1 00:00:01,440 --> 00:00:07,480 Speaker 1: Eroded barren formations called badlands avoided during Western settlement at 2 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:11,719 Speaker 1: the hands of scientists and artists, have evolved into classic 3 00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:16,680 Speaker 1: Western landforms and sought out destinations in our time. I'm 4 00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:21,560 Speaker 1: Dan Flores and this is the American West, brought to 5 00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:24,560 Speaker 1: you by velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt. 6 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:25,200 Speaker 2: Meets the harvest. 7 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:29,280 Speaker 1: A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters 8 00:00:29,280 --> 00:00:34,960 Speaker 1: and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com. 9 00:00:35,080 --> 00:00:54,440 Speaker 1: Enjoy responsible, getting over the color green, and learning to 10 00:00:54,600 --> 00:01:01,160 Speaker 1: love badlands Out on the Southern high Planes. Low down 11 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:04,559 Speaker 1: in the formations of a famous Panhandle canyon called Pallo 12 00:01:04,720 --> 00:01:08,080 Speaker 1: Duro that gives rise to the Red River, there's a 13 00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:13,920 Speaker 1: landform some long ago imaginative appreciator named the Spanish Skirts. 14 00:01:15,200 --> 00:01:19,720 Speaker 1: One of America's internationally famous artists, Georgia O'Keefe, first saw 15 00:01:19,720 --> 00:01:22,440 Speaker 1: this canyon when she was a young art teacher in 16 00:01:22,520 --> 00:01:26,319 Speaker 1: West Texas during World War One and always thought the 17 00:01:26,319 --> 00:01:29,679 Speaker 1: common name her young guide used for the Spanish Skirts 18 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:33,160 Speaker 1: bad lands is what he called them, was a peculiar 19 00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:37,880 Speaker 1: miss of appreciation. O'Keefe didn't know it then, but in 20 00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:40,360 Speaker 1: another two decades she was going to be in a 21 00:01:40,360 --> 00:01:45,120 Speaker 1: position to help other Westerners, Americans who loved interesting landscapes, 22 00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:48,920 Speaker 1: and much of the world developed a proper appreciation for 23 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:53,480 Speaker 1: a landform once dismissed as useless ground taking up good 24 00:01:53,520 --> 00:01:59,000 Speaker 1: space on the planet. What O'Keefe first saw in West 25 00:01:59,040 --> 00:02:02,720 Speaker 1: Texas in nineteen teen sixteen, where two hundred and forty 26 00:02:02,800 --> 00:02:07,680 Speaker 1: million year old permium age clays and mudstones eroded by 27 00:02:07,720 --> 00:02:13,440 Speaker 1: wind and water into horizontally banded mounds. The Spanish skirts 28 00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:17,720 Speaker 1: aren't a large landform, standing at most twenty five feet high. 29 00:02:18,280 --> 00:02:21,919 Speaker 1: But if your eyes are moved by color and sculptural form, 30 00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:25,560 Speaker 1: as o'keefes obviously were, in the right light, the Spanish 31 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,440 Speaker 1: skirts can take your breath away. An initial impression is 32 00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:34,400 Speaker 1: of scooped Neapolitan ice cream PLoP down blobs of earth 33 00:02:34,680 --> 00:02:39,200 Speaker 1: consisting of layered stripes of different colors, at least seven 34 00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:41,079 Speaker 1: different hues altogether. 35 00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:43,520 Speaker 2: The bottom base of. 36 00:02:43,520 --> 00:02:47,239 Speaker 1: A Spanish skirt's mound is in the pale tangerine of 37 00:02:47,440 --> 00:02:51,840 Speaker 1: Paalo Duro's canyon floor. Above that is a second layer, 38 00:02:52,240 --> 00:02:57,440 Speaker 1: sometimes demarcated by thin horizontal stripes of white gypsum of 39 00:02:57,480 --> 00:03:01,960 Speaker 1: a dark burnt hook horns orange. Above that are again 40 00:03:02,320 --> 00:03:06,600 Speaker 1: slender ivory bands, finally drawn as if with white ink. 41 00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:11,760 Speaker 1: Then come the Latina fireworks. In succession. There is a 42 00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:16,080 Speaker 1: broad swipe of deep lavender purple, then another of a 43 00:03:16,200 --> 00:03:20,640 Speaker 1: saffron yellow. Those two finished off by an unexpected and 44 00:03:20,760 --> 00:03:25,360 Speaker 1: quite wonderful band of coffee bean chocolate. Where the Spanish 45 00:03:25,400 --> 00:03:29,640 Speaker 1: skirts emerge from the canyon slopes as freestanding mounds. The 46 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:33,920 Speaker 1: final flourish is often a cap of creamy white atop 47 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:37,000 Speaker 1: the chocolate, like froth milk floating on the surface of 48 00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:41,880 Speaker 1: a latte. I've walked among the Spanish skirts in slanting, 49 00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:46,200 Speaker 1: reddish morning light and in the glow of yellowed sunset air, 50 00:03:46,440 --> 00:03:49,520 Speaker 1: and I understand why Georgia O'Keefe was fixated by their 51 00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:53,960 Speaker 1: earth art on several hikes in the nineteen teens. While 52 00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:56,680 Speaker 1: the rest of the world was distracted by stories of 53 00:03:56,760 --> 00:04:01,520 Speaker 1: trench warfare and poison gas in Europe, O'Keefe was becoming 54 00:04:01,720 --> 00:04:07,200 Speaker 1: seriously dazzled by Palo Duro Canyon earth art. Everyone else 55 00:04:07,400 --> 00:04:11,720 Speaker 1: hated the Western high Plains. She said, everything was horizontal 56 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:15,680 Speaker 1: and yellow rather than green like the East. But as 57 00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:19,159 Speaker 1: she told her friend Anita Pollitzer, she couldn't get over 58 00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:22,560 Speaker 1: the colors and shapes of this canyon in size into 59 00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:26,320 Speaker 1: the plains. It's absurd the way I love this country, 60 00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:32,920 Speaker 1: she wrote, Lucky for those who appreciate the art of landscape, 61 00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:35,839 Speaker 1: and especially lucky for those of us who are drawn 62 00:04:35,920 --> 00:04:39,440 Speaker 1: by the uniqueness of Western scenery in the United States 63 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:42,080 Speaker 1: that has had a hard time getting over the colored green. 64 00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:48,080 Speaker 1: O'Keefe never recovered from her fascination with barren, eroded badlands. 65 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:52,040 Speaker 1: When she returned to the West in nineteen twenty nine, 66 00:04:52,080 --> 00:04:55,360 Speaker 1: she at once sought out new Mexico cliffs and bad 67 00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:59,279 Speaker 1: lands that reminded her of Palo Duro and the Spanish Skirts, 68 00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:03,240 Speaker 1: finally buying a seven acre ranch at at the foot 69 00:05:03,279 --> 00:05:06,479 Speaker 1: of the Ghost Ranch cliffs northwest of Santa Fe. For 70 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:10,400 Speaker 1: the next half century, she endlessly painted the bad lands, 71 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:14,840 Speaker 1: ignoring the inclination of homesteaders to regard bad lands as 72 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:18,760 Speaker 1: sterile bad places to farm, or of religious types who 73 00:05:18,880 --> 00:05:23,400 Speaker 1: like to name Western geologies after hades and Satan. O'Keefe 74 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:27,760 Speaker 1: called her favorite bad lands the Red Hills, the White Place, 75 00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:32,200 Speaker 1: the Black Place. For decades she offered the art of 76 00:05:32,279 --> 00:05:37,920 Speaker 1: a graceful, sensual, color saturated Western landform to America and 77 00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:40,640 Speaker 1: the world. It was an art that helped change the 78 00:05:40,680 --> 00:05:46,719 Speaker 1: perception of bad lands forever. Thomas Jefferson may not have 79 00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:50,480 Speaker 1: known this, although Lewis and Clark's descriptions helped. But we 80 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:53,839 Speaker 1: all understand today that the American West