Rapid City to Custer: A Peace-Bringing Experience

Rapid City woke us up gently.

After that it was a series of bike shops, libraries, grocery stores and the like before heading into Custer State Park to visit a family Matt knew from CA. He spoke very highly of them, and was pleased when the other three mates found them as charming as he did.

We arrived about 8 p.m. after a leisurely ride through the black hills, complete with a stop for ice cream, a few brief rain showers and some amazing views. The next day we hung out with the family as they showed us around in their minivan--a much needed day off. We saw Rushmore, a number of information centers on the area, did some laundry, ate--we're always eating, and the family was more than happy to feed us--and topped it all off with a Fireworks display in Custer (the Mt. Rushmore fireworks were canceled).
It was a splendid time.

Among the things we visited was the Badger Hole. I wondered why people went to see a big hole in the ground at first, but once we got there, it did seem pretty clever. The dirt was all kinds of different colors from years of formation--OK, if you've checked out the link you know I'm kidding, so I'll stop. If you haven't checked out the link yet, do so.

If you still won't: he was a poet. He's most famous for "The Cowboy's Prayer." The Badger Hole is his house. He was South Dakota's first Poet Lariat. Quite brilliant, really.

His house sits in the Black Hills. It's not grand, or on some huge hill with a ridiculous view. Though the woods surrounding it is beautiful. It's just peaceful. It has a big porch in front looking across a dirt road into the forest. It has a cozy living room with a guest bedroom immediately off to the right when you walk in. It has a book case with a more-than-lovely book collection. It has a modest kitchen, and his room is attached to the other side of it. It's a fancy cabin--it's well built, well decorated (for a man who was never married), and cozy enough that even the most urban of us could picture themselves sitting in by the fire reading a good book with a cup of wine or coffee.

Walking around it, however, I couldn't help but wonder about how peaceful he actually was. He lived something of a lonesome life. He was engaged three times to the same woman, but he fell ill and that relationship didn't quite work out. He read a lot by the fire, I'm sure. He wrote a lot. He cooked his own food and chopped his own wood. He lived a simple life. He lived an ideal life if you ask the kind of person who likes to sit and think--there seems to be a whole movement, or maybe a few of them towards living simply and contemplating life, really thinking about things, etc. I suppose it's the same sorts of people who are a bit fed up with the society that has emerged. The desire to return to only what we need, to the simple pleasures, the natural pleasures; that seems to be what these sorts of people are looking for.

All four of us fall into these sorts of ideas, or types of people with ideas--however you'd like to go about stereotyping or categorizing this sort of thing. Well, to some extent we fall into them, at least. And so we go on longing, looking for peaceful serenity.

Looking at the Badger's few things I could envision myself living there in peace. Reading and writing at night, drinking and eating good things, keeping to myself and having friends over occasionally. And then I figured I'd get bored really quickly. I figured it wouldn't be quite as peaceful as I thought it would. I'm not to the point in life yet when I can be peaceful in any situation yet, especially one with no capacity for passive stimulus--that is, the ability to be passive while being stimulated by something at the same time. But Badger was much older when he built his house in the Black Hills, so I figure I've got some time to gain the sort of disconnection from electronics and man-made beauty, the need to assert myself and the like so that I too may one day live in peace, where ever it is that I do that living.