June 13, 2009

June 13

“What’s it about?”

We broke camp and drove across southern MN, and into SD. With our sense of irony and big city snobbery intact, as a joke, we stopped in Mitchell at the Corn Palace. A building dedicated to and decorated with corn. First, built in 1892, when people were impressed by gigantic feats of time wasting. Truly a marvel of “What?” Here is the part of the fable where I tell you not to be such a snob and not to judge a building by it’s corn cover, and that it was actually a very enlightening and thoughtful experience of reflection on the agrarian history of our nation and the middle west and the importance of corn in that history. But of course this isn’t a fable and it was none of those things. Not that it couldn’t be. We really didn’t give it a chance. If there is one criticism of this honeymoon so far it is that we didn’t take the Corn Palace seriously. So, trust me Corn Palace fans and Mitchell residents, it was our loss. We enjoyed it and I’m not sorry for stopping. We found it profoundly entertaining and did not in the least take it seriously.
At one point I heard a souvenir shop employee tell a woman about the movie that was showing later. Perhaps she was hoping they might be having a Stanley Kubrick retrospective film festival that day, but she asked,
“What’s it about?”
Sadly he dignified her question with the response,
“It’s about the Corn Palace.”
(Shelby’s favorite overheard line was “You wanna go ahead and get that unicorn?”)


"Misnomer"

We made PBandH’s in the parking lot and headed to the Badlands. I know what you’re thinking, but they were actually really good lands. Giant termite hills or drip sandcastles. A long, eroded cliff wall separating the Upper Prairie from the Lower Prairie.
We stopped along with scores of other tourists at the scenic overlooks and walked out on the gnarled cascading fingers of what felt under our feet like dried mud. It was not hard to imagine that if the threatening thunderstorm in the distance were suddenly upon us we would be washed into the White River Valley like the centuries worth of silt that left these formations.

We set up camp in the Badlands National Park on the Lower Prairie at the foot of a steep winding pass, long ago paved by the park service and not currently as intimidating as the pioneers must have found it in their wagons. That is unless you are two relatively out of shape city slickers trying to bike their way up for a photo op. Chicago is flat. Hills are hard to find. Needless to say, after a few minutes of panting we walked our bikes up. The ride down was a little scary for me because I wasn’t totally confident in the repairs I had made to our bikes. The whole way down, I kept having images of failed brakes or imploding wheels, Shelby flying over the handle bars and sliding face first sown the highway. Then I flashed forward to a week later. One broken arm and a full body scab. Strange, but actually in our relationship Shelby is the worry-wart.

We made it back down though without incident, had soup, the best zucchini, squash and onions, and played a little bacci ball. After dinner and bacci, the sporadic light rain we had been experiencing seemed to blow over completely and we watch the same distant thunderstorm light the horizon with cloud to cloud and the occasional ground striking flashes of lightening.

We went to bed and I was startled awake by the business end of the same storm. I sat up for a while afraid that the wind would tear our rain fly away, leaving only mosquito netting between us and the rain. Tried to sleep. Then a crash came from outside where we had left our stove and some pot and stuff out. There was nothing there I thought could blow away but I quickly got dressed and went out to investigate. There was surprisingly little rain, big drops but not a lot them. What made it sound like a downpour from inside the tent was the strong, steady wind. The crash had been Shelby’s bike blowing over and had crashed against the picnic table.. So I secured it (set it on the ground) so that it wouldn’t blow over again and try to go back to sleep. In the morning the sun was out like nothing had ever happened. The tent was dry by the time we packed it up. After a breakfast of oatmeal, we drove the rest of the way through the park and back to the interstate, headed to the Black Hills.