From Wow to Wonder
Wow, wow and WOW! The word became redundant, but no less accurate as we drove from Helena through Yellowstone to our campsite just outside of Big Horn at Medicine Lodge Archaeological site. (Our Yellowstone experience was a simple drive through. The park was occupied with more people that we cared to be in proximity to, and so we slowly and quietly meandered through letting our eyes and mind be fully present on the landscape.) We camped for two nights near prehistoric pictographs and the memories of those peoples held in the rock formations that surround it. The area surrounding what is now called Medicine Lodge Archaeological Site has been home to a people for over 10,000 years and sits on traditional Crow territory. The Crow people call themselves the Apsáalooke : Children of the Large Beaked Bird. Their historical homelands extended across a large area that included parts of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
The disconnect continues even further as the name "Wyoming" comes from a Algonquian Indian word. The name of our state is an English corruption of the Lenape word Chwewamink, which means "by the big river flat." But the Lenape never lived in what we now call Wyoming. They were from Pennsylvania. More on Native peoples of Wyoming can be found here, along with learning activities.
From there we gaped and gasped at the sights of Big Horn and then through the Black Hills to our destination just east of Rapid City South Dakota. Conceptual ceramic artist Jason Briggs and Megan Kieffer artist and ranch operator, opened up their home to us for several nights. We enjoyed cooking for them, being introduced to some of the details of hay, alfalfa and cattle farming, and paying respects to the natural formations within the Black Hills. Purposefully missing on our journey was a visit to Mount Rushmore and what should be know as The Six Grandfathers (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe). In the making of this carved monument, one of the most sacred places to the Lakota Sioux was dynamited and defaced in part by a man with known ties to the Klu Klux Clan. Instead we took a different trail and gave our respect to the natural wonder still intact. If you are not familiar with the history of the Black Hills, please take a few moments to increase your knowledge and act accordingly.
Words in poem or prose paint beautiful images, but I am no poet and the camera cannot possible capture how amazing the landscape is. How or why anyone would need to seek a higher power inside a closed off structure is especially baffling after being witness to what is within the eye’s grasp.
