Gene’s very kind wife, Alecia, snapped this just before I hit the road for up north; their son Jett to my right. Horses, the prairie, buttes, my ‘electric Bike, one of their dogs, perfect light… says it all.
I appreciate the kind reaction to my Badlands Cattle Roundup imagery and that so many of you realize the serious situation the ranchers find themselves in. I’m very fond of the people I met and fear for their future. They have a lot more to lose than someone like me, and even most of you. A unique and productive American culture…
A few nights after the roundup and a couple days on the Fortune ranch ‘back forty’ niche I moved back to the Badlands National Park boundary where Gus and I were hit with the thunderstorm that broke my windows and tore my surfboard from the roof. And sure enough we got hit again.
A couple days ago, Alecia, Jett, and I spent hours scouring the range for newborns, to make sure all was well. This one, still wet with afterbirth, just now arrived… The ranchers care deeply about their animals.
But before that Gus pulled one of her stunts that drives me nuts. It’s late afternoon and the western sky is looking ominous, like it did that time I already told you about, so I take Gus for a walk before we get stuck in the rig hunkering down all night, right? She’s not on a leash — I hate leashes — and I didn’t see the bighorn sheep just below the rim of the steep drop from the plateau to the prairie way way below. But Gus sees them and just as I (uselessly) yell ‘No!’ she launches herself over the rim edge and near free falls towards them.
This is the slope Gus somehow transversed, almost from the next camper to past my camera position. She was gaining on the bighorns when I last saw them.
She’s a goner, I’m thinking, gonna fall to a splattered death at the bottom of the ravine, but before the thought even jells I witness what I can only call a cartoon moment: Three bighorns are racing across the impossible slope as bighorns can somehow do, but as dogs cannot do, but somehow Gus is right behind them, not looking down at the bottomless drop and yes Wily Coyote comes to mind when he’s hotfooting over thin air but doesn’t know it yet so no problem, right?
Next thing I recall is the bighorns, Gus somehow still right behind, scrambling up from the near vertical onto the escarpment a hundred yards at least to the west, then the mob of hoofed and pawed critters racing off across the grassland between scattered campsites, a wild scene all right, and somehow my dog has survived certain death, through sheer stupidity and ignorance both, given the laws of physics and so forth.
Another Badlands danger: At deep dusk this huge coyote tried to lure Gus out onto the prairie. The sumbitch is as big as a wolf…
In Cosmic Banditos I describe a dog as having ‘the longest tongue of any known mammal’ and this description comes to mind, when I finally caught up with Gus way down the way almost to the Park entrance, with astounded RV folks watching as I drag her back, her ridiculous pink tongue all but dragging in the dirt.
An hour later Gus is stretched out exhausted by the rig and the western sky is looking very nasty now, yes like last time, but I’m thinking to get some photo imagery before the pandemonium so I break out the Canon and tripod and set it up.
Feels like a storm coming, huh?
First I’m visually attracted to some campers on the next rise to the south so I fire off a few bursts with a long lens. They look interesting with the strong shape of the cloud behind them so I’ll embed one here. If I were pretentious enough to title photographs I’d call this ‘The Storm Approaches’ or some such, especially with that weird motion blur like a high wind.
Same car campers as the previous image, plus the car that went by, fleeing the tempest, I suspect.
Then I switch to a wider lens as a car approaches from the north, which will pass right by my position then skirt by the campers I’m shooting, and given my 20 second exposure I’m figuring he will either ruin the shot or improve it, one or the other, nothing in between. Here it is embedded just to the right, and it’s the version I cropped so you can see the car on the hill better.
But the shot I’m thinking will be a good one is of the western horizon, which is looking downright surreal now, almost beyond menacing, but I need something in the foreground. Yes, my goddamn dog will do, the bitch, scaring me like that, but with the long exposure, a full 30 seconds now, she will ruin the image by moving so I keep shooting and shooting, hoping there’s one wherein she keeps her dumb ass head still while that wild ass horizon does its insane, explosive color thing. Meanwhile, since it’s all but dark now and I have time during the 30 second exposures, I light Gus and the grassland behind her with a flashlight.
I think I willed her to not move for this shot, the only one that worked. Click to enlarge. It’s worth a close look.
Since I’m writing this at least one of the 40 or so frames must have worked, meaning Gus held still. (It’s now one of my favorites from the last few weeks, actually). If I were pretentious enough to title photographs, this one would be ‘Gus Awaits Armageddon.’
Has a ring to it.
Later in the rig I put the Canon on the dash and let it fire away on auto with more 30 second exposures while Gus and I held on as the rig rocked and rolled. Oh, and I guess there ARE lightning bolts these days…
Allan
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