The hills are alive with the sound of silence 07/21

I woke up and experienced the grandeur and mystery of the Devils Tower. Having seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the thought of aliens landing there didn’t seem to obtuse. It’s a giant rock that juts out of the valley for apparently no reason. There are no surrounding mountains, no hills, no sign that a lined monolith is about to appear as if it ruptured straight out of the bowels of the earth. It was definitely a sight to behold.

Down the road from my campsite I stopped at a prairie dog camp, or whatever you call a collection of prairie dogs. They’re much smaller than I anticipated, and their “bark” was more of a cute, excited yelp. I watched them run around and pop out of holes for about 20 minutes before I decided to get out of the park before I was recognized and forced to pay for my campsite.

Next I made my way over to the Big Horn Mountains. Unlike the Appalachians, which once you’re in them, its hard to tell that you’re actually in a mountain range aside from the high graded roads, these mountains allowed you to feel powerful. From 10,000 feet up you can see the basin floor with all of its rivers, hills, and roads. The best part about these mountains was that there were very few people passing through them, so for most of the time I had the view all to myself. The solitude it afforded me along with the simple beauty of my surroundings made me never want to leave. I could see so far, the atmosphere blurred the features of the horizon. I could see shadows on the ground from the sun falling over the clouds. Even though it was a comfortable 75 degrees, there were still patches of snow that dotted the mountainsides, separating the fields of grass and rock that otherwise populated the mountains.

At one point, towards the middle of the range, I pulled into one of the many vista points to get a better view than driving in my car would afford me. The vista point was labeled as 9430 feet above sea level. In front of me was a steep drop-off that led to a large piece of the mountain oddly shaped like a grassy Pride Rock from the Lion King. Behind me was the rest of the mountain. I decided to climb the rest of the way up, to the very summit. From the vista point, the climb didn’t look that difficult. However, once I started up the mountain, it became clear to me that my vision deceived me.

I forgot to factor in that I was almost 10,000 feet above sea level, and there wasn’t as much oxygen to be had for climbing. That on top of the nearly steady 45 degree climb for the first few hundred feet surprised my lungs. A few hundred feet above my car, someone had assembled a large pile of rocks about 4.5 feet tall. It was wide at the base and got skinnier towards the top. I heard a lot of buzzing and thought maybe some bees made the rock pile their home, so I snapped a quick pic and continued the rest of the way up the mountain.

After the rock pile, the mountain took on a more gentle slope. The rise was about 20 degrees instead of 45, but it made up for the discrepancy in length. From my car to the top of the mountain where I stopped took me about 30 minutes, with a few small 1 minute breathers along the way. I’m not entirely sure what the actual height was that I stopped at, but I like to think it was 10,000 feet. I felt like I had definitely climbed up 600 feet, plus there was a pole parking the summit. On the pole there was a rusted plate, where other travelers etched their names in to declare that they, too, conquered the mountain. I etched in “BELVEDERE”, turned around, and made my way back down the mountain towards my car.

After an accidental minor detour down the wrong face of the mountain, I walked the 300 yards down the road back to my car. I then made way over the Medicine Wheel, an old Indian sacred healing place. It’s an 80 foot diameter wheel with spokes, made entirely out of limestone from the mountains. Although not too impressive on its own, the history behind it and its location made it worth the trek. Also, I met some nice ladies from Montana on the walk from the parking area to the wheel. I say met, but we were never really properly introduced. They were in their late 40s, travelling on a day trip to the mountains with their mother from Montana. They had some fun stories to pass the time, and we even had an impromptu snowball fight on Medicine Mountain. They told me when I wrote about them to refer to them as my “sisters from Montana.” And so they are.

There were some rocks jutting up from the side of the mountain next to the medicine wheel, and I hopped out on to them (carefully, as it was a few hundred feet the next highest point below me), and tried to read some of by book. However, there were too many damn flies to allow me the peace required for concentrated reading. The flies were the biggest I’d ever seen, rivaling the size of bumblebees. At first I thought they were bumblebees, which made me freak out whenever one would land on or near me. I didn’t want to get stung and have a knee jerk reaction that would throw me off the face of the mountain, so I (carefully) hopped back to safety and walked back to my car.

I was going to spend the night in Yellowstone, but all the camping spots were taken up by 2, and it was already 6 when I called. So I stayed in Cody, Wyoming for the night, where apparently they have a nightly rodeo all summer long. I didn’t want to fork over the money for it, so I didn’t go, but the town was crowded enough with tourists that I’m guessing the one ticket I didn’t buy was bought by someone else.

Overall it was a fantastic day. The mystery of the Devils Tower and the quirky prairie dogs started the day off. I loved the solitude and serenity the Big Horn Mountains provided, and my little snowball fight with my new sisters from Montana added a fun twist to the day. Days like this were what my trip was all about.