postcard cont'd

i have arrived in lemmon, south dakota. even if i were to turn around tomorrow and come home, the trip thus far has already been amazing. truly.

i actually made it to THE niobrara river. something i'd only read about and dreamed about and i actually did it - i went there. and there. and there. and there. the niobrara could be called the snake (so could frenchman's creek) it weaves in and out of so much of nebraska. i was absolutely thrilled.

but first, after leaving oklahoma, i camped at lake ogallala state park. a former partner of mine used to tell me i lived in "la la land" - they forgot the "oga" part - if only i'd known. it's true they had to dam a beautiful river to create lake ogallala, as well as the larger lake mcconaughy, but that was done long before my time and i did my best to tread lightly. i did a 3 1/2 hour hike around the entire lake and some trails throughout the park. at one point (toward the end) i had to cross down to a gravel path then i came to a cattle guard and what appeared to be a locked gate. i was deciding whether or not i should hop the gate or walk back around (which would have made it closer to a 5 hour hike) when this truck drove up. the person driving the truck worked for the park's environmental biology group. he asked me if he could help me and i asked if it was ok for me to hop the gate. he said, "it's not locked - just looks like it is. lift the chain off the hook and then hook it back up again." i thanked him and he asked me if i'd walked the whole perimeter of the lake. i said i had and he said, "nice." that made me feel so good but not as good as actually taking the hike. i pitched my tent before the hike, thankfully, so all i had to do when i got back to camp was to take a shower then sit and read next to the lake. between that hike and the one the day before in OK, i got a little too much sun so the next day was to be a "drive" day. and drive i did but i didn't get all that far. whoever said everything is bigger, better and more beautiful in texas clearly hadn't been to nebraska. i couldn't get out of the state. last night i camped near the merritt state park on the actual snake river. there were only two other campers in the same area that i chose and it was unbelievable; unbelievable that such a place existed, unbelievable that there were only two other campsites taken (neither of which i could see from my area), unbelievable that i found the place and, last but not least, unbelievable that i was able to pitch my tent without reading the instructions for the first time!! this photo (which i hope stays to the right of this paragraph) was literally just outside my tent flap.













some time between midnight and 2:00 a.m., something woke me. at first i thought it was someone shining a flashlight into the tent (i kept the rain fly open to enjoy the view) but then i realized it was the moon. it was a half moon last night but i suppose, since there were no cities or even towns anywhere near this place, i could see the right half fully illuminated like a normal half moon but the left half was haloed in - like a circle in a powerpoint presentation where half of it is "grayed" out - then on either side, there were 3 little rainbows the same height as the moon. at first i thought it was just my eyes, then the webbing of the tent but even after unzipping the tent and stepping out, they were still there. i just lay there and watched it for what seemed to be ages and fell back asleep only to be awakened by rain. everything inside the tent stayed perfectly dry (thanks to the tarp cj gave me for under the tent and to the rain fly) and i went back to sleep for awhile. then i awoke again to the rain getting harder and my first thought was - no hike today and i'm in the best place yet. second thought was that i better break camp as soon as the rain let up for a few minutes. i got everything into my backpack and, although it seemed like quite a while, the break finally came. i put the backpack in the car, took the tent down, poles in their bag, stakes in their bag and then i just folded the tent and thermal pad and tarp and put them on the backseat with the rain fly on the inside. i hated to leave such a beautiful place and the hike that i'd mapped out the day before but things have a way of working out. i thought it was probably around 8 a.m. but when i looked at the clock - already out on the park road - it was 5:00 a.m. i could not believe it. i got lost trying to find the road i thought i wanted but ended up at the niobrara wilderness area. the ranger was just ahead of me opening the gates. the sign said open during daylight hours and it was - barely - but it was. i swear this is what the sunrise looked like. first like a planet, then like an eye but so incredibly beautiful. there's no way to post all the photos on here - when i get home i'll have to have kristen show me how to do the kodak gallery or something. cory's got all my downloads going to one place - i can't find it but that's probably a good thing. he's keeping them safe from me until he can supervise their safe permanent storage.












and there was the beautiful niobrara again. i am so grateful to the author jim harrison for his beautiful descriptions of the niobrara in his books that made me want to find it. i think i could have stayed in nebraska for weeks but finally crossed over into south dakota around noon. i ended up on a dirt road somehow - for 16 miles - and finally came out on the NW corner of the rosebud reservation. and, although i was going to do a portion of the bad lands on a separate part of my trip while here in the dakotas, i ended up going into the badlands on a gravel road. i think, relative to our treatment of the human beings who were here when our forefathers arrived, the only thing that now makes me more sad than the treatment itself was seeing just what we took from them. i can understand - or empathize - with those who described being taken from their land as having their spirit broken. and photos can't do the place justice.

when i first moved to austin, cory gave me a sock monkey - i named him hanes. he is with me on this trip. cory majored in molecular biology so i kid that he (hanes) is like my traveling genome. beats the travelocity gnome by a long shot.

he's been in some of the best shots of the trip.

tonight, lemmon south dakota and i'm trading the tent for a bed in a lodge tonight. if it weren't raining and 40 degrees and i weren't so tired, i might have given it a shot any way but, as kurt vonnegut liked to say, so it goes.