Reflections on a Western Road Trip, circa '78

I’ve been to Little Big Horn
where Custer’s lust was cut to bits,
his brothers blindly led to where they’re dead,
his soldiers felled as they fled,
and hid, huddled behind horses
they shot as a shield.
Blood spilled, the spatter scattered tombstones
grow in greasy grass*
battle seeds sown in precipitous advance.
His Stand doesn’t stand—
long named for the loser,
lies at the feet of Lakota and Cheyenne,
at last—Archaeology meets History,
shatters myths, and shames;
arms, with an aim at its heart,
an apt rewrite, rename.
I’m told the field still looks the same.

I’ve been to Rosebud and Pine Ridge
and seen the raw edge of outrage
on two Wounded Knees, and the penalties
(the civilized are the savages in the piece);
where trailers seemed to town the reservations
and prefabs punctuate,
and rusted cars scar the landscape.
I’ve seen the poverty—The People* endure,
land rich, paper dollar poor;
this continent’s third world counties,
essential services their lacks.
And they pretended they weren’t there
when I looked for them, empathy to spare.
The place is theirs, but not their stamp:
wealth once counted in herds.
Their treaty’s their treasure; the trade, the neglect:
Paha Sapa’s not for sale—decision I respect.

I’ve been to the Badlands,
beyond imagining, forbidding
expanse—entranced:
The wind, shifting, shaping,
the gullies and spires and labyrinth sands;
an inch each day eroded, changed,
never the same, did you know?
The light, sunrise, sunset, shadows, shading
“peaks and valleys colors in delicate bands…
and a thousand tints the color charts don’t show”*
I’ve been to the Black Hills,
best of all, a small rocky mountain range
in the midst of the plains,
“an island of trees in a sea of grass”*
a breathtaking terrain my eyes traced
like a lover’s a lady’s lissome curves,
the granite core, towers of pines and alpine meadows
where buffalo roam right of way—and my spirit soared—
and I understand—this is Sacred land.

© Helga Ross 2007


Conservation writer Freeman Tilden*