I am back from the Badlands, from the Black Hills, from the wide waters of the Missouri. I stood at the spot where Lewis and Clark first raised a US flag in the newly bought Louisiana Purchase. I have thought about Wounded Knee, saw dead presidents carved into a mountain, and visited a park named after George Custer. I walked the streets of Deadwood with Wild Bill and Calamity Jane’s ghosts. Stood beneath the capitol dome in Pierre. I hiked a canyon called Spearfish that Frank Lloyd Wright thought beautiful. I stared into a gulch just down the road from Northfield, Minnesota that Jesse James was said to have jumped while escaping. I saw the falls of the Big Sioux River.

Basically, I bathed in the history of this country, from it’s first big expansion under Jefferson, through the Indian wars, the gold rush, and the coming of the trains. It was exhilarating. It reminded me of my youth when my family traveled the country at the behest of the US Navy who sent my father hither and yon. He made sure we saw the sights, although we never went this far north on our journey’s between the east and west coasts because the lure of Texas and his family was too strong.

And I saw the small things, too. Wall Drug in Wall. And the Corn Palace in Mitchell. The small things are the background stories to the big things. It tells us how a drug store in the middle of nowhere became an icon through hard work and imagination. It tells us about a community celebrating it’s main crop by making art with corn, and while it attracts tourists it’s also a community center where a local college and high school play ball. These are stories of grit and survival and give color and perspective to the big stories, drama on a smaller scale. It all made for a great vacation, and I’m grateful to the friends who made it possible. My horizons are further broadened.