Traveling the Badlands and Beyond

Badlands National Park

go Entering the Badlands © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://pkuatm.org/2024/05/13/s5hfcjfk Rapid City. 6:27 am. Sunny and 37˚F.
Filling the car’s gas tank is morning’s first priority – $2.94 a gallon,
cheapest gas on my travels. I buy sunglasses as I pay for my gas.
Standard equipment in Arizona, I’ve three lost pairs in the car,
and I’m driving due east into sunrise.
Streaks of angry orange flames decorate the cheapest pair that fit.
No matter, I buy them, in a hurry to find the back road to the Badlands.

https://photovisions.ca/78rebukt I am the sole traveler on Highway 44 for miles, the country’s rough, desolate, beautiful.
The Badlands rise from prairie, stark layers of sediment,
rock ribbons in tan, gray, yellow, black.
Grasslands and badlands – a contrasting combination
of pale green growth and rock erosion. Soul soothing.

Badlands National Park

https://emduk.org/oosnvu1ha Badlands National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://dentaris-sa.com/2024/05/13/swzvfgh1a7 My hike is brief – an hour in, an hour out – I make the time.
Hiking in rocky wilderness is good for what ails me.
I celebrate with lunch, Indian Tacos at the Cedar Pass Cafe,
visit the Badlands National Park’s Visitor Center.
Roam through the twenty site campground – more family trips
come to mind. I am grateful I’ve held tight to these decades-old memories.

https://domainebregeon.com/0qa7raq0m35 I’ve avoided the mindless Interstate roads for 2100 miles, but no longer,
Back roads that head east are no longer an option.
Roads in South Dakota head to outlying ranches or farms, or towns 50 miles to the south.
I pull on I-90 East, set the cruise control, and become traffic.
Destination: Sioux Falls, a decent dinner, a quiet hotel room.

Buy Valium 2Mg On my last night on the road, I wade through puddles in the cold rain,
enter the nearest restaurant,
and order a steak. It comes with a first class salad bar –
bowls mounded with fresh veggies along a twenty-foot table.

Buy Diazepam Powder China Contentment eases into my being.
Tomorrow I will be in Wisconsin,
but for now, a walk in the rain soaks me in Midwestern welcome.

Order Xanax Usa —————

watch Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet by night. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is Day Eight.

Celebration – A Desert Wisdom Card

Celebration - A Desert Wisdom Card

https://annmorrislighting.com/himle8yj Aloe Fireworks © 2013 Bo Mackison

follow site “People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation… Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.”  ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

I dubbed this bright coral aloe the ‘Fireworks Aloe’.

source link To me, it is a beautiful reminder of CELEBRATION. Not the noisy, crowded celebrations we associate with national holidays or milestone achievements — parties, large gatherings, extravagant entertainment — but the small daily achievements that deserve celebrations, too.

https://www.jacobysaustin.com/2024/05/1o40pstfc The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. ~ Oprah Winfrey

https://templedavid.org/symons/avv2zwem9 These aloe buds are bright and beautiful. They carry a certain joie de vivre, the French phrase that conveys “an exultation of spirit.” The blossoms remind us to celebrate life frequently, passionately, reverently.

We often do the hard work, complete the frustrating assignment, then move on to our next task never pausing to acknowledge our achievement.

https://discovershareinspire.com/2024/05/0xb6pex0r How wonderful to take a few moments and celebrate, with appreciation and reverence, a job well done or a task completed in a timely fashion.

“Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music.
Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music…”
~ lyrics from Three Dog Night

CELEBRATION offers questions/reflections for journal writing, art, and a call for action:

  • Celebrations do not require expensive preparations or large chunks of time. A celebration marks the completion of a project, large or small. Reflect on the projects you’ve completed in the past few days – large or small. How many of these accomplishments did you acknowledge?
  • In your journal keep a running list of your completed projects for a short period of time – perhaps a morning or a weekend. (Laundry, exercise, weeding the garden, writing a paper — they all count!) As you finish each project, celebrate. Think small Or not. Acknowledge with an “exultation of spirit”.
  • Collect a few props to use when you want to celebration. Streamers. Upbeat music. A big sheet of paper and bright markers for writing yourself congratulatory messages. A kazoo for impromptu cheers.  Add smiles and laughter. Use frequently!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for exploration and discovery, using the Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Pictographs, Buffalo, Mount Rushmore, Memories

Pictograh by Native American Artist, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument Visitor Center

Pictograph by Native American Artist © 2013 Bo Mackison

Day 7 – Nebraska Panhandle to Black Hills

Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. 7:10 a.m. 34˚F. Sunny. Windy.

Smoke hangs in the air as I head north, leaving town.
Cook Oil Road.
Gas Engine Road.
Narrow valleys shrouded with heavy fog.

Wild turkeys on the roadside look ready for a butterball feast,
No kin to the elongated, scrawny fowl in Wisconsin.
Black calves peer though the wire fencing,
one has a pure white face, striking in his difference.

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument on the Nioroba River.
The ranger unlocks the Visitor Center, it’s early on a Friday,
He story tells his way through the exhibits, proud of
the people in the murals and their discoveries and kind deeds.
A calendar pictograph covers the wall – a peoples’ history. Striking.

Horses in Custer State Park

Horses in Custer State Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

Trees appear in the distance as I drive
the battered road in Ogallala National Grasslands.
Antelope stare, then break into an elegant run.

Ardmore, Nebraska, nearly out-of-town before I notice it’s a ghost town.
Old houses and churches, broken windows in faded businesses, out of business signs,
old cars, but no people, no voices. No signs of movement, of living.

Driving turns hypnotic, I jerk alert when I see a curve sign.
Enveloped by soft greens, soft mounds, soft sounds, I continue –
Me, my car, the narrow asphalt road.

