A year ago today, my wife and I woke up on the car park of Taco John’s in Chamberlain, South Dakota. The night before we’d scoured the town looking for a place to hide our RV, so we could get up nice and early and go to the Akta Lakota museum. We tried parking there first, but the caretaker came and told us we had to leave. So, we drove back up Main Street for about the third time, looking for quiet side roads. This time, we noticed a bunch of people glaring at us from a McDonald’s as we passed. I assumed it was just the repeated sight of this big lump of metal trundling down the quiet, late night streets. Then we heard a cop car siren.
Beck pulled over panic-stricken.
“You do realise this is a one way stretch,” the young cop said.
“No, we didn’t see a sign,” my wife said, terrified. “I’m so sorry, we thought-”
“You English?” he interrupted, smiling.
“Yes,” I quickly interjected. “How embarrassing. We were looking for an RV park,” I said, losing my Black Country twang for good old Queen’s English. “And I guess we missed the sign-”
“No RV parks open at this time of the year,” he said. “I tell you what, there’s a couple of restaurants with a big car park near the interstate…” Before going on to tell us about a trip to London he’d been on. He looked about 20 and exuded friendliness.
Beck was chuffed we’d dodged a ticket. I was happy we’d had the experience of being stopped by the cops. We also had a place to kip for the night without feeling a sense of guilt or fear that we may be shifted at some point in the wee hours.
The next morning, we woke up, had some breakfast and then went to the museum. We were the only visitors. We walked around at our own pace, giving us time to muse on a period in history when our indigenous relatives roamed the land like any other animal. Before the European animals came along and relatively swiftly – in the full scale of time – changed things, so that now some roads only had one direction and, strictly speaking, it costs us money to go to sleep.
“There is a time appointed for all things. Think for a moment how many multitudes of animal tribes we ourselves have destroyed; look upon the snow that appears today – tomorrow it is water. Listen to the dirge of the dry leaves that were green and vigorous but a few moons before! We are a part of that life and it seems our time has come.” Sinte Gleska or Spotted Tail, commenting on the struggle to survive the reservation, 1880s.
I spent a lot of time reflecting on us as animals, which I personally feel is the most forgiving and accepting way of looking at us and the things we do. I pondered on spirit animals, remembering how I once saw a fox in the street and it transformed the way I saw my own spirituality. I’d come to feel nature was the living embodiment of a higher power for me. I felt most alive and free in natural surroundings. Nature was the best place for me to connect to the life force that I feel connects us all. But that night, when I saw the fox in Abingdon Street, I realised that everything is nature. There’s not really any distinction between a tree and a house. We consider one natural and one man-made, but man-made can only ever be nature, a human’s house is just a beaver’s den or a bird’s nest. That life force that I believed was in nature, is in everything, connects everything, there can never be a separateness, be it a bison, a bush, an exhaust pipe, the sea, an empty packet of crisps or a lettuce. Man-made is often used to denote something unnatural, and that unnatural is often deemed bad. But there isn’t a good or a bad, be it people, place or thing, there’s only a perception – and that’s hard to accept – but we all have a role in life. One man recycles, another pollutes. One woman believes in equality, another is a bigot. The anguish – that comes to all of us, whatever our role – is the non-acceptance of that. Whenever I see a fox, I'm reminded of this, so I guess they are my spirit animal.
It was nice spending time in the museum, which on one side related the way the Lakota lived their lives on the land, and on the other taught of the Catholic school that came to teach the Lakota children. By virtue of its display of the facts, it judged the happenings of time less than I myself probably did.
We hopped back in the RV that day and drove to the edge of South Dakota in pretty dire weather. It reached -17 or so and in the wind felt like -25. It was hand and feet achingly cold. We stopped off at the corny Corn Palace, did some shopping in Walmart, then got to Sioux Falls and did little more than take a look at the mostly frozen falls. We booked a night in the RV park in Palisades State Park, but unfortunately the snow had got so bad we didn’t make it there.
We became wedged in snow down a tiny lane, less than a mile away (which was significant in the conditions). There'd been no cars en route from Sioux Falls – we barely saw any cars on the roads that day, just warnings about not driving. In a state of panic, we got hold of the only implements we could find to dig us out in worsening snow. A saucepan and dustpan. It was a pretty hilarious sight, but scary too – it didn’t help I’d read about cougars roaming the land. In the end, we walked along the road and found a solitary house. A man named Aaron lived there and he helped dig us out. He then towed the RV in reverse, slowly, back to wider roads which had been maintained. Beck drove and I shovelled snow off the road (not a cougar in sight).
It's hard to believe this was only a year ago. We often talk about how fast life goes, and in some respects I feel it, but in others not so much. I think if you live a full life, time slows down. We spent three weeks driving from one side of North America to the other and it was certainly a full three weeks. It’s such an exciting landscape to drive through, and South Dakota with its Badlands, the Black Hills, the buffalos, prairie dogs, Deadwood, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the reservations and its State Parks was a big highlight. So much history, and they sure know how to do a National Park. Then there's the random Americana all states seem to have!
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