Ignoring parks a natural mistake
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D -- "Art is nothing as to nature," Bernard Pomerance wrote in his play, "The Elephant Man." A dozen years since I last saw it -- a dark, circuslike production at the Theatre Building on Belmont Avenue -- but the line must have tucked itself away in a fold in the brain, because it came back as we stood on soft, cracked, dove-gray dry mud and swept our eyes across this marvelous moonscape of buttes, ravines and canyon walls.
"Art is nothing as to nature, boys," I announced to my two sons who, accustomed to living with a blowhard prone to quoting bits of doggerel at them, said nothing.
The odd thing -- the sad thing -- is that it never would have occurred to me to come here, to go out of my way to visit this surreal corner of our country, had I not been in the neighborhood anyway, driving down a nearby stretch of Interstate 90 and needing to stop somewhere.
Which seems now like such a lapse, such an inversion of priorities. As a guy who once flew to New York City to see a Flemish painting (Petrus Christus' "Portrait de Jeune Fille," if you must know) you'd think I'd be methodically traveling the world, soaking up its splendors. That it would have occurred to me, before the age of 49, to notch a few national parks onto my belt, on general aesthetic principles.
But it didn't -- to me, there was always something dubious about those who seek out natural wonders, who hike up mountains and grovel before waterfalls.
The Sun-Times regrets the error.
Badlands is the first -- with Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Redwood and the Grand Canyon to come -- and frankly, I thought our first 15 minutes in the park were so moving, so superlative, the chance of anything topping it is nearly impossible. We had driven through hundreds of miles of desolate South Dakota farmland and ranchland when, entering the park, the green hills gave way to this vista of sculpted rock formations, stretching to the horizon in all directions.
We had a cabin in the park at Cedar Pass, and were eager to get there after a day on the road. But I just had to pull over at a trailhead. There is a boardwalk set up for the casual visitor, and at the end, a sign, one of those stern warnings the National Park Service is so good at, telling you that if you proceed beyond this point you take your life in your hands, that people get lost and die and you better be equipped.
The boys and I looked at each other, standing in the snapping wind, then bolted back to the car, and began madly pulling on thick socks and hiking boots and tossing water bottles into daypacks as if the unearthly landscape we had just glimpsed might vanish if we weren't quick about it. Somehow that moment, the frenzy of preparation, seemed extraordinary, almost equal to the glories themselves. Maybe because nobody complained.
One look at those sedimentary lines streaking the cliffs and the perfect beauty, vast age and complete indifference of nature becomes clear. Maybe that explains my previous indifference about seeking out these splendors -- it's hard enough to grind out tomorrow's stuff without confronting the reality that, in the grand scheme, it's the dew on a piece of gravel, that all human effort dwindles to nothing, to vaporous illusions of significance. Omnia vanitas.
The next day we began hiking in earnest, five miles down the Castle Trail, and while the views were still marvelous, eventually it became time to move on.
We proceeded westward to Mt. Rushmore. Talk about a jarring juxtaposition -- a thousand more dramatic mountaintops, carved by the wind and the rain, and we make a big deal and flatter our abilities because we put four faces on one of them.
Still, it was impressive, not to mention patriotic. Sure, Jefferson doesn't really look like Jefferson, but as Samuel Johnson said of the dancing dog, the wonder isn't that it's done well, but that it's done at all.
Strangely, Mt. Rushmore memorializes four men who need no memorializing -- nobody says, "Oh, right, George Washington, I forgot about him!" -- plus one who gets more than his due, the sculptor of the mountain, Gutzon Borglum. By the time you see all the busts of him, the tributes and the plaques to him, the museum and the studio, you begin to suspect the whole endeavor was a post-modern artist's ploy to drape honor upon himself, using the presidential greats as a ruse.
Having just seen the Badlands and the Corn Palace in Mitchell, I couldn't help but place Mt. Rushmore in league with the latter. The Corn Palace is a brick building, not made of corn, but decorated anew each year with corncob designs, honoring the local crop and, not incidentally, drawing the dupes off the highway to buy popcorn and postcards, which also seems to be Mt. Rushmore's true purpose.
My boys were even cooler than I to Mt. Rushmore.
"A little disappointing," Ross said. "Nature is more wonderful than anything we can build."
"The Badlands were better," Kent agreed. "Man-made creations don't compare to nature."
I was surprised, pleased, proud and a bit unsettled to hear Pomerance's words echoed back to me. Keep in mind that whatever you tell your children, they'll eventually tell you.