The Badlands: It’s all good

I made it to the Badlands yesterday at about 1 p.m. (Mountain Time Zone).  This isn’t my first trip; I’ve been here several times as a kid and as an adult.  There’s something about this place that takes all of life’s tensions and washes them away.  Blows it away is more apt.  The wind is nearly constant here.  Some people complain about the wind, but I’ve always found the wind soothing.  One of my Iowa relatives used to say that the wind blows the stink off you.

I’m camped just a few miles from Wall Drugs.  This place has nothing in common with Wall Drugs.  Coffee might be five cents at Wall Drugs, but it doesn’t taste anything like the coffee that I roasted myself, ground on a manual knee grinder manufactured over 50 years ago, made in a cone filter without any electricity. and sipped outside while overlooking the wide expanses of the West.

I’m perched on a cliff in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands.  The temperature gets up into the 80’s during the day but falls into the 50’s at night.  I hear coyotes at sunset and steers at sunrise.  I’m just going to let all of this soak in for a few days, but all is well.