This Different Sky. This Old, New World.

             For the first few days of our trip, the landscape hadn’t been different enough to be jarring. But as we moved west, everything began to o-p-e-n u-p.

               The world gets wide in a way that doesn’t quite fit into words my eastern brain is familiar with. This different sky unlocked something inside of me, something I didn’t know was bound tight. It was the first sense we were headed somewhere truly different.

               This vague feeling of newness, of otherness, slammed into sharp focus when we entered Badlands. Vast rolling plains and fields offered glimpses of chalky rock outcrops hiding underneath, strange formations lurking below the green, and then BAM! On the horizon stood these stony sentinels, waiting, beckoning us forward.

               Almost everyone we spoke with who has done a similar trip mentioned Badlands as a highlight, if not their favorite spot. I knew it was going to be special. I've lived on the west coast before, albeit briefly, but I was still in a forest. Surrounded by tamaracks and larches and other trees, though different and taller than the ones back home, they still served as a frame of reference. Badlands shattered that frame. There’s not much more I can say about it. Like the rock that surrounded us, my sense of place eroded away, until I was left with a new way of seeing the landscape around me.

              This different sky. This old, new world. These Badlands.