The Myth & The Majesty

Hillfolk! This is a thing! Tours, talks, activities, and all sorts of fun next Saturday (July 14). More information right here .

We had a little extra excitement around here on the fourth. It's been dry. Hot, windy, no rain -- the grass is already hitting a crackly stage that makes a girl nervous. This is the kind of summer I remember from college. The kind that sparks forest fires seemingly out of spite, without aid from lightning, humans, or even just a hot engine. So you can imagine what happens when Independence Day rolls around and thousands of flaming sticks take flight. We had finished supper already when someone rang the doorbell. Or more importantly, when it rang seven times in a row. I can safely say that when you hear the words, "There's a fire out back!" it doesn't take long to find shoes and a door. Note: I'm standing in our backyard while taking this. Before the fire trucks could get here, the entire neighborhood showed up. Garden hoses were unrolled and buckets were found. People clambered over the fence to start spraying down the edges, taking buckets t...

So ... I told you about Burning Beetle a couple years ago.  It has since expanded and become an annual event and it just so happened to be this last Saturday. The Chef Lady and I caught up and after an afternoon of wine and shopping, hit Custer. This is one of the weirder events in the Hills and ... I kind of love it. You could see this dude from across town. It was more than a little unsettling, actually. And look! It's the entire town of Custer! I was also amazed by what my somewhat new phone could manage. This is the first time I've really tested the camera and ... Yeah, these are some pretty good shots, and it had nothing to do with me and my shaky hands. If you're interested in catching it next year, give yourself time for the talent show beforehand, the march, burning, fireworks, and dinner/"bug crawl" afterwards. It's definitely grown from its original form and it's a lot of fun. Now, to familiarize myself with Inst...

This past Sunday I managed to gather some pretty awesome people and climb Black Elk for the twelfth time this year. [Note: "Twelfth" is a weird word to spell.] It was possibly the last day of December that would be over 35 degrees and one of the few that I could manage a hike with others -- so plans were made and at 12:30, we met up at Sylvan Lake. Yes. 12:30 is a late start to a December hike around here. Sunset was officially at 4:15, so we didn't really waste time getting up there. That's right. I register. You only have to have one run-in with a ranger... As it happened, it was a perfectly clear day and not too cold. And a great day for some awkward tower selfies. Naturally, I started to think about stats on this particular hike. I've climbed the peak around 50 times total now over the course of about 22 years. 40% of those have been in the last five years. This year, I managed to get six of the monthly hikes done in the ...

Ten months down, two to go. Next month, maybe I need to find a new angle. Once again, a fabulous view. After yesterday's cold and fog, this was wonderful. Next month, maybe I can try not waiting till the second to last day, though...

Today, on the 3rd anniversary of The Big Snow , I'd rather talk about this last weekend. Sunday was the most perfect day for a hike. I am a creature of habit, and as such I aimed for Sylvan Lake. Instead of Black Elk, though, I had my sights set on Sunday Gulch. The story goes that the wives of miners in the area a hundred and twenty years ago would venture down the gulch for their Sunday walks. As such, this is one of the older known trails in the area. It's also one of my favorites. The trail takes you alongside enormous granite walls... ... and right down a creek bed that doubles as the trail. The handrail is fun, too. The three-mile loop has a fair bit of elevation change (initial drop is around 400-450 feet); combined with the creek bed and the climb back up, it's one of the relatively few Black Hills trails with a "strenuous" rating. As such, it also attracts less foot traffic than the neighboring trails in the Black Elk ...

My eighth climb this year to the tallest peak in South Dakota was uneventful -- gorgeous weather, not a lot of foot traffic, and my second-best time for the year. However, five days before I climbed said peak, the US Board on Geographic Names officially announced that Harney Peak would now be known as Black Elk Peak. Won't stop me from taking the same picture each month... William Harney was a Civil War general and participant in the Plains Indian Wars. And he was ... Well, not the nicest guy. - In 1834, he was accused of whipping a female slave (Hannah) to death and he fled the county. As was generally the case for male slaveowners in Missouri at the time, he was eventually acquitted, but the record is there.  [I find that I had to use the phrase "as was generally the case" absolutely obnoxious. Seriously, how did it escape notice for so long that human ownership was not a good idea? I hope at some point someone looked around at the world and thought, "I ...

I grew up on the eastern half of the state, a land of wind, humidity ... and for some reason, lots of ice. My extreme weather memories seem to revolve around ice storms cancelling school in the fall and winter and thunderstorms spawning tornadoes in the spring and summer. Moving to the Hills was a break from some of that (tornadoes in particular are quite rare around these parts) but there was a trade-off. The Black Hills are adjacent to the Badlands, a small patch of desert between miniature mountains and the prairie that most people picture when you say South Dakota. Thanks to this desert -- and all the weird weather that surrounds mountain ranges -- this area of the state tends to be quite dry. Summertime humidity is often below 50% (and in particularly dry years, mostly under 20%), rain is usually fairly infrequent, and snow cover rarely lasts. The last two winters aside, that is. This year seems to be a return to what I'd call normal, and with that comes an early retur...

I have written about hiking Harney Peak many times. Seriously. Maybe too often . Heck, I've even used it as an example for other things . So why am I doing it again? Maybe I should start sitting elsewhere, though... I have a goal for this year -- a trek up once a month at a minimum -- and that goal has been questioned more than once. Reasonably, I might add. Why would someone go over the same trail so many times? Why pick the same destination over and over when there are so many other options out there? ... It's not an easy goal to defend, as it turns out. I'm lucky enough to have sampled trails throughout the Hills, but this is one section I've done repeatedly. Over the course of two(ish) decades, I've been up something like 35 times. And over those trips -- from different trailheads with different routes -- I've gotten to the point of being friendly with the area, especially the main trail from Sylvan Lake. There's something strangely sa...

