From:  Chris Hoke <mineralrock@yahoo.com> 
Subject:  day nine, south da ko ta.
Date:  Tue, 17 Oct 2000


some army a-hole to crazy horse: "where are your lands
now?"
crazy horse: "my lands are where my dead lay buried"

there you have it.
chief sitting bear, or something to that effect,
wanted "the white man to know the red man has heros,
too" and invited a polish sculptor, korczak, to come
construct a memorial to crazy horse. it's not even
close to finished.  the poor guy kicked the bucket in
82, but his 7 sons and daughters work on it to this
day. and it's all private, there's no federal money in
it at all. all in all, it will be at least 4 times the
size of mount rushmore, an impressive monument by
itself.

that's what i remember most about day eight.
the face of crazy horse, the monumental work that has
gone into it. this guy, korczak, dedicated his whole
life, he worked 8 days a week on it from when he was
in his late 20's till he died. he lived in a tent for
a while, only because he heard the stories of how the
us govt sort of screwed over the native people.
amazing, that at the same time we liberate the slaves,
we massacre the indians. unbelieveable.

here i am living in complete comfort not knowing the
struggles of our people. we all bitch and moan about
our horrible childhood, or the injustices that have
afflicted us. we all need swift kicks in the teeth,
we're so spoiled beyond belief. when does it end?
when does the famine arrive?  if i have 5 dollars, i
can make it through the day. when will we have to
travel 2 days for some bread? all of us, we live in
total comfort. oh, the stock market. oh, my grades.
oh, i have to work so hard for a scrap of bread.
human nature, it can be a bitch sometimes. we all want
to complain and argue and point fingers. well, here's
a finger that means something: "my lands are where my
dead lay buried"

i hate to be a party pooper, but it's been on my mind,
and stuff that's on my mind, usually finds it's way
here.

so, day eight.  we had slept in walmart, the allmighty
walmart, who lets us crash in their parking lot for
free. as far as i could tell, when i awoke we were
about to head out of rapid city, and too mount
rushmore. it was early.  still no light yet. i could
smell coffee, but i thought if i pretended i was asleep
dad would ignore me. he did untill we were sort of
close to it.  then i had to get up. we got to mount
rushmore just as the sun was beginning its day. oh
lord, it was magnificent. huge, imposing, dramatic.
worth the trip. we spent a couple of hours there, and
decided that food was the next priority. i love country
gravy, smothered over biscuits.  yum. that's what i had
for eats. we then got absentee balot forms from the
keystone chamber of commerce, because we're not sure if
we're gonna be back home by the seventh. it's looking
more like the fifteenth or so.  no rush. i know i said,
yes, we'll be back by the seventh at the latest. gimme
a break.  we're having a blast, and there's no rush.
so then we hightailed it through custer state park. we
drove for an hour or so, through these winding winding
roads with beautifull tunnels and switchbacks, and saw
buffalo, elk, deer, rams. oh, they were so serene, we
were not more than ten feet away and they didn't care.
they're protected. we then decided a long hike was in
order, so we parked and headed out on the centennial
trail. we hiked for a good couple of hours, and at the
middle we went up a huge rock formation, and from the
top we could see nothing but pine trees and huge
granite rocks shooting out of the hills. oh, it was
glorious. so quiet, so serene, so private.  we felt we
were totally by ourselves, like explorers looking on a
new land. did i mention it was glorious? the hike down
from the rock was very tricky, very technical and
dangerous. when we were finally down, we looked at
where we had come down and could hardly believe we had
just done that. any false moves would have meant a
long hard fall, possibly fatal, definitley brutally
injurous.

when we saw our bounder, it was like heaven.  back
home, to cold drinks and air conditioning.

we drove then to the crazy horse memorial, its still
in construction, but the orientation video was
amazing, detailing the struggle of the sculptor in
creating his monument to the native people. it made
a big impact on me, becasue it is a completely
private venture.

from crazy horse we took a scenic drive back to mount
rushmore and back through keystone, and we drove up to
deadwood. deadwood was the infamous city where gold
prospectors rushed in, and wild bill died there,
having been in deadwood only sixty seven days. we
mailed our absentee ballots and got back in the
saddle, driving to scenic, breathtaking spearfish
canyon, as the sun was begining to set. it was really
amazing, huge shear cliffs on either side, speckled
with trees and a creek that ran through the canyon. we
decided to go to a restaraunt the michelin green guide
recomended, adjacent to a beautifull wood lodge. good
eats.  fettuccini alfredo with big butterfly shrimp,
carrot cake, a beer<!> and coffee. then we asked
if we could crash in the huge parking lot, they said
sure, so we had a quiet evening watching Face/Off, a
silly action movie with nick cage and john revolta, and
fell asleep.

lonely?  friends treating you like dirt?
***/***/****
like typing? for hours and hours?
mineralrock@yahoo.com

chris