross-country move to be with her snowboard guide partner in Jackson, and later two fishermen from Cheyenne. The snowboarder wins a few hundred dollars in a dice game jackpot, and the five of us watch Olympics and play dollar-ante dice games after that. It is a night well-spent in a town that pulls together the various strands of Western life and makes them into something whole.

From Thermopolis I head up canyon and into the Wind River Reservation. Here the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshone have land along the Wind and its merging tributaries with names like Poison and Badwater Creeks, which are in fact the two streams flanking the town of Shoshoni. This is deep rural country, though larger towns like Riverton and Lander have cropped up just off the reservation checkerboard and provide some services. From here I head up the old wagon trail route over South Pass and turn off on a steadily deteriorating dirt road into the Wind River Range, where my backpacking party will head for the Cirque of the Towers.

The rest of my fellow hikers head back to Salt Lake City after our hike, either to fly home or to carry on with their van life adventures across the West. My road back, however, is a long but purposeful one. After my descent from the Winds I head east to Casper, over rolling steppes of Wyoming sagebrush beneath moody skies, a pinprick within the great openness of the West. Early 1800s explorers called this land between the 100th Meridian and the Rockies the Great American Desert, and though it can be monotonous, the austere beauty here fills some hunger, some knowledge that these wastes hold some secrets and that crossing them can unlock some greatness.

I stop at Independence Rock and the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, markers on old roads west, monuments to the toll these lands once exacted on those chasers of western dreams. Now, I shoot across them in a matter of hours, endure dreary Casper and then spend the next night in Hot Springs, South Dakota, where I see a collection of mammoth remains interred here on the southern end of the Black Hills. Most Western towns tend toward the simple, the impermanent, just the basics set up here to provide the necessities. But they also feel the past deeply, their stories told by the events that once happened here, and they guard these stories better than in the east or the far west where it might be paved over, subsumed by the march of progress. Instead progress drifts through here from time to time, leaves its mark but tends to move on, and the West eases back into a more timeless state.

The next morning I head toward the Pine Ridge Reservation, an experience that deserves its own post. But after that the rest of the drive across South Dakota passes easily enough. Grazing cattle beget sunflower fields beget corn and wheat. There is some momentary Badland delight before Kadoka, a swing past a second Dakota capitol building, and a skirting of some pleasant lakes to break up the endless fields and tired farm towns with a few nice new houses on the outskirts.

I spend my final night of travel at Lac qui Parle State Park, just across the Minnesota border, in a walk-in campsite amid prairie grasses with a view down to the lake that speaks. It is a perfect evening, and I write easily, the crickets amid the oak savanna pulling me back to some of my deepest-rooted snippets of memory, of warm summer nights outside Madison. (Wisconsin, that is: Madison, Minnesota is the nearest town to Lac qui Parle.) The campground is quiet, mostly empty, but a couple of fires crackle and a warm glow emanates from the camper cabins. A few Pleiades streak overhead. Worries drain away, nagging doubts fall into nothing. I have faith and I have a mission, and a blank space in which to write a name.

Part 2 is here.