Close Encounters

7/16/17

A cool front blew in overnight, resulting in me not having to wake up to blistering heat for the first time this trip! I celebrated by being as lazy as possible (well, and working on blog posts, since of course I’m overdue). Jane and I were finally packed up and on the road at noon, but that was no big deal – we didn’t have far to go.

We spent a leisurely (well, as leisurely as 80 mph gets) couple of hours driving back through the Black Hills and into Wyoming.

 

First classic I saw on the road this trip!!

No need to be rude...

Then we saw it, way off in the distance: a giant column, looking much like the stump of a felled tree, looming over the surrounding countryside from the crest of a hill. Mysterious, mystical, and centerpiece of a classic sci-fi alien movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Devil’s Tower!

The closer I got to this tower, the more awe-inspiring it was. This thing truly dominates the landscape in the most spectacular way. I couldn’t wait to get closer.

I set up camp in the on-site campground, succeeding in getting a great view of the Tower from my spot.

It's also National Ice Cream Day, so, you know...

Then I headed up to the visitor center for a walk around the base of the Tower. There’s a longer hike that circles around the Tower from a greater distance, but I really wanted to see it up close! The closer you get, the more fascinating the Tower is. It’s composed entirely of massive hexagonal columns of igneous rock, which were formed as the rock cooled and shrunk after its initial intrusion up into the overlying sedimentary rock. You can see a similar pattern and process in a dried-up puddle of mud – so think that, but on a really really large scale!

The Tower is popular with climbers and I saw quite a few on my lap around the base. You really don’t get a sense of scale of this thing until you see someone actually perched on top of one of the columns. Then, suddenly, it seems impossibly large.

Many Native American tribes hold Devil’s Tower sacred, and it’s easy to understand why. Its commanding presence, beauty, and the hushed silence that surrounds it lends it a spiritual feel that will not be shaken. The Tower is the center of many Native American summer ceremonies, and consequently the trees surrounding it are hung with many prayer bundles that are beautiful to behold. No pictures of those though, as I didn’t want to be disrespectful.

After my nice little hike, I cooked myself dinner and then attended a ranger talk at the nearby amphitheater. There’s a few different hypotheses on how this tower formed - or, more accurately, the source of what we see today – but as much as I puzzled over it, I couldn’t see which would be more likely. Of course, I’m not an igneous geologist, so it’s not like I would have figured it out anyways.

The Tower becomes an imposing shadow as night falls.

Flashes of lightning off in the distance alerted me to the possibility of a nighttime storm. Last time I was camping and saw a storm coming, for some reason I just piled all of my stuff under Jane and called it good, with fairly disastrous results. This time I was smarter! I packed up all of my cookgear and grill and got it into Jane or my tent (whichever was closer) as fast as I could. And good thing, too – I finished just in the nick of time as a howling wind came ripping through the campground, bringing with it pelting rain. I hopped in my tent to read my book and enjoy the storm.

A storm in a tent is only great if you have a good tent. Fortunately, I have a good tent, and I’ve long since learned the strategy of using tall luggage items in the corners to prevent it from laying down on you in strong winds. So I was quite happy to be in there. I looked out the “window” of my tent at the Tower, and was very surprised to see two small lights about halfway down the side. There were still climbers up there! I watched those little lights flashing around for quite some time, imagining the struggle of trying to climb down those columns in a storm like this. Eventually the lights settled down – guess the climbers found a good ledge to weather the storm in and decided to just stay put. Probably a pretty exhilarating (and miserable) experience for them!

With that, I settled into my sleeping bag and opened up my book. Jane stood guard outside, as always. The wind whipped and the rain pattered on, and I confess that I didn’t make it far in my book before I fell asleep.

Kelly signing out.