devil's tower, wyoming

if i see one more motorcycle i am going to scream.



the black hills were beautiful. yesterday we hiked down a mountain & through wildflower fields until i insisted we turn around before venturing too far into bear territory, or what i imagined to be bear territory. we drove up to mt. rushmore but didn't bother getting close up.

we made dinner over a campfire & tried to pop corn for dessert, which didn't turn out well. all the kernels melted into one enormous black mass, which we discovered upon opening the lid after waiting for popping sounds for two hours.

i read courtney 'a view of the woods' by flannery o'connor as the sun went down, then we talked about boys.

we stopped in spearfish, south dakota before crossing the border into wyoming. now we are in a gift shop/restaurant near devil's tower, a bizarre & frightening piece of hard earth jutting into the sky. i am eating very non-vegan ice cream because it is damn hot. it's only a matter of time before the stomach pains set in.

this isn't the first time i've strayed from the vegan way in the past weeks - at the commune the only protein option was usually eggs, so i had a paprika egg (thank you camila) with toast two or three times, & i had what i assume was a non-vegan pancake at a kitschy buffet near the crazy horse monument yesterday morning. i've done my best - at the mexican place in council bluffs, iowa i had to scrap mounds of melted cheese off of my rice and beans.

but that's a central aspect of this trip: learning how to negotiate limitations & change, & trying to understand any anxiety that comes up in the face of situations i can't control. what has struck me as truly beautiful about this experience is all the time & space it allows for self-examination.

on the other hand, i have managed to maintain a steady yoga practice throughout all the relocating & changes of scenery, i.e. changes in ground conditions. yoga on the moldy fitness room rug at the commune was remarkably different from yoga in living room of a boyhouse in omaha, or yoga on the dusty, grasshopper-covered ground in the badlands, or yoga on the buggy earth of the black hills.

the land here is green & red & gorgeous.

tomorrow we begin working on a farm in northeast wyoming - we'll be there for a week before moving on to montana, washington & oregon.



p.s.
the little grasshoppers i mentioned in my last post chewed a hole in our tent. they will eat anything. if we had died in the badlands, they would have been all over our bodies in seconds. horrifying.