Living a tourist destination has certain perks -- there are industries that have no business in non-tourist-y areas that we also get to see and use. Living in the Hills has certain other perks in the form of trails and trees. One definite perk is a result of both of those things.  Seriously, why is this the only picture I took that day?! Rushmore Tramway Adventures (originally the Rushmore Aerial Tramway) has been a staple in Keystone for fifty years, starting as a lift to a mountaintop park with a fantastic view of town and the surroundings. As long as I've known of them, they've also had the alpine slide (an excellently fun way to get back down from said park), and in recent years they've added a zipline, freefall, and the adventure park. The adventure park is several high ropes courses among the trees made up of high wires, bridges, walkways, ladders, ziplines and platforms. A ticket gets you an hour and a half of self-guided fun with eight different courses...

It is once again rally week here in the Hills. More importantly, it's the 75th rally -- which means that things kicked in a bit earlier than usual and we are now host to extra thousands of bikes. In response to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally three years ago, I posted this letter. As it is once again that time of year and I still like what I wrote then, I thought I'd give it another chance to be read ... with some revisions.   *   An Open Letter to Sturgis Rallygoers Welcome! We're glad you're here. No, really -- we are. This is one of those events that South Dakotans have a (possibly grudging) appreciation for and we're happy you're here to enjoy it. We know it's a big year and we're actually pretty excited about it, too. That being said, there are some things I'd love for you to keep in mind. 1. If you're not currently in Sturgis, please pay attention to the non-rally-goers around you. If you're out and about, you're surro...

 Generally speaking, around March I usually point out that we still have "one more big snow left."   Now, unlike last year, I started to relax when May started. That one more big snow hadn't really happened and it was over 60 outside.   However, there's another rule of thumb around here ... Don't plant anything till after Mother's Day. Reaching May doesn't mean you're safe yet.   Enter today.       Right this moment, there are about seven inches of snow on my deck. And it's nowhere near done yet.     All the more impressive since the first two to three inches melted as fast as they fell. Our road is pure mud under the snow.     It's very pretty. It's just ... a bit out of season.   Just for fun -- this was taken ten years ago this weekend.   Go May.

Quick! Think of the last time you visited a new place. What caught you off guard that the locals didn't seem to even notice? The pretentiousness of my title aside, this is incredibly common. Practically a requirement, really. If everything about where you live strikes you as weird, odds are good you'll do what you can to not live there anymore. In the meantime, the rest of it slowly becomes an everyday thing. Living in an area where tourism is a major economic driver means that there are an awful lot of things around that make other folks pull over ... that I might not even see. I might have visited them, know where they are, how to find them, how long it took to build them -- but unless you ask me questions, I doubt they'll come up. (Unless I'm telling a story about people not being able to find Mount Rushmore .) With that in mind, let's talk about some of the things we don't necessarily notice around here. 1. Bison. Don't get me wrong -- the...

The first time I climbed Harney I was roughly 10. (...I think.) The only thing I really remember about that day was the fact that the last half-mile was entirely in the clouds, so I never got to see the view Mom and Dad had talked about. Luckily, to a 10-year-old brain, getting to run through the clouds is possibly even cooler than getting to see into Wyoming. The next time, it was a huge obstacle. I was 12, I was carrying a backpack and therefore way more weight than my tiny body was used to (that's right, at one point I was tiny) and it was the longest walk of my life. Almost literally -- it took hours. [Yes, if some of this is familiar -- I have talked about it before .] Now, two decades after my first trip, it's a wander in the woods. An hour and a half-ish walk to a gorgeous stone tower at South Dakota's highest point. It's solid exercise but not the challenge I remember, even though now I carry all that additional weight on a more permanent basis than I di...

If you're looking to visit the Black Hills, there's something you should know: The weather here is always a topic of conversation. I know, I know. Weather is the epitome of small talk. Filler. Nothing important. The catch is that around here ... it is important. Okay. The basics: it is not abnormal for it to hit 110 degrees in July and -20 in January. Generally, it's more pleasant than that, but neither of those are particularly strange. It is not abnormal for there to be snow on the ground after Mother's Day. It is not abnormal to not need a coat at Thanksgiving. It is not abnormal for one hill to get rain while the one next to it is in full sunlight. Other things that aren't strange: having your heat on in the morning and your A/C by afternoon, large hail seeming to come out of nowhere, and 70 degrees in March. You see, the Hills are a relatively small island of miniature mountains in the middle of a large spread of grasslands. To the west, the ...

In 1948, a seemingly impossible undertaking began. Somewhat in response to Mount Rushmore, a second sculpture was commissioned, this one in honor of the Lakota people that considered the Black Hills sacred. Crazy Horse Memorial was to be enormous and more importantly, more than a mountain carving -- the master plan included museums and a university, among other things. Sixty-six years later, the sculpture is still in progress, but a museum, cultural center, and a satellite campus of the University of South Dakota have found their homes there. There is plenty of controversy surrounding the very existence of such a place and the arguments over the years have been fierce -- yet it's found its place in the Black Hills experience. A big part of said experience is the Crazy Horse Volksmarch. This particular volksmarch (a noncompetitive, usually 10K walk) takes you through the woods from the museum parking lot around to the back of the mountain itself ... and then up right ont...