It was a little after 10:30 AM when I entered Badlands
National Park and I can truly say I really did expect the stark beauty that I
encountered. In order to make the
sharing of images manageable, I'm going to break them down into four
sections. The first will be the
eastern Badlands. Then I'll share
images from the Ben Reifel Visitor Center which has a small museum. Next we'll do the central Badlands, and
I'll finish with the western Badlands and the Buffalo I encountered there.
Badlands are not only found here. They are actually a geographic feature characteristic of a
plateau area that drops suddenly and dramatically along a jagged ridge of
canyons and runs that expose layers of rock covering millions of years of
geologic history and change.
That's my rather wordy explanation. One of the things that is very curious to me in looking at
the exposed layers here is how they go from pale and dusty grays to salmon and
dusty rose reds. I don't have the
answer, but I found myself asking what occurred, nay, re-occurred in prolonged
periods of time to replicate the extended presence of say iron in the rock--a
leading source of red in most stones.
When you look at landscapes like this, it isn't difficult to
imagine why movies that want to film outside and depict alien landscapes like
that of Mars come here to film.
Consumed by the enormity of the macro visual aspects of this
place, it almost acts like a palate cleanser for the eyes to focus for a time
on the equal delights of the micro-landscapes.
I believe the frilly yellow flower in the mid-ground of the image below is
called Matchbrush, Gutierrezia sarothrea.
It's a member of the aster family and blooms in July and August. The other yellow flower with the larger
blossoms is Curlycup Gumweed, Grindelia squarrosa--also a member of the aster
family, but it blooms from June through November.
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