One of the things I was looking forward to on this road trip was meeting people from all backgrounds. Initially, I had the idea that I wanted to have conversations with people and listen carefully. After all, we live in a contentious political time and I was desperate to renew my faith in humanity. I’d come to develop a negative mindset about our country and I wanted to challenge that. If I could meet people in their own space, maybe I would understand a bit about their lives and as a result, a bit about how we got to this messed up place.

One thing I immediately intuited was that, for the most part, American’s do not want to engage about politics, at least the subset of folks I am meeting on the road. I found this out through Mark’s occasional blunt comments regarding our current administration. Interestingly, those comments were met with silence, a nod, or a change of subject. It seemed there was no desire to talk about the debacle we find ourselves in. (One big exception was Europeans, they have plenty to say but want to know how the heck we feel.) Rather, people wanted to talk about books, food, kids, jobs, travels, weather, the Cricket, the wildfires, the road. Which was fine with me. Most times, I was able to get a lead on where someone’s politics lay, and it was fascinating to listen and hear what their particular concerns and troubles were.

We have had at least 100 conversations in campgrounds, on hiking trails, in diners, and rest stops. The Cricket is a magnet. Old-time RVer’s are confounded by its odd shape. They are uncertain whether they like it or not and are not shy about it. When they find it has no toilet, the response is usually “ the wife would not stand for that”. Yes, it’s mostly the men who come by to kibitz about the trailer. I’ve come to love these conversations. I imagine it’s a lot like a gaggle of farmers standing outside the general store shooting the breeze. It happens like clockwork in every campground we arrive at. The Cricket is our icebreaker; a peek inside and around and we are onto other subjects, the door is open.

Some of our conversations have evolved in to more memorable connections. We stumbled upon Dano O’Keefe at the Bar N Ranch in West Yellowstone. The weather was turning cool and snowy and after checking into the KOA, I noted that Bar N Ranch was the driveway right next door. I had read in my guidebook that there was a great place to eat there and it was too cold to cook. We drove up the long dusty road to a building that looked like a restaurant but seemed desolate. There was an open sign in the window so we ventured in. The interior was completely unexpected. Lavish western, full size taxidermied mountain goats, bears, beavers, an enclosed wine cellar and prairie views out the huge windows. More importantly, a long empty bar and the smell of good food waited. Dano emerged from the kitchen and asked what’ll we have. Let me just say, Dano makes a mean Old Fashioned, not a new, stylized version of an OF but a true blue, burn the back of the throat Old Fashioned. Dano hails from Dallas and was up here working for the summer season, His time was winding down and after we ordered we engaged in some great back and forth. Dano was opinionated and had worked in the industry for a while. Over some damn good Trout Piccata and Elk Stroganoff we indulged in topics as varied as sports, wine, tourists, and his take on Glamping. It’s that time of year when service industry people are ready to carve out a little time for themselves and not have to plaster a smile on their face every day. Dano was imagining the places he would visit, a time when he could recharge and plan what’s next.

To escape the snow and cold, we checked into the Lake Lodge in Yellowstone for an evening. There, in the lobby facing the wind swept Yellowstone Lake, we were sipping some white wine and two couples joined us. We struck up a conversation and found no shortage of things to talk about. Beth and Mary Alice are sisters and live on opposite coasts with their spouses, Jeff and Tim. Mary Alice was a great raconteur, turns out she had worked in a local bookstore and had some favorite authors to share. She also rode horses, and  frequently fell off horses. We hadn’t made plans for dinner and Tim generously offered to change their reservation to 6 and we ended up laughing, sharing family histories and tragedies and travel stories late in to the night. They were good people and I’m better for sharing an evening with them.  I must admit my head hurt the next morning.

The cold front worsened in Yellowstone with the passes shutting down and stranding everyone. We had shivered in our trailer for a few nights under 5 blankets and several layers of clothing and ended up having to spend much of our time in Gardiner, not my favorite place. A year round gateway town to Yellowstone, it was not a great place to find a cozy spot to park oneself to read and write. The local library consisted of two tiny rooms and the coffee shop was blasting loud music. Even the restaurants were more like bars. I was eating my fill of Elk burgers and bison meatloaf.

