Heavenly places
I seek to find
Wand’ring through the desert
With spirits running dry…
~Maire Brennan
For those hoping to find the gateway to the northwest territory, the Badlands of South Dakota were a heartbreaking discovery. Characterized as impassable and uninhabitable by the early cartographers, adventurous sojourners who had made their way from settlements along the eastern seaboard soon discovered the harsh realities that the map makers were unable to share in their parchment documents.
Exhausted and out of time–summer was fading fast–the early settlers were forced to keep moving as this land wouldn’t allow them safe harbor nor would it allow them to pass through.
Standing where so many have stood hundreds of years earlier, it’s easy to see how the Badlands of South Dakota were the worst of all possible discoveries–especially with spirits already running dry.
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