Devil's Tower, Wyoming

I'm in Wyoming.  That's where Devil's Tower, tomorrow's destination, is, so I find me here tonight. It turns out that Wyoming is mostly grasslands.  For my friends in the California SF Bay Area, think of the central valley, except the size of  an entire state, and only grass.

Every so often along the way (see yesterday's post for the route), there'd be an untriggered barricade, which can be lowered when they decide to close that road.  Interstate 90 had them; country roads had them.  I guess it snows pretty hard up here.

Devil's Tower was the first national monument.  Teddy Roosevelt did the declaring.  The top of this formation can *only* be reached by climbing its parallel cracks.  It's sort of famous for that particular kind of climbing.

The Indian folk around here, however, consider it sacred and they consider climbing it disrespectful.  To understand that viewpoint, suppose someone went and did something disrespectful at the Dome of the Rock. Both the Dome of the Rock and Devil's Tower were here long before Christians, Muslims, Jews, Indians (of any kind). So I think it's not the places that are sacred, but the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, that are.