Badlands Stories

The first excerpt:  from the introduction to Badlands.

Once I heard one of those few mountain lions bellow. I heard it plain as the dusty smell of sage itself. It scared me so deeply I almost shit my pants right there where I was sitting on Pine on Rock watching the changing light sweep over the roughened valleys and the violently sheared walls and the filed curves of the wind sculpted rock. It was a gulf of sound. It was a sound that echoed so long it became old. So old it seemed to walk on crutches until it blended with the wind and became the same as the wind, became a breath of God, the sound of that lion, so mighty, so old, so powerful. That I will never forget. It was the sound of time, the voice of the badlands.

 

These lands were given an Indian name. Makoshika. A Sioux word for mean land, or bad land. And they were mean too, but in a way that a crotchedy old grandmother is mean and you know that underneath that scratchy surface there is a nurturing heart that wants you nearby, that lets you gaze into her eyes until you notice the serenity underneath the violence that shaped what she is.