Sacred rocks and parking lots.

Road notes 2: South Dakota

One reason I am on this road trip is to find places that speak to my soul. Blockbuster writer Taylor Sheridan’s mid-life reinvention taught me how much the energy of a place can affect us.

Where does the breath of spirit feel strongest? I’ve found this to be unpredictable. I don’t know until I’m there.

At one point I thought it was about aesthetics. Of course, spirit would be strongest among awe-inspiring natural beauty and in the most glorious places of worship or culture. Now I’m not so sure.

Is this quality inherent in a place (the temple is built where the divine feels strong) or does it arise out of human interaction, does it grow with devotion and diminish in apathy? Can it ever be lost? And what happens when one culture treads over another?

I wrestled with these questions in South Dakota’s Black Hills, where I found spirit strong but challenging. It all started with a moment of righteous indignation.

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Bear Butte / Mato Paha

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I am hiking Bear Butte, a small mountain of volcanic rock on the edge of the Black Hills. I was guided here by a local and I am learning about the place as I go.

The Lakota call this place Matȟó Pahá and consider it sacred. I walk among the evidence of their prayer ceremonies: strips of colorful cloth and little pouches of tobacco that adorn the trees. “Please respect these offerings and leave them undisturbed,” asks the State of South Dakota and I decided not to share a picture.

I did not bring an offering. The thought would have never crossed my mind. The mountains I know are not covered in color but garnished with crosses. They don’t seem like places of communion but of achievement. Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” as George Mallory put it before vanishing on Mount Everest.

Halfway up, I hear a lonely voice from the valley below.

Long, stretched-out vowels, a soul reaching for spirit.

The wind picks up.

Then another voice cuts in from the bend ahead of me.

“Yeah, yeah, Devil’s Tower! I’ve done that one, too. Great hike! Yeah! Beautiful views!”

Two groups of hikers must have met. I feel anger boiling up. Their excited chatter seems to spoil a sacred peace.

“Oh yeah, they got the best food, dude! They'll take care of you.”

I feel the urge to take my pocketknife and restore peace through violence. Do these morons not realize this is not an amusement park? Do they not recognize this as a temple of life? No. No, they don’t. They paid for parking, now they get to enjoy the show. And during the break it’s time for soda, pretzels, and a laugh.

I close my eyes. This is just humans being human, wanting to share, to be seen, to connect. I meet them a bit later on the trail. Father and son. A teacher near retirement, a young man about to go to college. I was ready to “teach” them with my dignified silence. Oh, how good it felt to be the righteous one. . . Sorry, I prefer to be quiet in sacred places! But all that goes out the window.

We talk. The dad likes pizza, history, microbreweries. The son is excited to take him to Colorado and “hike a 14er.” I talk about the Black Forest in Germany, the Schwarzwald, named after the dark appearance of its tree trunks just like the Black Hills. They seem like nice people. Just chatty. Well, sometimes so am I.

Then they move on.

The cloths flutter in the wind.

The voice from the valley has long vanished.

The mountain falls silent again.

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“This mountain . . . draws people, even those who don’t know much about it. They are often surprised by their strong reaction to it and the emotions it stirs up in them. I tell them, ‘Remember where you’re at–this is one of the best places in the world to come and pray.” — Corey Hairy Shirt of Bear Butte Lodge to spiritual-travel writer Lori Erickson (who unlike me did her homework (and I encouraged her to share her work on Substack :) )

I spent the week on a campground in Sturgis, near the infamous (and illegal) gold rush town of Deadwood. The town’s lifeblood are tourists and the enormous annual Sturgis motorcycle rally (“that week pays the mortgage!”). Main street is lined with bars and stores with biker gear. My cabin is surrounded by enormous RVs, stranded battleships the size of my old Manhattan apartment plus a ‘toy bay’ for motorcycles. By fall, they migrate back to Florida towed by pickup trucks with more horsepower than my European mind can comprehend.

The campground is home to a roaming stoner-prophet. Between beers I hear about whispers and visions, about endless cycles of reincarnation, about the chaos to come.