Badlands National Park
Badlands National Park in South Dakota is a desert with bizarre sculpted
hills. Some of them are sharp and pointed, others are grotesquely rounded
and bulbous. The rock looks like clay, or soft sandstone but it is actually
quit hard. I imagine that it softens in the rain. The overall impression
is that you are viewing a freeze frame of a landscape that is melting and
flowing under the forces of erosion.
Ridges, shaped like inverted flattened U's, crawl haphazardly across the
landscape. Smaller ridges slope down from the main ones, in leaf vein patterns,
like cathedral ramparts. Between the ridges and side ridges are deep impenetrable
canyons. You can sometimes see the rock strata on a ridge where the dusty
soil and gravel have been washed away.
These jagged hills are filled with jumbles of pocket canyons. Stream beds
in the canyons offer the only level ground to hike on. Perched atop many
of the needle sharp peaks, seen here, are small flat boulders. A boulder
of harder rock will protect a column of softer material below it. As the
soft rock weathers away, the hard rock cap is left perched on a tower.
The Badlands NP is right on the edge of the Great Prairie lands.
The gently rolling hills of the prairie are carpeted with short grass, that ripples
in vast waves under the wind. One section of nearby "Grasslands National
Monument", is perfectly flat, with a horizon like a ruler blade.
All images © John Donohue, 1995,1996