Mallard’s Rest from Scenic 89

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

Campground (below in this shot) is where I spent the night… right on the Yellowstone River. I drove down to Chico Resort Hot Spring around 7PM, and paid $6.50 to soak my bones for an hour or so in the wonderful warm open-air mineral hotspring pool (!), watching the storm-clouds swirling and gusting above me. As I left, the misting rain turned to hail and then horizontal snow, but I made it back to Mallard’s Rest and was still warm from the hotspring when I curled up to go to bed, rocked to sleep by gusting wind.

Cloud over South Dakota

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

Quick sketch in watercolor of a key image from my long drive back from the Badlands to Upper Michigan: CLOUDS. I became quite mesmerized by the clouds. For a long time, it seemed that I was driving at exactly the same *speed* as the cloud’s shadow, neither pulling away from it, nor seeing it pull away from my position on the interstate! Somewhere near the SD-MN border, the sky began clearing, and as the clouds spread apart, each seemed to be a unique character, witch distinct features. The sunlight *beamed* through this one slightly, spotlighting a distant treeline with yellow light, and hiding the rest in shadow. I found the clouds so moving I needed to pull over, and make this sketch.

Sketch: Castle Trail, Rain

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

The white spine-like element in the foreground is a clastic dike which is eroding just a bit more slowly than the surrounding sedimentary rock layers.

Lakota Men, Badlands 1905

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

(Edwin Curtis Photograph, from interpretive signage on Door Trail)

Dinner in the Badlands

Originally uploaded by miss_distance

A delicate meal of twig-bark.

“Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.” -Verlyn Klinkenborg, “Our Vanishing Night,” National Geographic magazine, November 2008

While doing some research, I learned that there’s an Observatory located just north of the Badlands — a terrific reminder that our National Parks protect many invaluable natural resources, and one of those endangered resources is a DARK NIGHT SKY.  Much of our country has become so polluted by lights that our view of the night sky is limited to just a few of the very brightest objects. Because I grew up on a farm in the country, I am keenly aware of how the night skies have been “washed out” during course of my lifetime. Here’s an image of the “Night Sky” showing how overly illuminated our country has become (from the International Dark-Sky Association’s website):

Badlands Observatory website: http://sdspacegrant.sdsmt.edu/bo.htm

Or watch a program about the Badlands Observatory, “Badlands, Good Skies” — as featured on SD Public TV’s “Dakota Life” series in January, 2002:

A town of less than a hundred people may seem like a place where nothing big ever happens, but when the sun goes down in the modest community of Quinn, population 73, there are happenings of astronomical proportions. Visit the Badlands Observatory, its Director Ron Dyvig, and learn how the vision for the observatory came about, the process of building the facility and the work that is done there. Meet some of the members of the Black Hills Astronomical Society and learn about their interest in the facility and astronomy in general.

View:  (RealMedia) movie: “Badlands, Good Skies”