Not That Flat

A recently published book about the Great Plains caught my attention a few weeks back.  It’s called Not That Flat and it’s by Anthony J. Dzik who is a Professor of Geography at Shawnee State University in southern Ohio.  The book deals with a variety of topographical features within the Great Plains in order to dispell the myth that the region is entirely flat.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the Great Plains knows that its generally rolling character is puctuated with areas of greater relief – often in the form of badlands or buttes.  Professor Dzik highlights some of the more obscure places in which to find significant topographical relief (many of them have been mentioned in this blog as well), such as the Killdeer Mountains of North Dakota, the Arikaree Breaks of Kansas and the Sweet Grass Hills of Montana.  Those places are certainly little known enough, but what I found fascinating were the places I had never seen, and in some cases even heard of before, such as the Gloss Mountains of Oklahoma, the Red Hills of Kansas, and right in my back yard, the Paint Mines of Colorado.  Many of these areas are not too far from where I live, and I’m excited to find some time to visit them.

Perhaps the best thing about the book is that its overall message is to redefine the Great Plains as a place of endless variety and intriguing landscapes.  This parallels the goal of the Great Plains Trail which seeks to get people out to some of these areas and to view them as places for recreation, and as a refuge from the hectic pace of modern life.  For decades, the mountains, forests, and even deserts of America have enjoyed this status as natural refuges.  On the flip side, for decades, the Great Plains has wallowed in obscurity as the ugly step sister, but as Professor Dzik proves, it’s really “not that flat.”  The time has come for the Great Plains and the grasslands to be added to the list of places where people can come to find adventure, or just to unwind.

Powwow Highway

Back to films of the Great Plains . . . One of my favorite films of the last (can it possibly be that long?) 25 years or so is Powwow Highway from 1989.  It’s the story of Buddy and Philbert who take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico in order to bail out Buddy’s sister, who is in jail, and help her with her kids.  Buddy is a fast talking, no-nonesense dude with a chip on his shoulder about how the Native Americans are treated by the whites, while Philbert is the loveable, overweight spiritual leader of this odd couple as they make their way south in a wonderfully beat-up 1964 Buick Wildcat that Philbert names “Protector.”

The movie is more about character than plot, and it’s the character of Philbert who really steals the show, and makes this a memorable movie.  His faith in their quest transforms the film into more than just a road trip movie, and you find yourself lost in the journey to the point where you can’t even remember why they are on the road in the first place.

Along the way there are numerous Great Plains scenes as they travel to Bear Butte, the Black Hills and other places along what will one day become the Great Plains Trail.  In fact, the route in the movie is, generally speaking, the route the GPT will follow.  As with any place, it’s one thing to see it by car, it’s another to fully experience it on foot, or bike, or horseback.  The GPT will be there to provide the backdrop and the challenge for your own spiritual journey on the Powwow Highway.

It is Solved by Walking

Back to Books . . . Here’s a recent publication from Oregon State University Press called Walking Distance – Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People by Robert and Martha Manning.  The Book is an introduction to (and not a thorough guide for) various long distance walking trails throughout the world.  Some of them are famous such as the John Muir Trail, the Kaibab Trail, and the Milford Track, but most of them are more obscure, and can be found in places that would be fascinating to visit even without a long distance trail, such as the Long Trail in Vermont, the Camino de Santiago in Spain, or the South Downs Way in England.

The opening of the book is a reminder of why people should walk and includes many great quotes on the subject throughout the book.   The photography and the maps are excellent.  Of the many thought-provoking quotes in the book, I think I like the following one the best:

“It is solved by walking.”  - Latin Proverb

Because of its Latin origin, it harkens back to a time when walking was much more of a necessity than today, but it also alludes to the idea that walking can be not only pleasurable, but a productive use of our time.  We are always thinking of arriving at our destination as quickly as possible, but we are missing the problem-solving-rhythm that walking can induce.  The pace and the time of a walk allows our brains to wander into the  more constructive and creative territories of our minds where we can find a solution to a current dilemma, or maybe just enjoy the moment.

One day, the Great Plains Trail will be a special place to do just that!