is a region 81 00:05:53,880 --> 00:05:58,200 Speaker 1: of many diverse landforms and ecologies. The West is made 82 00:05:58,279 --> 00:06:02,360 Speaker 1: up of extensive prairies and plaints, a horizontal yellow terrain 83 00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:07,719 Speaker 1: of overlapping arcs of grasslands extending westward nearly five hundred 84 00:06:07,760 --> 00:06:11,800 Speaker 1: miles to the foot of the Rockies. There are mountain uplifts, 85 00:06:11,839 --> 00:06:15,279 Speaker 1: many of them individual ranges like the Wasatch or the 86 00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:19,120 Speaker 1: Bitter Roots, within a larger framing of the Rocky Mountains, 87 00:06:19,320 --> 00:06:24,400 Speaker 1: the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades all those uplifts, with one exception, 88 00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:28,400 Speaker 1: the Uentas in Utah. Running north and south through the continent, 89 00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:33,440 Speaker 1: there is a vast canyon lands etched into the Colorado Plateau, 90 00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:38,320 Speaker 1: a coastal rainforest. In the northwest, there are true deserts 91 00:06:38,320 --> 00:06:42,880 Speaker 1: of shrubs and cactus, some hot zone deserts, others coal 92 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:48,159 Speaker 1: deserts of extensive sagebrush steps. But if one of the 93 00:06:48,200 --> 00:06:51,880 Speaker 1: grand characteristic traits of the West, making it. An exception 94 00:06:52,080 --> 00:06:56,039 Speaker 1: to green America is aridity. Lovers of the region ought 95 00:06:56,080 --> 00:07:01,040 Speaker 1: to be especially intrigued by its naplu ultra air landscape. 96 00:07:01,520 --> 00:07:06,920 Speaker 1: This is the West's presentation of exposed geology, where chlorophyll 97 00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:10,680 Speaker 1: green often does not appear at all, in favor of 98 00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:15,280 Speaker 1: an earth colored something like Mars. These are the places 99 00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:17,600 Speaker 1: Old worlders named badlands. 100 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:18,520 Speaker 2: The West. 101 00:07:18,600 --> 00:07:22,520 Speaker 1: Badlands are actually an array of distinctive landforms. They don't 102 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:25,400 Speaker 1: occupy a single region the way the rockies of the 103 00:07:25,440 --> 00:07:29,040 Speaker 1: Sonoran Desert do, but tend to erupt from the edges 104 00:07:29,080 --> 00:07:32,920 Speaker 1: of these larger divisions in eroded lowlands of the plains, 105 00:07:33,240 --> 00:07:35,440 Speaker 1: or at the feet of the soaring cliffs of the 106 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:39,800 Speaker 1: Colorado Plateau, or in the foothills of mountains in the deserts. 107 00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:45,000 Speaker 1: Particularly in contrast to the West's mountain ranges with their 108 00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:48,880 Speaker 1: forests and snow caps. As their name implies, bad lands 109 00:07:49,080 --> 00:07:53,320 Speaker 1: long suffered from a spin problem. On an initial encounter, 110 00:07:53,640 --> 00:07:58,920 Speaker 1: they obviously lacked appeal for primates, who require water, wood, and. 111 00:07:59,040 --> 00:08:00,400 Speaker 2: Shade to become comfortable. 112 00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:05,000 Speaker 1: Even more problematic, during Western settlement, bad lands offered little 113 00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:10,760 Speaker 1: or no promise of economic possibilities, lacking exploitable minerals, trees, 114 00:08:11,200 --> 00:08:15,679 Speaker 1: even grass. People from the green countrysides of northern Europe 115 00:08:15,880 --> 00:08:18,960 Speaker 1: or the eastern half of America reacted to bad lands 116 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:23,760 Speaker 1: as a kind of worst version, desert antithesis of everything 117 00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:30,040 Speaker 1: normal and desirable. As for actually conferring the descript or 118 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:33,800 Speaker 1: bad on bad lands, it seems to have been the 119 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:38,160 Speaker 1: French who first cast those aspersions when their explorers encountered 120 00:08:38,160 --> 00:08:42,880 Speaker 1: them on the northern plains. They called the sterile multicolored 121 00:08:42,920 --> 00:08:47,400 Speaker 1: mounds they found there mave terre bad lands because they 122 00:08:47,480 --> 00:08:52,319 Speaker 1: presented so few inducements, essentially none for a European looking 123 00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:57,600 Speaker 1: to settle the country. Bad Lands take on a great 124 00:08:57,679 --> 00:09:01,840 Speaker 1: many forms and colors, but the Spanish skirts. The classic 125 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:06,559 Speaker 1: version is an undulating set of variably striped clay or 126 00:09:06,679 --> 00:09:10,920 Speaker 1: shale mounds. They're often found in conjunction with other geology, 127 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:17,080 Speaker 1: harder sandstones with narrow slot canyons, spires and hoodoos upright 128 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:21,720 Speaker 1: pedestals capped with a stone that's preserved the clay column beneath, 129 00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:28,040 Speaker 1: smooth and curving with swirling connected hemispheric mounds. Classic badlands 130 00:09:28,040 --> 00:09:31,720 Speaker 1: throw up wild shadowing when hit with low angle sun. 131 00:09:32,480 --> 00:09:35,719 Speaker 1: Their particular drama of shadows and light must have made 132 00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:38,920 Speaker 1: little impression on people looking for a home, but there 133 00:09:39,040 --> 00:09:43,079 Speaker 1: was an aesthetic drama there, and ignoring it wouldn't prevail forever. 134 00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:48,040 Speaker 1: The creation of the West badlands goes back to sediments 135 00:09:48,160 --> 00:09:52,680 Speaker 1: ultimately existing as shales, clays, and mudstones that precipitated to 136 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:56,440 Speaker 1: the bottoms of river, lake and ocean shorelines ten thousand 137 00:09:56,600 --> 00:10:00,840 Speaker 1: to two hundred and forty million years ago. So stretches 138 00:10:00,840 --> 00:10:07,679 Speaker 1: of bad lands are often a geological gift of exposed Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, 139 00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:12,440 Speaker 1: and Permian soils and rocks, and some bad lands the 140 00:10:12,559 --> 00:10:15,520 Speaker 1: stripe thirty five foot mound in front of you may 141 00:10:15,559 --> 00:10:19,640 Speaker 1: preserve deposits that took forty five million years and several 142 00:10:19,679 --> 00:10:23,040 Speaker 1: geologic periods to deposit, which is why there can be 143 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:27,240 Speaker 1: such a variety of different colored soils, Because they were 144 00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:30,920 Speaker 1: created from the shorelines of bodies of water that existed 145 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:34,199 Speaker 1: millions of years ago, and because water and wind erosion 146 00:10:34,240 --> 00:10:37,599 Speaker 1: have laid them bare as landforms, bad lands everywhere in 147 00:10:37,679 --> 00:10:41,560 Speaker 1: the world tend to be treasure chests of ancient life history. 148 00:10:42,320 --> 00:10:45,960 Speaker 1: In fact, it was as scientific laboratories that bad lands 149 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:50,320 Speaker 1: first emerged, as an exciting and important landform destination in 150 00:10:50,360 --> 00:10:53,600 Speaker 1: the West. Everywhere in the world they're found, in fact 151 00:10:53,760 --> 00:10:59,840 Speaker 1: the Middle East, Spain, Tuscany, Peru, Argentina, New Zealand, Taiwan, 152 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:04,080 Speaker 1: in the Danzia formations of China. Bad Lands we now 153 00:11:04,160 --> 00:11:09,679 Speaker 1: realize tend to be treasure chests of ancient life history 154 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:13,560 Speaker 1: for travelers moving across North America from east to west, 155 00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:16,680 Speaker 1: As was the case for Americans in the eighteen hundreds, 156 00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:20,960 Speaker 1: badlands first cropped up in places like West Texas, Nebraska, 157 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,640 Speaker 1: and the Dakotas, then emerged in scattered locations from New 158 00:11:24,679 --> 00:11:28,640 Speaker 1: Mexico to California. They draped the whole bottom half of 159 00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:32,040 Speaker 1: Utah and appear as far north on the plains as 160 00:11:32,120 --> 00:11:36,560 Speaker 1: Montana and Alberta. In the nineteenth century, almost everywhere, the 161 00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:41,320 Speaker 1: edges of mountain ranges, canyon defiles, or sweeping plains erupted 162 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:45,640 Speaker 1: into exposed bad lands. Paleontologists found them to be crucial 163 00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:50,120 Speaker 1: for the fossil discoveries that took Darwinian evolution from theory 164 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:54,440 Speaker 1: to fact, which made them a peculiar scientific destination. 