Pine Ridge

There are two parts to the Badlands. A North and a South. The North is full of trails and has the infrastructure of a typical national park. The south is in the Pine Ridge Reservation, and there are no trails. The last Ghost Dance took place in a basin there, and you’re free to cut your way to it. There is a road called Sheep Mt. Rd. that ascends to the top of a bluff, which you can use to hike down into the Southern part of the Badlands. I spend a long part of the afternoon on top of Sheep Mt. I write a little, and there are tall …

Share

Badlands

Posted on 2 min read

I was told the Badlands erode an inch every year. That’s a lot when you think about it. It’s a foot since I was last here. Measurable difference in a human lifetime. The Black Hills next door erodes 10,000 times slower. The Badlands are only 500,000 years old, and in another 100,000 – 500,000 years they will be gone. That’s one of the things that I love about this place. The impermanence. I always found the Rockies so foreboding. Like the ocean they felt primordial. But they were a dominating prescience. They cast a constant shadow. The Badlands are beautiful and temporary. And yes, extend the line out far enough, …

Share

59 Minutes in Germany – Flash Fiction

They said I need a union What union An electrician’s union To install a light fixture I guess Why don’t you do it yourself I don’t know how, do you No… my father did it I look over at my daughter. She’s icing her shin, her leg propped up on a chair. Two neighbor girls sing to her in German. I need to go to the bank before it closes It’s 3-37 Yeah You won’t have much time I have to try. Can you watch her It’s no problem I listen to the singing and push open the door without understanding a word. I try to run and lurch down …

Share

Contracts – Flash Fiction

The shattered glass is so fine that it’s almost like a powder across the floor. Tim’s already got out tack-board from the storage closet, and the new gap will take its place in the queue behind the rest of the boarded-up stain glass windows. “Did you reset the clock?” I ask. “Shit,” I hear him mutter. “I’ll climb up and do it as soon as finish this,” he says, stretching out a ladder to reach the window. I hear the creek of the door and move towards the entrance. Listening to their footsteps, I know they’re tourists: light, haphazard, without intention. I walk to the altar instead. I dust off …

Share