Days of Heaven and “The Magic Hour”

Ok . . . back to talking about films depicting the Great Plains in one way or another.  However, it’s becoming clear that other things will continue to pop up, and it will difficult to maintain a steady stream of posts related to films.  That’s ok, I’ll just sprinkle them in when I can like I’m already doing with reviews of books.

That said, the setting for the film Days of Heaven (1978) starring a Richard Gere, Sam Shepard, and Brooke Adams is the western panhandle of Texas in the early 1900s, but it was actually shot in Alberta, Canada.  The plot is not particularly tied to the Great Plains (although it alludes to the substantial migration of people to the Great Plains at that time), but the visual scenes are some of the best and show the Great Plains in a favorable and even romantic light.  As a matter of fact, most of the scenes were shot at what is known as the “magic hour” or “golden hour” for film and photography, which is the hour or so just before sunrise or after sunset when the refracted light takes on a meloncholy softness and an emotional feel.

The visuals are indeed beautiful, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1978.  Below is a clip for the trailer.

Days of Heaven Trailer

 

 

Photo of the Week - April 25, 2013

Reblogged from The Prairie Ecologist:

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I made a quick trip up to our Niobrara Valley Preserve this week to help set up time lapse cameras that will help document recovery from last year's massive wildfires.  More on that next week...

The weather followed the same pattern we've seen the last couple weeks; cold and wet early, followed by gradual warming.  We delayed the trip a day to wait for the latest snowstorm to move through, but three inches of snow were waiting when we arrived mid-day on Tuesday.

Read more… 191 more words

This is very interesting information along with some nice late spring photos from the Niobrara River.

April Gallery – Western Nebraska

Like the Dakotas, Nebraska goes through some dramatic changes as you go from east to west.  The eastern portion of the state is akin to most of the Midwest in that it has generally rolling farmlands with a healthy dose of wooded areas in the mix.  The western half of the state is dry with buttes, rattlesnakes and ranches in a landscape reminiscent of scenes from western movies.  It’s a wide open country with dramatic vistas, and you’re more likely to see cowboy hats than feed caps.

Follow the link below to our Flickr site to view and enjoy our April Gallery – Western Nebraska!

April Flickr Gallery – Western Nebraska

 

The Bones of the Past

I’ll get back to the topic of movies very soon, but I wanted to interject on a slightly different topic that I encountered just this week.  Not only does this topic have nothing to do with movies, the basis for this topic occured at least 15 or 20 thousand years before the first movie was even a gleam in the first director’s eye!

 

I’m talking about mammoths.  Big ones.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Dr. Steven Holen who is the former curator of archeology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and now has started his own small nonprofit called The Center for American Paleolithic Research.  Much of his research centers around the finding of mammoths in and around the Great Plains, including places in Colorado, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  Although mammoths lived all over North America in the late pleistocene, the Great Plains is apparently the best place to look for bones because of the alkline nature of the soils here.  Further to the east, due mostly to the presence of trees and therefore of decaying leaves, the soils are more acidic and break down the calcium carbonate material of bone much more quickly.  Alkaline soils will preserve the bones nicely.

One of the most fascinating things about Dr. Holen’s research is that it concentrates on finding not only the bones of mammoths, but also on finding evidence of humans.  Humans that were either involved in the demise of the mammoth directly, or at least were there and likely making tools from the bones.  Dr. Holen consistently found bone shards at the sites that were probably used as butchering and meat cutting tools.  He was careful to point out that the shards could not have been produced by natural processes, but had to have been struck with a large rock or perhaps another large bone.  He even reproduced these shards using a modern elephant bone and striking them with heavy rocks.

That alone would be fascinating enough, but the real kicker is that after carbon dating most of the sites, it was found that they were much older than previously believed possible, and so the real focus of his work is to convince the archeology community that humans were in North America thousands of years before the famed Clovis Culture – perhaps as much as 30 thousand years ago!

The preservation of these sites is very important, and will allow for further investigation and study.  What a great bonus it would be if the Great Plains Trail can pass near one of these sites and add further interest to the already fascinating (and very old) story of the Great Plains!