165 00:11:56,080 --> 00:11:57,000 Speaker 2: In the United States. 166 00:11:57,000 --> 00:11:59,679 Speaker 1: The work that turned Western badlands into a mecca for 167 00:11:59,760 --> 00:12:04,199 Speaker 1: paid ileontology began in eighteen forty nine, when doctor John 168 00:12:04,360 --> 00:12:08,840 Speaker 1: Evans explored the Dakota Badlands and published a scientific article 169 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:13,800 Speaker 1: on their possibilities. From that point, a wide range of luminaries, 170 00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:19,079 Speaker 1: like Yellowstone Park advocate Ferdinand van Derver Hayden, intensively sought 171 00:12:19,120 --> 00:12:22,679 Speaker 1: out the West's bad lands to dig fossils. In the 172 00:12:22,760 --> 00:12:28,360 Speaker 1: post Darwin era, Yale paleontologist Othnil Marsh was stimulated by 173 00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:31,480 Speaker 1: a stirring Thomas Huxley lecturer in New York in eighteen 174 00:12:31,559 --> 00:12:35,600 Speaker 1: seventy six to assemble a chronology of horse evolution that 175 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:39,559 Speaker 1: became the principal evidence to support Darwin's theory. 176 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:41,840 Speaker 2: Of evolution by natural selection. 177 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:46,640 Speaker 1: These days, Jack Horner and other modern dinosaur scholars still 178 00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:50,040 Speaker 1: ply the bad lands for major discoveries from the continent's 179 00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:53,079 Speaker 1: remote past. We've gotten a version of this in the 180 00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:55,000 Speaker 1: opening scenes of at least. 181 00:12:54,679 --> 00:12:56,440 Speaker 2: Half the Jurassic Park movies. 182 00:12:57,080 --> 00:13:00,440 Speaker 1: Bad Lands are still the primary target of the modern 183 00:13:00,480 --> 00:13:05,720 Speaker 1: dinosaur hunt in the United States, Canada, and China today. 184 00:13:06,360 --> 00:13:09,880 Speaker 1: Post Civil War American explorer John Wesley Powell, who saw 185 00:13:09,880 --> 00:13:12,080 Speaker 1: and wrote more about the West than anyone else of 186 00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:15,720 Speaker 1: his time, said prophetically of the bad lands, he'd explored 187 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:18,480 Speaker 1: that they were, as he put it, a desert to 188 00:13:18,520 --> 00:13:22,960 Speaker 1: the agriculturist, a mind to the paleontologist, and a paradise 189 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:23,679 Speaker 1: to the artists. 190 00:13:24,640 --> 00:13:27,040 Speaker 2: As usual, pale got it exactly right. 191 00:13:27,840 --> 00:13:32,160 Speaker 1: While scientific investigation came first and is still underway, for 192 00:13:32,240 --> 00:13:36,319 Speaker 1: the past one hundred years, it's been artists, photographers, hikers, 193 00:13:36,600 --> 00:13:40,160 Speaker 1: and simple lovers of landscape who have turned these once 194 00:13:40,280 --> 00:13:45,640 Speaker 1: maligned landforms into scenery appreciated for its sensuousness and aesthetics. 195 00:13:46,480 --> 00:13:49,440 Speaker 1: Bad Lands are like the western deserts in that respect, 196 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:52,040 Speaker 1: but you have to admit it took someone like a 197 00:13:52,120 --> 00:13:55,400 Speaker 1: Georgia O'Keefe or an Edward Abbey to make the rest 198 00:13:55,400 --> 00:14:00,560 Speaker 1: of us begin to pay attention. Bad Lands reputations may 199 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:04,160 Speaker 1: have begun to change for some Americans even before O'Keefe 200 00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:08,160 Speaker 1: began to paint, though about a century before our time. 201 00:14:08,520 --> 00:14:11,800 Speaker 1: With homesteading of much of the West almost over and 202 00:14:11,840 --> 00:14:15,760 Speaker 1: the automobiles starting to make formerly dreaded and even dangerous 203 00:14:15,760 --> 00:14:21,000 Speaker 1: places suddenly less formidable, badlands began a slow process of 204 00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:26,360 Speaker 1: shedding their former treatment as worthless waste. In eighteen ninety nine, 205 00:14:26,920 --> 00:14:30,560 Speaker 1: explorer Robert Hill descended the real Grand River in West 206 00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:34,600 Speaker 1: Texas through future Big Band National Park, the story of 207 00:14:34,640 --> 00:14:39,160 Speaker 1: which he published in Century Magazine in nineteen oh one. 208 00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:42,880 Speaker 1: It took Hill nearly a month of constant familiarity with 209 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:47,400 Speaker 1: sites like Vermilion Foothills of Red Clay, as he wrote, 210 00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:55,000 Speaker 1: before the adjective's weird, repulsive, spiteful, bizarre, and sterile finally 211 00:14:55,080 --> 00:14:59,440 Speaker 1: dropped from his verbal palatee, replaced with some grudging admiration 212 00:14:59,800 --> 00:15:03,760 Speaker 1: of form and color, but eventually, with a lot of practice, 213 00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:07,840 Speaker 1: Hill did began to appreciate this new Western landform as 214 00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:12,320 Speaker 1: a visual feature he could admire. Robert Hill's journey and 215 00:15:12,480 --> 00:15:15,680 Speaker 1: article were a kind of watershed take on bad lands, 216 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:19,560 Speaker 1: an early break from the dismissive place that occupied in 217 00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:24,200 Speaker 1: landscape aesthetics in the nineteenth century and earlier. It's interesting 218 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:26,800 Speaker 1: and worth some reflection. I think that with a landform 219 00:15:26,840 --> 00:15:30,480 Speaker 1: that offered no economic possibilities, whose lure for some was 220 00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:35,720 Speaker 1: scientific but for most esthetic, a disproportionately high number of 221 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:40,920 Speaker 1: women emerged as admirers of bad lands scenery. Hill was 222 00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:45,480 Speaker 1: initially followed by the literary naturalist John C. Van Dyke, 223 00:15:45,760 --> 00:15:49,400 Speaker 1: who wrote marvelous descriptions of the Grand bad Lands of 224 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:53,680 Speaker 1: Death Valley in his early twentieth century volume The Deserts. 225 00:15:54,560 --> 00:15:58,080 Speaker 1: But it was Mary Austin who emerged as a California 226 00:15:58,280 --> 00:16:01,440 Speaker 1: rival to Van Dyke as an early promoter of a 227 00:16:01,520 --> 00:16:06,520 Speaker 1: bad lands esthetic, providing an American desert appreciation that even 228 00:16:06,560 --> 00:16:10,800 Speaker 1: prefigures ed Abbey's with her book The Land of Little Rain. 229 00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:17,240 Speaker 1: Then there was the unlikely British expatriot photographer Evelyn Cameron, 230 00:16:17,640 --> 00:16:21,200 Speaker 1: delighting through her viewfinder at the Northern Plains badlands near 231 00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:26,320 Speaker 1: her Terry, Montana ranch. Cameron also became a devoted lover 232 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:30,880 Speaker 1: of badland scenery. Cameron and her husband were naturalists who 233 00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:35,080 Speaker 1: studied and sometimes tamed wolves, coyotes, foxes, and birds of 234 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:39,280 Speaker 1: prey from the marvelous badlands she hiked and photographed, and 235 00:16:39,320 --> 00:16:43,040 Speaker 1: who then watched in horror as homesteaders from the East 236 00:16:43,080 --> 00:16:47,040 Speaker 1: and Europe tried valiantly, but with signal lack of success, 237 00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:51,640 Speaker 1: to settle eastern Montana in the nineteen teens and nineteen twenties. 