Historical Sign Ahead: Wood Stage Memorial Marker.
Cheyenne River, a narrow ribbon of brown.
Wild Horse Refuge. and the hills turn Crayola Crayon Green.
Cascade Falls, Black Hills National Forest.
Bison chili at the Blur Bison Cafe in Hot Springs.

Buffalo Right of Way

Buffalo Right of Way © 2013 Bo Mackison

Wind Cave National Park,
I skip the cave tour and watch the buffalo instead,
often I wait, my foot on the brake, as the buffalo ignore me.
Huge beasts, shaggy and disheveled, shedding their winter coats.

Mount Rushmore from Afar

Mount Rushmore from Afar © 2013 Bo Mackison

I detour through Custer State Park, relive memories of a family summer vacation
twenty years past; there was a pop up camper,
a hotel-preferring husband, three kids and me, all on our big explore.
Memory making moments, still precious, favorite childhood memories.

I pull out my camera when Mount Rushmore, framed in a narrow tunnel, takes me by surprise.

Flags at Mount Rushmore

Flags at Mount Rushmore © 2013 Bo Mackison

Miles down the road, I hesitate.
Stop at Mount Rushmore National Monument? I’ve already seen it…

Once more memories crowd my thoughts, I stop, pay exorbitant parking fees,
and walk to the empty benches in front of the four Presidents.
That vacation long ago…
I remember the 9-year-old boy who sat next to me for a half day,
craning his neck, staring, studying
stunned into silence by the thought of a mountain, a sculptor and a chisel.

The memory alone was worth the stop.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is Day Seven.

Nebraska Panhandle and Beyond

May First Snow in Colorado Springs

May First Snow in Colorado Springs © 2013 Bo Mackison

Day Six – Trekking to Nebraska’s Panhandle

A perfect excuse for a day sabbatical from the car was a freak May 1st storm
that followed me across Colorado and caught up with me in Colorado Springs.
Set with a quiet room, a lap pool, and a breakfast bar,
I planned an all day writing/photography retreat – revival for a weary traveler.

May 2nd and I head northwest, city rolls into country,
cars angled awkwardly in ditches remain from yesterday’s icy sleet.
Yellow road sign: No plowing. 7 pm to 5 am.

Atop Scottsbluff National Monument

Nebraska Panhandle © 2013 Bo Mackison

I delight in beds of deep purple wildflowers on the roadsides.
Sheep, cows, horses share small pastures.
A trickling creek winds around thick-rooted bare branched tree relics.

Snyder, Colorado.
1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, 4th Street.
Asphalt roads in the villages, county roads are dirt ruts.
Circuitous, the South Platte runs wild with snow melt,
and snow clumps around fence poles, in the tree thickets.

Scottsbluff National Monument

Scotts Bluff National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

Clouds are famously scattered, every second grader draws this sky.
Looking for coffee, I pause at the Prairie Cafe in Stoneham.
Abandoned, a sign — “closed, be back soon” — dangles from a cracked window.

I cross into Pawnee National Grassland, though grasses are rare in these parts.
The Grasslands are home to tanks, army helicopters,
I pull over for a camo caravan led by a siren-warning police unit.
Army games and cattle farms dominate my road view of National Grasslands.
With relief I leave Pawnee and cross the Colorado/Nebraska border.

Scotts Bluff National Monument

Path into the Storm © 2013 Bo Mackison

My day’s destination – Scotts Bluff National Monument.
Scotts Bluff, sandstone rising 800 feet above the North Platte,
an eagerly sought landmark by travelers on the Oregon, Mormon and California trails.

And an eagerly sought landmark by this traveler, too.
I walk a rare mixed-grass prairie, listen to a ranger’s  historical stories,
experience her passion for the land and I have time enough to explore.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is Day Five and Day Six.

Imagination – A Desert Wisdom Card

Imagination - Desert Wisdom Card

Ocotillo Birds ©2013 Bo Mackison

But if we learn to read the signs of life all around us, and if we discover that we are indeed created to be creative, then we can rediscover the power and resourcefulness of imagination — another aspect of soul.
~ Marjory Zoet Bankson

Ocotillo bloom throughout the Sonoran Desert.

They are one of the most reliable flowering plants in the Sonoran Desert, so reliable that migrations of hummingbirds rely on its nectar for sustenance. The bright orange spires pop from the ends of the ocotillo branches in wildly imaginative clusters.

Whenever I see clusters of ocotillo in bloom, my imagination awakens.

I see images of fluttering birds, or celebratory pennants waving twenty feet in the air. When the spent blossoms drift to the ground, I imagine the pavement studded with orange sapphires or paper confetti. What a rich life one has with an imagination unleashed!

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation…it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
~ J.K. Rowling

Imagination not only allows us to expand creative thinking, it also encourages new thoughts, connections, and understanding. It allows us to travel where we have never been, to dream of possibilities, and to identify with strangers as fellow members of humankind.

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.
~ Gloria Steinem

IMAGINATION offers questions/reflections for journal writing, an art prompt, and a call for action:

  • Imagine the life of an acquaintance or even a stranger. In your imagination, compare and contrast your lives. Reflect on the above quote from J.K. Rowling as she equates the power to imagine with the power to empathize.
  • Spend fifteen minutes (or more) letting your mind wander. Imagine “what if?” Day dream. Doodle or draw while you are noodling with your mind. Yes, doodles can count as journaling, but also include words or phrases, if desired.
  • Art Prompt: Try this activity on a sunny day when you are indoors. Notice the shadows that reflect on the interior walls from the window light. Capture these shapes with a camera or sketch them on paper. Let the wall shadows trigger your imagination. Embellish the shadow photos or drawings using your imagination.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for exploration and discovery, using photography, with a Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.