To The Hundredth Meridian: DAY 9 THURSDAY AUG. 29 GILETTE WY

More heat and brilliant sunshine greeted us as we rose, got in the Millenium Falcon, and headed south and east. The rangeland of Wyoming continued in an almost unlimited procession. Surely we must be sailing on an ocean of rolling grassland. The colours changed and ew noticed more red creeping into the soil and rock. We arrived at Devil's Tower in the late morning. The heat rose quickly, but the shade of the Ponderosa Pine gave us welcome respite as we walked a short trail around the base of the Tower.

The Tower itself gained a place in our consciousness through the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Steven Spielburg made us of the Tower's sacred nature as the jumping off point for his story of extra-terrestrial contact and we could see why. It is unusual, commanding, powerful and fragile all at once. The First Nations revere it as the "Bears's Tipi" because of a wonderful and fanciful legend of Native youths playing in the wild suddenly being pursued by an angry bear. The children fled and prayed to the Great Spirit, who caused the ground where the children were standing to suddenly rise to the sky. The angry bear tried to climb the rising ground to no avail: but his claw marks are still visible today as the columns surrounding the huge rock. Walking around the base, looking up frequently at the silently imposing columns, gazing into verdant valleys below gave us a sense of this great place, and made us believe in the legend. It is, despite the many tourists like us, a great place.

I was pleased to see four First Nations young men walk around the Tower, but, as they ran and climbed rock and took goofy photos of each other on their iphones and ipads, I wondered if they felt the spiritual connection that this place is supposed to supply with their ancestors. Maybe yes, maybe no. But, then again, I wonder if British teens and young people feel any kind of connection when they walk around Stonehenge or Westminster Abbey. In this case, these young guys were probably having a good time as summer ends, and they face another possible school year. Maybe I should lighten up ??

We drove on through the well-named Black Hills, through rolling rock and stands of more of the wonderful Ponderosa Pine. These lands, now in South Dakota, are sacred to the Sioux, or more properly, the Lakota people, who dwell on the plains and who must have looked upon the Hills as their cathedrals. The betrayal of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, discussed in the previous entry, must have been the most profane act against their beliefs.

And the profanity increased as we approached Mount Rushmore. I realize that this site is famous the world over, but the road leading up to the site left a very, very sour taste in my mouth. Yes, the colossi are impressive, but the area leading up to it is not. It is as tacky and obscene as Clifton Hill at Niagara Falls. I was angry at the unfettered commercialism of the road up. Then, at the site, an $11.00 parking fee, several monumental arches, state flags and the sculptures themselves: I was done in five minutes. No effort whatsoever to commemorate the sacred nature of the site for the Lakota. For Americans, this place is as necessary as a pilgrimmage to Mecca: people there seemed aglow with patriotism as they stared into the mammoth nostrils of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. For me, I couldn't get out of there fast enough.