238 00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,080 Speaker 1: Cameron was followed on the Northern Plains by the North 239 00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:59,640 Speaker 1: Dakota artist Zoe Byler, whose paintings of the almost science 240 00:16:59,680 --> 00:17:03,760 Speaker 1: fiction landscapes along the Little Missouri River were attracting attention 241 00:17:03,880 --> 00:17:07,000 Speaker 1: to both the place and the artists by the nineteen twenties, 242 00:17:07,359 --> 00:17:11,400 Speaker 1: a decade before O'Keeffe's Badlands Oils would take the New 243 00:17:11,480 --> 00:17:20,320 Speaker 1: York art scene by storm. When Georgia O'Keefe's portrayals of 244 00:17:20,359 --> 00:17:23,959 Speaker 1: the undulating, naked badlands mounds of New Mexico first went 245 00:17:24,080 --> 00:17:28,000 Speaker 1: up in galleries in Manhattan, the initial reaction was shock 246 00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:33,200 Speaker 1: and revulsion. Some Eastern critics concluded the artists must possess 247 00:17:33,359 --> 00:17:38,359 Speaker 1: some psychological scar that frightened her of water. Of course, 248 00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:42,840 Speaker 1: that wasn't it. In the nineteen thirties, two decades after 249 00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:46,840 Speaker 1: seeing Paaloduro in the Spanish skirts, after years of life 250 00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:51,240 Speaker 1: as Alfred Stieglitz's model and artist wife in New York, 251 00:17:51,680 --> 00:17:54,080 Speaker 1: O'Keefe bought a small ranch at at the foot of 252 00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:57,719 Speaker 1: the Ghost Ranch cliffs and turned her work from flowers 253 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,520 Speaker 1: toward the hot colored badlands and cliffs around her home. 254 00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:06,160 Speaker 1: She found the curvilinea red mounds out her door, charged 255 00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:09,919 Speaker 1: with all the suppleness and grace of the human form. 256 00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:15,600 Speaker 1: Why do you love these barren landscapes? So, an interviewer 257 00:18:15,640 --> 00:18:19,639 Speaker 1: from Boston asked her years later, clearly puzzled at her 258 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:24,080 Speaker 1: passion for places so far removed from the conventions of beauty. 259 00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:32,800 Speaker 1: I like color, O'Keefe replied, in the east, everything is green, green, green. 260 00:18:33,359 --> 00:18:38,280 Speaker 1: I looked around me and wondered what one might paint. Plus, 261 00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:42,520 Speaker 1: bad lands are an especially fine place to climb around in, 262 00:18:42,800 --> 00:18:46,760 Speaker 1: she exclaimed. It was the shapes that fascinated me, the 263 00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:52,120 Speaker 1: shapes of the hills. One of O'Keefe's Eastern biographers visited 264 00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:55,199 Speaker 1: to try to understand the appeal of such country, and 265 00:18:55,280 --> 00:18:59,639 Speaker 1: concluded that the landforms that excited O'Keefe as her landscape 266 00:18:59,720 --> 00:19:04,800 Speaker 1: mus were in fact bizarre, garishly colored, and in fact 267 00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:10,520 Speaker 1: ought to be extravagantly tasteless, vulgar, and unbelievable. But for 268 00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:13,879 Speaker 1: a painter, this was a landscape that offered up the 269 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:18,560 Speaker 1: earth itself as abstract modern art. All one had to 270 00:19:18,600 --> 00:19:22,840 Speaker 1: do was paint what was there. The results were classics 271 00:19:22,880 --> 00:19:27,160 Speaker 1: of a great career, Petternal and the Red Hills from 272 00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:32,240 Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, Red Hills and Bones from nineteen forty one, 273 00:19:32,400 --> 00:19:36,600 Speaker 1: The Gray Hills nineteen forty two, and the Black Place 274 00:19:36,800 --> 00:19:38,720 Speaker 1: three nineteen forty four. 275 00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:41,520 Speaker 2: And so Keith told her. 276 00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:46,280 Speaker 1: Friends, Rebecca Strand and Arthur Dove, after finding and buying 277 00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:49,399 Speaker 1: her ghost Ranch home, then moving to New Mexico full 278 00:19:49,440 --> 00:19:51,840 Speaker 1: time following Stieglitz's passing. 279 00:19:52,640 --> 00:19:53,800 Speaker 2: I am west. 280 00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:56,240 Speaker 1: Again, and it is as fine as I remembered it, 281 00:19:56,320 --> 00:19:59,720 Speaker 1: maybe finer. There's nothing to say about it except the 282 00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:03,160 Speaker 1: fact that for me it is the only place. I'm 283 00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:06,160 Speaker 1: about one hundred miles from the railroad, sixty eight from 284 00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:09,760 Speaker 1: Santa Fe, eighteen miles from a post office, and it 285 00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:12,560 Speaker 1: is good. I wish you could see what I see 286 00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:16,080 Speaker 1: out the window. The earth, pink and yellow cliffs to 287 00:20:16,160 --> 00:20:19,520 Speaker 1: the north, the full pale moon about to go down 288 00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:23,960 Speaker 1: in an early morning, lavender sky behind a very long, 289 00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:28,120 Speaker 1: beautiful tree covered mesa to the west, peak and purple 290 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:32,840 Speaker 1: hills in front, and the scrubby, fine, dull green cedars, 291 00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:36,280 Speaker 1: and a feeling of much space. It is a very 292 00:20:36,320 --> 00:20:42,840 Speaker 1: beautiful world. I wish you could see it with John 293 00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,520 Speaker 1: Wesley Powell and O'Keefe, with Robert Hill and John c. 294 00:20:46,720 --> 00:20:50,520 Speaker 1: Van Dyke, and Mary Austin and Evelyn Cameron, and many 295 00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:52,920 Speaker 1: years later Edward Abbey, to show the rest of us 296 00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:56,399 Speaker 1: how to love arid and bad lands. Country. Badlands have 297 00:20:56,480 --> 00:21:00,879 Speaker 1: slowly progressed from denigrated are just ignored. Was stern landforms 298 00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:04,320 Speaker 1: to settings many of us are drawn to and avidly 299 00:21:04,400 --> 00:21:08,840 Speaker 1: seek out. Almost shockingly, in our time, badlands have become 300 00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:13,680 Speaker 1: the sites of national parks, South Dakota's Badlands National Park, 301 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:19,080 Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt Historical Park in North Dakota, Dinosaur National Monument 302 00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:24,840 Speaker 1: in Utah, Colorado, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah, 303 00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:29,680 Speaker 1: Death Valley National Park in California, Big Bend National Park 304 00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:34,280 Speaker 1: in Texas, and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. There 305 00:21:34,320 --> 00:21:39,480 Speaker 1: are also numerous badlands state parks Mikoshika and Eastern Montana 306 00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:44,879 Speaker 1: for one, Toadstool Geologic Park in Nebraska for another, Dinosaur 307 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:49,320 Speaker 1: Provincial Park in Alberta, and even a sizeable number of 308 00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:55,159 Speaker 1: official federal wildernesses like the Ohito Badlands and the Bistie Badlands, 309 00:21:55,240 --> 00:22:00,840 Speaker 1: wildernesses in New Mexico. Once passed over and scorned by homesteaders, 310 00:22:01,080 --> 00:22:04,040 Speaker 1: then ignored in the push to create national forests in 311 00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:08,720 Speaker 1: mountains and national parks in western canyons, the West badlands 312 00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:12,840 Speaker 1: have somehow acquired an audience of admirers in the last 313 00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:18,080 Speaker 1: hundred years. So it's probably clear enough that I'm bad 314 00:22:18,160 --> 00:22:22,800 Speaker 1: Lands smitten myself. I'm powerfully drawn to bad lands sculptural 315 00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:26,240 Speaker 1: shapes and to a coloring that can easily rival a 316 00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:30,679 Speaker 1: box of crayons. I'm amazed at the sterile granularity of 317 00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:34,720 Speaker 1: their mounded surfaces and at the runoff reels rain water 318 00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:39,120 Speaker 1: forms on and between them. Like dunes, bad lands are 319 00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:44,119 Speaker 1: also friable enough that they're always changing their look. Because 320 00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:47,320 Speaker 1: bad lands aren't confined to one particular region of the West, 321 00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:51,320 Speaker 1: but show up scattered across its geography, I'm always on 322 00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:54,320 Speaker 1: the lookout for bad lands I've not seen before, and 323 00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:59,960 Speaker 1: always excited to discover new stretches with new color combinations. 