Devils Tower, Wyoming

Sept 4th

Today we hiked around Devil's Tower--a monolith rising more than 800 feet. It is sacred to the Indians. The Kiowa have a story that explains its existence in the Black Hills of northeast Wyoming: Seven little girls and their brother were playing in the woods, the brother pretending to be a bear. Somehow, magically, he turned into one and chased his sisters who ran for their lives onto the stump of a tree which grew and grew as they climbed it. The "tree" is today's Devil's Tower. The ridges in it are the still visible bear's claw marks as he tried to reach the panicked girls. The story ends happily as the 7 sisters were taken into the heavens and became the 7 stars of the Big Dipper , or Ursa Major - the Great Bear. If you're a Spielberg fan and remember "Close Encounters", this is the place...

A few years ago we hiked around another sacred rock to the native people. Half a world away, in the outback of Australia, Ayers Rock is just as important to the aborigines there.

Critter sighting as we exited the area: a prairie dog town along the Belle Fourche River. The little guys were scampering around, some standing up and chirping to warn their buddies of another onslaught of tourists with cameras. When Lewis and Clark traveled west in the early 1800's, they succeeded in capturing one to send back to President Thomas Jefferson, and reportedly capturing one occupied an entire afternoon.

Side trip number 2: You may have heard of buffalo jumps. Usually in autumn, often out of a desperate attempt to have enough buffalo meat for the winter, the Plains Indians would sometimes drive them over cliffs or into deep depressions (this was in the days before the horse). It was out of our way a bit, but we visited one such site where bones of 15,000 buffalo (bison) have been found--and that site discovered accidentally when roadbuilders came across it while working on what was to be Interstate 90.

Northeast Wyoming is one vast grassland - beautiful vistas that just seem to go on forever.

Had dinner in the town of Sundance, near where Butch and the Wild Bunch used to hang out. The town actually gets its name from a nearby mountain, below which the plains indians once conducted their Sun Dance - a ritualistic ceremony by which the young braves cleansed themselves to their principal deity - the sun.