Storms of Fields and Heart
Cascading light jumped across cloud bellies as the dark sky grumbled. I could only listen under the thick blanket of clouds that blocked out moonlight, blind to it all. Then the storm crackled and lightning fell from the sky, and in a moment the Nebraska plains materialized from jet night. A nearby barn I hadn’t seen was lit up like high noon before disappearing into the black again. Another bolt tears across the eastern sky and it looks like early morning for a moment with the angle of the shadows. I watched with eyes wide like a child’s, awed by lightning tearing through different parts of the sky and casting shadows at different angles and lengths, as if the storm’s intensity had broken the structure of time and the same farm kept appearing but at different times of day, yet always in the 18th-century Baroque style of painting with ultra-high contrasts of light and dark. Boris Brejcha’s Tomorrowland set was erupting from the speakers, and the electric rush from the skies and the music was on par with any line I’ve ever done. I watched and listened raptly and my neck began to ache as the flashes of light pulsed from moment to moment across hours, showing me the intensity and stamina of the electric storms of the plains that I’ve heard of but never seen first-hand. My basic sloth-like photography skills were no match for the dynamic complexity of the storm, but it makes me want to go back when I know what I’m doing.
That night I parked in the empty lot of the White River Visitor Center and watched the storm play out over the rest of the night. It was so strange - there was a constant barrage of light flashing across the sky yet never any thunder.
The next morning I woke up outside the White River visitor center on the rez. After a propane-cooked breakfast I headed west to the overlook, driving through terrain so muddy and atmosphere so muggy that it felt like Costa Rica again. Now Cesaria Evora is playing through the Escape’s speakers and she’s adding to the tropical vibes.
I loved this overlook not only for the views, but it was a peculiar little meeting ground of adventurers and wanders. I encountered a young guy I had seen earlier at the visitor center and he asked me to take his picture, explaining while I did so that he was from Indiana and moving to Cali. He left after a few minutes to meet his future, and shortly after an old couple appeared and asked for their picture too. People always do this when they see a photographer nearby, but I don’t mind if they offer a good story for my time and these two did. They’ve been road tripping the last 2 weeks from New Mexico to Yellowstone and stopping at everything that interests them in between. Judging from the looks of them I thought they had been married for decades, but she had been married to another man for 47 years and he to another woman for 51. Both their partners had passed away in the last couple years though, and he explained that the woman with him now had been his first girlfriend back in the day and they had reconnected. They were both giddy like little kids as he told their story. Oh, how they shined! And I wonder what their first date half a century ago was like? I’m imagining a malt beverage while Ritchie Valens plays in the background and maybe a drive-in movie theater afterwards, if he played his cards right. Which I’m sure he did.
After leaving the overlook I went a bit north past the national park and took a grassy primitive road to where I thought there might be another overlook. The little Escape puttered through the soggy earth of the narrow trail. Get stuck here and I’d have to dig myself out and maybe wait for days for the road to dry out so I could reverse out of it. I started to get nervous until a creek barred the way farther, so I got out and hiked around the giant field that is North Dakota and soon found myself in some deep mud.
Eventually a 4-wheel cart with a family pulled up next to me and a guy asked if I knew I was on the rez. I said no (even though I knew I was) and he asked if I was picking up rocks with the others. I wasn’t sure what he was on about - maybe he was trying to bait me into a confession of taking pieces of the land? I told him I was alone and showed him the non-rock camera gear I was carrying. He took off.
I continued through rolling fields shining with the golden glow of the one type of plant that seems to have mastered the land. When evening rolled around I was able to back the Escape up to a section where the trail bifurcated and turn around on it and leave. I’ll admit that the whole time I was in the field I was thinking about whether I’d be able to leave or not.
Another storm rolled in at dusk as I headed west back towards my home base of the parking lot at the White River visitor center. The rain started and quickly turned into a torrential choking downpour of which even the most ardent pluviophile would have cowered from. I almost hit a duck that was sitting in the middle of the dark road and I questioned myself and whether I was seeing things, but then a few seconds later I saw two more doing the same thing. I've never seen them do that before. Made it to the home base and passed out for the night in the back of the Escape listening to water pound the metal roof.
When I woke up the next morning my eyes were crusted shut from my allergies and I had to pry them apart to see the clear skies. I gobbled more propane-heated oatmeal and set out for the badlands, passing the body of one of the ducks that had been on the road the night before. I realize now why they had been there - the center of the road was the highest elevation across the entire plains and they were taking refuge from the rising water.
A few friends had mentioned Custer State Park as a gorgeous must-see place, so I plugged the directions into the GPS and took a mountainous twisty road there for the adventure it offered. I didn’t realize what waited for me on en route though. I knew Mount Rushmore was in the state, and in my ignorance I ended up right in the dark heart of this awful place. I wouldn’t have thought I could hate a park so much, but this one proves me wrong.
Each of the men who’s likeness was carved into the face of the Six Grandfathers (what the mountain was originally by before its desecration) were part of Manifest Destiny, authorizing the destruction of Indian settlements, passing legislation to seize lands, and initiating the largest execution of indigenous their country had and has ever seen. The original sculptor shared the same sentiment as these men, too. Gutzon Borglum was a KKK-funded white supremacist who had come here from the South after carving the likenesses of Confederates Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson into another mountain during the KKK’s rebirth. And even the name “Rushmore” is a joke - a visiting lawyer from New York had joked that it was called Mount Rushmore after himself, and the name has remained since.
As I drove along the winding mountain road under the watch of the faces I made a conscious effort not to look at them as I continued south to Custer State Park. The name always bothered me, but in an era where Confederate statues are taken down and sports teams with indigenous mascots are reinvented, I figured I could look past it. But despite the enchanting beauty of the mountain sides that my friends were right about, my mood became even more sullen at the visitor center, which was affront to history. In their efforts to package and sell an experience they omitted anything non-white. No information on Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, or a single mention of the Sioux or Lakota was present, unless it was presented as background information on just another adversary/hardship the original settlers faced. Hanging on the wall near the entrance was a movie poser for How the West was Won.
I left there disheartened again, traveling to a nearby town where I realized that I hadn’t seen a single Indian since leaving the Pine Ridge rez. It wasn’t until stopping at a gas station that I saw another. Her long sable hair was draped over her shoulders and she looked down as she walked across the lot. She looked defeated, thought it could have been my mind’s eye that saw that. I wouldn’t blame her for feeling that way, living in sacred land yet under the ever-watching gaze of men that prosecuted Manifest Destiny. I hate how they treated the land and the people here, and how they treat them still.
This excursion has all been so confusing for me. Who am I angry at? The Park Service for continuing to gloss over history? Or the other visitors who come here to escape their own mundane worlds, as I do now? Or the original sculptor with his ties to the KKK that desecrated the mountain with his dynamite? Or the white supremacists whose faces are etched into the rock face? And further, what resolution could I want now? To take more dynamite to it? It still has value, and each visitor sees something different in it - some see beautiful art, some see men to aspire to, others just see they’re not in the office at work. To sate my misgivings would I destroy what brings families together?
Fuck, I just don’t know.
Right then I decided it was time to head home. I could have stayed a few more days but I felt defeated. I drove south across the plains and came across a little town in Nebraska next to a lake… with a lighthouse. I’m in my element with a camera in hand and golden hour on the other side of the lens, but I don’t feel the elation I usually feel with the marriage of these elements. For the first time in a long while I feel truly alone.