324 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,280 Speaker 1: So I've traveled all over the West to hike around 325 00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,600 Speaker 1: in badlands country that's new to me. I once drove 326 00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:08,800 Speaker 1: solo all the way from West Texas to South Dakota 327 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:11,080 Speaker 1: for no other reason than to be able to wake 328 00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:16,040 Speaker 1: up amidst the pastel yellow humps to the horizon landscape 329 00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:20,159 Speaker 1: of bad Lands National Park. I've gone far out of 330 00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:24,080 Speaker 1: my way to go for hikes, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, 331 00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:28,800 Speaker 1: in the Bisti or data Zen Badlands wilderness of northwestern 332 00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:33,480 Speaker 1: New Mexico. I've had bad lands adventures in Teddy Roosevelt 333 00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:37,320 Speaker 1: National Historic Park in North Dakota, where Teddy himself fell 334 00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:40,320 Speaker 1: in love with the strange look of a topography that 335 00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:45,360 Speaker 1: struck him as colorful and weirdly compelling. More than once, 336 00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:47,840 Speaker 1: I drove all the way across the horizontal length of 337 00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:52,879 Speaker 1: Montana from Missoula to Makoshika State Park to experience the 338 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:58,040 Speaker 1: terry badlands where Evelyn Cameron photographed Montana and its wildlife 339 00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:01,879 Speaker 1: a century ago. Hiked the bad Lands of Death Valley 340 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:05,199 Speaker 1: in both winter and summer, and on the island of 341 00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:09,000 Speaker 1: Kowaii in the Hawaiian Shane. I've blissed out more than 342 00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:14,160 Speaker 1: once to a miniature river complete with waterfalls, bouncing musically 343 00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:18,600 Speaker 1: along through terra cotta badlands in Why may A Canyon, 344 00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:23,200 Speaker 1: an unexpected slice of the arid West in the middle 345 00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:28,720 Speaker 1: of the Blue Pacific. There's a strange passion to all this. 346 00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:32,720 Speaker 1: It's not that I failed to appreciate high alpine meadows 347 00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:36,479 Speaker 1: or towering redwoods in a Pacific Northwest rainforest. But for 348 00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,440 Speaker 1: some reason, I find wandering around a place like Arizona's 349 00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,240 Speaker 1: Petrified Forest National Park or the painted desert of the 350 00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:46,919 Speaker 1: Navajo res easily as drilling as climbing up to a 351 00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:51,720 Speaker 1: glacial cirque in the Colorado Rockies. The feel of champagne 352 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:54,800 Speaker 1: air on your skin as you stroll alone or with 353 00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:59,560 Speaker 1: a companion under a flawless cobalt autumn sky through thirty 354 00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:03,560 Speaker 1: five foot high mounds, with the crunch of the granulated 355 00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,600 Speaker 1: dry clay in your ears with every step, A sense 356 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:10,520 Speaker 1: of flow as your body moves through receding and approaching 357 00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:16,560 Speaker 1: elemental earth forms, barren of obscuring vegetation with bands of color. 358 00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:18,520 Speaker 2: A wild visual riot. 359 00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:22,119 Speaker 1: At every hand. That's a sensuous immersion in place and 360 00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:27,320 Speaker 1: moment that works for me. New York expatriate writer Mabel 361 00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:31,560 Speaker 1: Dodge Luhan and her book Edge of Taos Desert called 362 00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,720 Speaker 1: the bad Lands Country on the high Road between Santa 363 00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:39,480 Speaker 1: Fe and Taos, A journey through a pink and yellow dream. 364 00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:43,760 Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Places of this kind are things we 365 00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:49,240 Speaker 1: more usually encounter in dreams, just to experience the whole 366 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:52,240 Speaker 1: of the place with the senses dialed up the full gain. 367 00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:55,560 Speaker 1: I once walked through yet another bad lands locally known 368 00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:59,200 Speaker 1: as the Painted Desert, this one on the northwestern edge 369 00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:03,200 Speaker 1: of Big Ben National Part. It was a cloudless morning 370 00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:06,480 Speaker 1: in June. Big Ben is as far south in North 371 00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:08,960 Speaker 1: America as you can get and still be in the 372 00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:13,600 Speaker 1: United States, and at that latitude, June means shearing heat 373 00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:18,000 Speaker 1: that's felt in the nostrils with every inhalation. It's heat 374 00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:21,159 Speaker 1: that is also a smell. It can even leave a 375 00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:25,200 Speaker 1: coppery taste in the mouth. This particular morning began at 376 00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,040 Speaker 1: seventy eight degrees, but my thermometer read ninety two by 377 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:33,000 Speaker 1: nine am, ninety eight by eleven, and one hundred and 378 00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:36,879 Speaker 1: eight shortly after noon. By that point, my body felt 379 00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,280 Speaker 1: like a bag of mostly water. The blast furnace big 380 00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:45,800 Speaker 1: Ben's painted desert desperately wanted to reduce to raisin form. 381 00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,879 Speaker 1: Wandering half lost in that astonishing bad lands. It struck 382 00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,040 Speaker 1: me while in the midst of it, like being on 383 00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:54,919 Speaker 1: a planet made up of herds of recumbent gray and 384 00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:59,880 Speaker 1: lavender elephants whose bodies had partly melted into the ground. 