It was with unmitigated joy that we found Chico Hot Springs, a circa 1900 lodge that was a literal oasis of warmth and western hospitality. We rented a cabin for two nights and while the wind blew to 40mph and the sky darkened with clouds, the Absaroka Mountains were hidden from view and the rain came followed by thick snowflakes. We would write all morning and Mark would study, then we would grab our bathing suits and join all the locals and travelers down in the hot springs, piped into a pool area within the resort. The best part was the adjacent saloon, with a walk up window at the pool area where you could grab a cold one and plunge back into the steaming waters. There was a fine restaurant on the premises also where trout and elk ravioli were specialties. It was a wonderful respite from the weather.

We met so many friendly people here, the barkeep, the lady at the bar from Red Lodge, the couple from Philly in the hot tub (high five!), a ceramic artist from Montana named Lisa Lord, who summed up her move to Montana in one word: Freedom. The most memorable character we met though at Chico was at the bar inside the nice restaurant. We decided to eat at the bar the second night, the food was so good the first and we had no reservation for the second. Of course, you always meet the most interesting people sitting at the bar. Within 5 minutes of sitting down, we became fast friends with Toby. Honestly, it felt like Mark found his long lost brother. And yes, the door opened with politics. Toby, a Jewish museum curator from Nebraska, was sarcastic, acerbic, well read, an outdoorsmen and had an opinion on everything. We were thrilled to meet him, we laughed, bought each other drinks and reveled in the pleasure that good conversation brings.

We have been traveling for a month now. I’ve taken to keeping a notebook to record all the people we meet. There is something in these moments of connection that give me hope and help me to see a person in all their fine detail. The divisive state of our world had captured me. I was hostage to the black and white, to the labels and the assumptions. I’m not saying that since I’ve been on the road, a few words of fellowship hoodwink me into thinking everyone is a Pollyanna or has the earth’s best interests at heart or respects women enough to not vote for a misogynist. These conversations enable me to see beyond the veneer, I hear story and see commonalities. I witness humanity and that’s enough to give me some semblance of hope. I do know this; that’s where healing and understanding will happen, in the small moments, in the listening.

Last night, we had two older gentlemen visit us in campsite. The first, a retired dentist in his eighties, sat down and told us his history of camping, all the places he’d been, how he started out in an old beat up tin can in his youth. He spoke hesitatingly and paused often, to grasp the memories. We sat and waited and listened. There was nowhere we had to be. Ten minutes after he left, a man with a shock of gray hair, multiple piercings in both ears, wrists bedecked with gold and silver bands stopped by. He was a retired academic living in Northern California. He liked the Cricket. And the stories flowed.

After leaving Custer State Park, we knew Devil’s Tower was only a few hours away, so once again we took the scenic road through Spearfish Canyon at the uppermost northwest corner of South Dakota. This gorge was a different geologic formation then what we had previously traveled through. Monolithic giants of limestone rock in shades of pink and gray loom on either side of the winding road and magnificent waterfalls are short hikes from the roadside. South Dakota sure has its fair share of spectacular roads.

I convinced Mark to stop at Deadwood, a touristy but authentically western town of infamous fame. Both Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok lived and died here.  A visit to Saloon No. 10 for a cold beer and the reenactment of Wild Bill’s untimely murder was campy but good fun. We continued to follow the highway through a series of one horse towns, stopping in at the Aladdin General Store (125 years old, circa 1896) on Wyoming Hwy 24 that was reminiscent of  a movie set complete with four cowboy characters hanging out in front pulling down cans of Bud Light. The second floor was a musty but fascinating collection of cowboy and western memorabilia. The crumbling structure was almost as much interest as the heaps of merchandise. In one room, Victorian-age wallpaper was peeling off on sheets, revealing the original skeletal structure of wood beams. The plaster on the ceiling was water stained and bubbling. We wandered through, marveling at the porcelain chamberpots, leather chaps, creaking cradles, rusted aluminum coffee urns and one-eyed dolls.  There was some western art in rickety broken frames that wasn’t half bad. Downstairs, off to the right there was a tiny bar where Bud Light was $1.50 but “fancy beer” would cost you a bit more.The handwritten sign on the front door advertises the sale of the store, town included(pop 15) for a cool 1.5 mil. Apparently, it had been sold in June at auction for half a million but the buyers backed out.

