Badlands Residency Day 55

Another windy, rainy, gloomy day...until late afternoon when the clouds began to break apart, pockets of blue sky emerged, and the sun smiled on the landscape with fast moving highlights of bright warmth.  So of course I grabbed my camera and headed out.  One of my first discoveries was a sad but inevitable one.  The nice window in the buttes across from the visitor center, which I climbed to just a few weeks ago, has fallen in the last couple days of rainy weather.  Fallen rocks and movement in the slumps are additional evidence of the quick erosion rate of this landscape.  I'm glad I climbed up to the window while it was there.  Earlier in the day I spent a little more time packing some things and cleaning, and did another sketch for the design guidelines project.  Spent the late evening keeping a good friend company after a most terrible day.  I read a book a while ago titled Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, Dying in the National Parks.  I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in the realities of what rangers give for the public.  The author's stories are similar to those I've heard from many different rangers from a number of parks.  National parks are really great.  Many, if not most, of the employees at parks are really great.  Government, however, does not always function in rational ways, and employees frequently are dealt a bad hand.  Too often it's the best employees who are most needed.  I've seen this happen to several people now, and can only say: stick with it, we need you, you're fantastic.

Harsh wind and rain in the morning.

With rain, the seemingly hard and harsh buttes
turn to stacks of slick mud, causing one to wonder
how they haven't already eroded to nothing.

Late afternoon sunshine out my front door.

Driving out of the housing area.

Looking back towards the visitor center along the
Loop Road.

Looking back to the housing area, the Cedar Pass
Lodge cabins, and the campground beyond.

A closeup.  Notice how nicely they were designed
into the landscape.
 

Looking east along the Loop Road at Cedar Pass.

Looking along a ridge.

Turkey Vulture above Cliff Shelf Trail.

Buttes across from the visitor center.

Close-up, you can see where the window used to be.
To the left of the middle of the back ridge, there is
a very narrow and tall opening that juts down.