385 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:04,080 Speaker 1: I remind myself at one thirty PM that five hours 386 00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:07,760 Speaker 1: in a sauna is more than enough. The heat, bug 387 00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:11,000 Speaker 1: screeching of cicadas in the Tamaris thicket where I'd parked 388 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:14,720 Speaker 1: my jeep guided me back to shade and safety, but 389 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,920 Speaker 1: even on one hundred and twelve degree day, I lingered 390 00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,600 Speaker 1: longer in that world of elephantine forms than I should have, 391 00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:25,359 Speaker 1: reluctant to give up those visions and such a sense 392 00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:31,720 Speaker 1: of being fully alive. My ultimate bad Lands experience so 393 00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:35,800 Speaker 1: far went down a decade ago, almost by accident. At least, 394 00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:40,359 Speaker 1: it seemed accidental to have Anthony Bourdain's producer call and 395 00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:43,760 Speaker 1: inquire if I was interested in helping out with a 396 00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,400 Speaker 1: Part's unknown episode. They wanted to film in and around 397 00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,320 Speaker 1: Santa fe and who then asked whether I could appear 398 00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,560 Speaker 1: in a few scenes with Tony without looking like a 399 00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:57,720 Speaker 1: deer in headlights. The answer was a foregone conclusion. Although 400 00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:01,960 Speaker 1: I wasn't entirely sure about the headline part the accident. 401 00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:06,120 Speaker 1: I discovered eventually that Stephen Rinella, who at that time 402 00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:10,119 Speaker 1: used the same production company Bourdain did, was behind the 403 00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:14,680 Speaker 1: scenes of that phone call. The Parts Unknown shooting schedule 404 00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:18,640 Speaker 1: was crazy. They had five days to film seven scenes, 405 00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,960 Speaker 1: and since Burdaine arrived with a vague Old West caricature 406 00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,520 Speaker 1: of New Mexico, some of those scenes got brainstormed on 407 00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,240 Speaker 1: the fly. I joined them on the second day of shooting, 408 00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,240 Speaker 1: a day when we were miked up for eight hours, 409 00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,440 Speaker 1: and that ended with a campfire cookout under a full 410 00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:41,080 Speaker 1: moon and soaring canyon spires, with Bourdain preparing a meal 411 00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:44,800 Speaker 1: for himself and me and three generations of a local 412 00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:49,120 Speaker 1: Spanish family. There was another scene where Bourdain and I 413 00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:54,960 Speaker 1: ate level two hatch chilis and fell speechless. The high point, 414 00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:59,800 Speaker 1: though even exceeding eating an Anthony Bourdain meal under Western stars, 415 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,840 Speaker 1: was the horseback ride a trio of us did along 416 00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:07,320 Speaker 1: the foot of the Ghost Ranch cliffs, right through the 417 00:29:07,360 --> 00:29:12,160 Speaker 1: Red Badlands around Georgia O'Keeffe's house, the very red hills 418 00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:16,760 Speaker 1: she'd rendered into world famous art. Ever, the New Yorker 419 00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,080 Speaker 1: Burdane waved off the stetson he was offered for this 420 00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,760 Speaker 1: warm sunny day ride. But the guy could sit a horse. 421 00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:26,920 Speaker 1: As for me, I was in one of those dream 422 00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:31,040 Speaker 1: states Mabel Dodge Lewhn had written about. At the time, 423 00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,800 Speaker 1: I must have been paying attention, But later all I 424 00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,440 Speaker 1: could recall was nudging a really fine horse through the 425 00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:41,480 Speaker 1: Red Hills that, eighty years before had become the type 426 00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:46,440 Speaker 1: specimen of an iconic new kind of Western landscape. The 427 00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,920 Speaker 1: cameras were on, the mic was live, and a genuine 428 00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:53,040 Speaker 1: American hero was on a horse beside me, and all 429 00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,160 Speaker 1: I could entertain in my head was the rolling up 430 00:29:56,200 --> 00:30:00,920 Speaker 1: and down brick red dirt of our passage. That bad 431 00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,720 Speaker 1: lands experience back to a Western creation, myth of sorts 432 00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:08,040 Speaker 1: is going to be hard to top. I still dream though, 433 00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:12,320 Speaker 1: I even dream of Mars, our Solar System's ultimate desert 434 00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:17,000 Speaker 1: with red canyons twenty five thousand feet deep and bad 435 00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:23,120 Speaker 1: lands such bad lands on a scale beyond earthly the gods, 436 00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,600 Speaker 1: But what would an O'Keeffe do with bad lands like those? 437 00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,800 Speaker 3: So Dan, in this episode, you're talking about bad lands, 438 00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:41,160 Speaker 3: and you brought up an aspect of this sort of 439 00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:45,160 Speaker 3: regional feature that I hadn't really considered in depth, and 440 00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:48,400 Speaker 3: that is that the bad lands are sort of a 441 00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,560 Speaker 3: landscape that we think of is unique to the American West, 442 00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,680 Speaker 3: and it's this regional distinctiveness. And then you point out 443 00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,840 Speaker 3: it's a global phenomenon. And there's a whole lot of 444 00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,320 Speaker 3: aspects of the West that you know, have parallels around 445 00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,560 Speaker 3: the globe on different continents. But in this you touch 446 00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:11,880 Speaker 3: on bad lands as a global geological phenomenon. 447 00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:16,000 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, they're they're found all over the world 448 00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:20,640 Speaker 1: in conditions that sort of mimic those of the American West, 449 00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:27,920 Speaker 1: where essentially you have arid country, arid climates and mountain 450 00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:33,600 Speaker 1: ranges are canyonlands or plateaus that often produce bad lands 451 00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:38,160 Speaker 1: at the basis of the larger formations. And so that's a, 452 00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,960 Speaker 1: you know, not an unusual feature of landscapes around the planet. 