We pulled in to our campsite late in the  afternoon. I could not believe my eyes. Our site for the evening faced an iconic  symbol from one of my favorite childhood movies. There it was, in all it’s otherworldly glory. The sun was beginning to set behind Devil’s Tower and the changing light altered its visage every minute.  I was running around taking pictures while Mark was setting up our camp stove for dinner. What a setting! This campground plays Close Encounters of the Third Kind every night at dusk.  I thought this was a stroke of brilliant marketing, Mark though otherwise but we did wander over and sure enough, there were couches  and folding chairs set up and a tiny screen showed a young Richard Dreyfus convincing Terri Garr he saw a UFO.  On our walk back, we saw glowing lights shining on the top of the tower, could it be climbers spending the night on the grassy flat top?

Waking up in the early dawn to it’s silent but looming presence, the sun illuminating its strange crevasses, we were excited to get up close. There was no one there when we arrived. Hiking the circumference as the sun rose was oddly moving and contemplative. The tower’s presence up close was not threatening or intimidating, as I anticipated. The path wove its way through Ponderosa pine and aspen trees, and the perspective and light changed as we walked. At one point, we spotted a group of three climbers, it made me queasy to watch them. Their progress was slow but measured. I wondered what kind of person feels the need to scale such difficult terrain.

Our trek to the  Grand Tetons lay ahead, at least an 8 hour drive. Mark wanted to go through Cody Cowboy country, but this time I voted in favor of the more direct route down through Casper on and across the open plains of Wyoming. I had no idea how desolate and lonely the state of Wyoming can be. It is the least inhabited state and our trek across cattle country drove that fact home. We tried to listen to William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways (a favorite read of mine from 30 years ago) on audio but it was putting us both to sleep. We passed a sign for Hell’s Half Acre, thinking it would be a good a place as any to stop and picnic, but apparently the restaurant and store closed a while back. The horseshoe-shaped, snake-infested gorge, a geologic oddity in this otherwise flat expanse remains. We discovered later that the alien bug planet scenes in Starship Troopers  was filmed here.  Who knew?? Every time we saw a sign for a town, we would perk up and read the signs. Hiland, Pop 10.  A few ramshackle trailers scattered on a hillside, an old chevy truck on blocks. In Shoshone, “Lip Rippers Bait and Tackle”.  In the same small town, there were two ice cream shacks advertising the best malt in town, right across the street from each other. I regret we didn’t stop to put our two sense in.

There are places in our country that feel lonely and barren. And yet, the breathe of life exists in even the most insignificant places. I love the fact that a town, no matter how small gets a small green sign marking its existence in time and place. It only takes two people to make a community and it doesn’t matter if the streets are paved, or if there is a gas station or a community center. Humans have made their homes in the most inhospitable places and manage to survive the vagaries of weather and economy. We are a hardy species, much like the unlikely pine trees that seemingly lay seed and grow out of rock. We plant ourselves and grow a home around us.

Truly. I know that The Badlands National Park is a great American destination and all the adjectives and superlatives have been applied. They are indeed: otherworldly, eerie, forbidding, inhospitable, spiritual and alien. We spent two days here. The wind shifted direction and the heavy smoke and haze from the Montana wildfires blew away and the brilliant sunshine revealed the Badland wall in all its stark beauty. We drove the wildlife loop road and gazed at prairie dogs by the dozens, mountain goats creating traffic jams in the road, and had our first glimpse of the majestic Bison.

My favorite experience was our choice to get out of the car and hike the Castle and Medicine Root Trail. It was to be the first hike of our road trip and it was challenging as well as deeply satisfying to walk among the grasslands and the jagged formations, devoid of automobiles and people. Just the prairie and the monolithic presence of stone and the wind in our ears. Actually, a 26 mph wind that initially was at our backs and upon return was pushing us one step back for every step taken forward. It was a 9 miler and Mark and I both went into our own little Zen world, thirsty and weary and wondering how much further was it?  The beers that evening never tasted so good and well-deserved. The bounty of a Good Hike.

I think what is most special about the Badlands it its stark contrast to the landscape that comes before it when traveling west. The topography is so strange that your brain fumbles for a metaphor to grasp the unfamiliar. For me, it called to mind the mud castles I made on the Jersey shore as a child. It was as if I’d been shrunk down and another alien species had created these playthings for me to gasp “oh” at. There was  a distinct feeling that I had stumbled upon them and they were meant just for me.