453 00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:47,960 Speaker 1: And when I was working on this particular script, I mean, 454 00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:52,560 Speaker 1: I had seen sort of marvelous photographs. There's in fact, 455 00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,640 Speaker 1: there's you know, a movie out from two or three 456 00:31:55,720 --> 00:32:03,400 Speaker 1: years ago that is in the Danzia bad Lands of China, 457 00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,720 Speaker 1: and it's really a pretty remarkably similar kind of looking 458 00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:09,920 Speaker 1: landscape to some of those in the American West. 459 00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:10,800 Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is. 460 00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,680 Speaker 1: Something around the world. And because of the fact that 461 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:19,320 Speaker 1: these kinds of land formations tend to be associated with 462 00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:26,120 Speaker 1: really old geology, with Triassic and Permian and Jurassic sort 463 00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:31,680 Speaker 1: of exposure everywhere around the world, these are places that 464 00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:37,160 Speaker 1: scientists have been digging dinosaurs for at least the last 465 00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,160 Speaker 1: seventy five or eighty years. I mean, this has become 466 00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,240 Speaker 1: kind of the target sort of landscape for the dinosaur 467 00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:48,800 Speaker 1: high around the world. And that's primarily why is because 468 00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:52,080 Speaker 1: the bad lands are mostly composed of these really old 469 00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:56,600 Speaker 1: mudstones and siltstones that have been exposed more recently, but 470 00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:00,720 Speaker 1: that date back to the times before sixty five million 471 00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:01,200 Speaker 1: years ago. 472 00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:05,000 Speaker 3: And if you'd asked me where they find dinosaurs, I 473 00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:09,440 Speaker 3: would have told you Montana, Hell Creek Formation, and then 474 00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:11,640 Speaker 3: I would have said Mongolia. Yeah, And I could have 475 00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:14,960 Speaker 3: described to you the landscape that they're found in Mongolia, 476 00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:18,400 Speaker 3: but I wouldn't have labeled that image in. 477 00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,440 Speaker 2: My mind as bad lands. But that's exactly what it is. Yeah, 478 00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:22,440 Speaker 2: that's exactly what it is. 479 00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:26,280 Speaker 1: And so it's a universal planetary kind of phenomenon, and 480 00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:29,760 Speaker 1: we were lucky to have lots of expressions of it 481 00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:32,800 Speaker 1: in the American West. And so I was trying with 482 00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:41,000 Speaker 1: this particular episode to convey to listeners and watchers this 483 00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:45,480 Speaker 1: sense that bad lands. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 484 00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:50,600 Speaker 1: they were called that because this was not the sort 485 00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:53,440 Speaker 1: of landscape you were looking for if you were hoping 486 00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:57,120 Speaker 1: to settle somewhere in the West. It didn't have grass, 487 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:01,440 Speaker 1: it didn't have trees, it didn't have it didn't have 488 00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:06,880 Speaker 1: mineral deposits. Hence, these early descriptions referred to those kinds 489 00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:14,279 Speaker 1: of places as bad lands, not only science but also art. Obviously, 490 00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:18,359 Speaker 1: this kind of aesthetic appreciation of the remarkable colors and 491 00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,839 Speaker 1: sculptural forms of that sort of terrain, I think has 492 00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,320 Speaker 1: in our time, especially probably in the last fifty or 493 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:28,840 Speaker 1: sixty years, sort of elevated this kind of landscape to 494 00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:32,720 Speaker 1: being one of the iconic ones of the West. 495 00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:38,160 Speaker 3: You mentioned art, and in this piece you highlight how 496 00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:46,280 Speaker 3: women artists have really been leading figures in depicting these landscapes. 497 00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:47,319 Speaker 2: And is. 498 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:53,120 Speaker 3: There a connection there between them being overlooked and underappreciated 499 00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:57,320 Speaker 3: and then leaving space for someone like Georgia O'Keefe to 500 00:34:57,320 --> 00:34:58,960 Speaker 3: bring them to a new audience. 501 00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:05,600 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon. I haven't thought really hard 502 00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:11,759 Speaker 1: about why, for example, men might have been drawn to 503 00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:16,920 Speaker 1: certain kinds of terrain and women to this particular one. 504 00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:19,720 Speaker 2: But when I began putting together. 505 00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:25,880 Speaker 1: The historical stories about bad lands appreciation, about painters and 506 00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:31,959 Speaker 1: photographers who had become sort of famous for doing work 507 00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,200 Speaker 1: in the bad lands, I began to realize, Wow, it's 508 00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:40,160 Speaker 1: an extraordinarily large number of women, as opposed to say, 509 00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:45,080 Speaker 1: I mean, there are certainly some great women painters of 510 00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:49,400 Speaker 1: the Rocky mountains. But many of the appreciators and painters 511 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,800 Speaker 1: of the Rockies tended to be men. So there's something 512 00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:54,759 Speaker 1: about this landscape, and I think the fact that it 513 00:35:55,200 --> 00:36:00,000 Speaker 1: lacks utility but has a kind of an arresting beauty 514 00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:03,920 Speaker 1: may have been one of the things that drew women. 515 00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:08,080 Speaker 1: And so Georgia o'keeith clearly is the pre eminent person 516 00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:13,200 Speaker 1: that one can give credit to for having popularized bad 517 00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,280 Speaker 1: lands in our time. But I mean, as I mentioned 518 00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,040 Speaker 1: in this piece, there are a bunch of other women 519 00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:21,600 Speaker 1: who play a major role. Mary Austin with her book 520 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:23,960 Speaker 1: Land of Little Rain back at the turn of the 521 00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,360 Speaker 1: twentieth century, and one of my favorites is Evelyn Cameron, 522 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:35,279 Speaker 1: that British expatriot who lived with her naturalist husband outside Terry, Montana, 523 00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,640 Speaker 1: and who in the years from about the eighteen eighties 524 00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:43,920 Speaker 1: through about nineteen fifteen or so, photographed endlessly photographed all 525 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:48,520 Speaker 1: that country around Terry. And as I mentioned in the script, 526 00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:51,040 Speaker 1: one of the sort of fascinating things about her and 527 00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:55,239 Speaker 1: her husband is that they not only were intrigued by 528 00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:59,960 Speaker 1: the wildlife of eastern Montana, but they had this thing 529 00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:05,839 Speaker 1: where they would capture young coyotes, in one instance two 530 00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:10,440 Speaker 1: young wolf pups and raise them up as pets. And 531 00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,880 Speaker 1: so they are all these remarkable photographs of of Evelyn 532 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:20,960 Speaker 1: and her husband with these various animals, all kinds of raptors, 533 00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:25,560 Speaker 1: predatory raptors, and coyotes and wolves in particular. 534 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:33,040 Speaker 3: And I think in this piece you highlight the sort 535 00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:40,640 Speaker 3: of very unique esthetic qualities of western badlands. There's layers 536 00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,879 Speaker 3: of color, there's strata of geology, and then there's these 537 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:48,240 Speaker 3: shapes that don't see quite seem to make sense. 538 00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:49,120 Speaker 2: You know. 539 00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,520 Speaker 3: I think of being out in eastern Montana and you 540 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:56,239 Speaker 3: see these washes that sort of go down in waves, and. 541 00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,319 Speaker 2: Can you sort of speak to how I mean. 542 00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,680 Speaker 3: I know that you're a big fan of this being 543 00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:06,040 Speaker 3: in this country, but it does elicit a very different 544 00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:10,319 Speaker 3: sort of emotional and intellectual response than you know, a 545 00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:11,320 Speaker 3: big granite peak. 546 00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:12,840 Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. 547 00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:18,080 Speaker 1: It's as Georgia O'Keefe said about the Red Hills the 548 00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:21,600 Speaker 1: bad lands around her place outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, 549 00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:27,319 Speaker 1: it's a marvelous place to climb around in and it's 550 00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:30,080 Speaker 1: that kind of country. It's very human scale. 551 00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:30,760 Speaker 2: Bad lands. 552 00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:34,879 Speaker 1: Mounds are most often not more than thirty five to 553 00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:39,480 Speaker 1: fifty feet high, so they're fairly easily scalable and climbable. 554 00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:46,080 Speaker 1: And it's a kind of a landscape with rhythm and 555 00:38:46,239 --> 00:38:53,360 Speaker 1: symmetry to it along with color and sculpture that I've 556 00:38:53,560 --> 00:38:56,080 Speaker 1: found for most of the time i've been in the 557 00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,120 Speaker 1: West really arresting. I mean, I've, as I mentioned in 558 00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:04,160 Speaker 1: that script, I've made long pilgrimages in order to see 559 00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,200 Speaker 1: particular bad lands country that I hadn't spent time in, 560 00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:12,240 Speaker 1: and and I've done it repeatedly just because I'm moved 561 00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,120 Speaker 1: by that kind of terrain. It's kind it's got a 562 00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:21,520 Speaker 1: granular kind of surface tactile feel to it, but it's 563 00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:25,480 Speaker 1: mostly a really visually compelling. 564 00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,319 Speaker 2: Kind of landscape. And and I. 565 00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:33,440 Speaker 1: Think that is probably why it drew so many photographers 566 00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,439 Speaker 1: and artists. As Georgia O'Keefe said, I mean, she said, 567 00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:40,000 Speaker 1: I don't have to invent these paintings. I just paint 568 00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:43,480 Speaker 1: what's there. And here it is with all this arresting 569 00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:44,719 Speaker 1: grace and rhythm to. 570 00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,560 Speaker 3: It, and there's a there's sort of a timelessness that 571 00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:52,799 Speaker 3: we associate with with like a mountain peak. Obviously there 572 00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:56,120 Speaker 3: is a history there, but when you're in bad Lands country, 573 00:39:56,680 --> 00:40:00,520 Speaker 3: you can see time and history right in front of 574 00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,359 Speaker 3: your face. And it's almost like you could go back 575 00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:05,840 Speaker 3: there and visit the next year and see what's exposed 576 00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:09,080 Speaker 3: now in terms of just you know, artifacts and bones 577 00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:10,479 Speaker 3: and fossils and things like that. 578 00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:11,120 Speaker 2: Yeah. 579 00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,520 Speaker 1: Well, I mean one of the great national parks built 580 00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:16,200 Speaker 1: around bad lands in the West is a petrified forest 581 00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,480 Speaker 1: in Arizona. I mean, it's a bad lands, but it 582 00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:25,760 Speaker 1: is endlessly exposing fossils and petrified wood, and so yeah, 583 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:29,640 Speaker 1: that's another to me. Part of the appeal of a 584 00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:33,160 Speaker 1: place like that is that every time you go things 585 00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:33,760 Speaker 1: have changed. 586 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,160 Speaker 2: I mean, these. 587 00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:38,840 Speaker 1: Clay mounds are pretty friable, and so they can be 588 00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,040 Speaker 1: altered by weather, even the weather of two. 589 00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:42,720 Speaker 2: Or three years. 590 00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,960 Speaker 1: If you get a lot of rainstorms, it will change 591 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:49,560 Speaker 1: the way they look. So unlike say a granite peak 592 00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:54,120 Speaker 1: that pretty much remains the same throughout your lifetime, this 593 00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:59,239 Speaker 1: is country that is changing at a pretty interestingly rapid rate. 594 00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:08,719 Speaker 3: And I think at least in Montana, there's this It 595 00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,880 Speaker 3: connects us to a story that's millions of years old. 596 00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:15,200 Speaker 3: When you think about the Great Inland Sea. Oh yeah, 597 00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:20,960 Speaker 3: I mean there's there you look at the landscape and 598 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:25,799 Speaker 3: you think to yourself, this hasn't always been this way, right, 599 00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:29,880 Speaker 3: like you're on a seabed, and it sort of brings 600 00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:35,200 Speaker 3: into relief that long history of environmental change. 601 00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:37,640 Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of the bad lands in Montana 602 00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:42,160 Speaker 1: are from the old, the ancient inland sea that extended 603 00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:45,920 Speaker 1: all the way from the Gulf across the continent and 604 00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,360 Speaker 1: right through Montana. So yeah, that's one of the things 605 00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:51,919 Speaker 1: that that I think you get to do when you're 606 00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:56,839 Speaker 1: walking around or hiking, backpacking and country like this, as 607 00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:59,760 Speaker 1: you do get to imagine these kind of vast sweeps 608 00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,759 Speaker 1: of time, and you know that's that's part of the 609 00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:03,359 Speaker 1: appeal of. 610 00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:07,000 Speaker 2: The West for sure. Well, Dan, thank you, how you bet, Randal, 611 00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:08,320 Speaker 2: Thanks m