My Black Hills, my home (part 1)
When did I know that I belonged to the Hills?
I’ve seen the pictures of day trips that my parents took when I was a toddler—a blanket laid beneath a tree while my dad climbed on some rocks nearby or my little head bobbing on my dad’s back while my parents hiked their favorite trails.
My earliest actual memories of time in the Hills are of camping with the Getz family. Jack and my dad went fishing in the early morning, and we cooked trout over the open fire for breakfast. It rained in theafternoon, and we huddled in our beat up truck topper and played cards as we waited for the rain to end. The towering pine trees stood watch as Tim and I played along the stream. That sound of water over rocks and wind in the trees became an expected part of my childhood experience.
Our family would often go to slash areas in the Hills and cut firewood for our fireplace at home. I took pleasure in walking as far as I could from the pickup truck and finding the biggest, longest logs that were just barely at the edge of the chainsaw noise carrying through the trees. I would sit on a rock and turn my face up to the sky as the pine trees swayed in the wind. I’d just sit in the quiet and feel this warmth like heated molasses oozing into the crevices of my heart. Even as a girl I just….loved…the quiet. I wasn’t a particularly quiet child at all. Ask my mother who regularly told me to pipe down, but I felt reverence and peace in the woods. I felt at home. After some blessed moments of being still on the rock, I would pick up my log and drag it toward the chainsaw buzzing, triumphantly displaying my trophy log to my parents. Perhaps this was when I knew.
We would sometimes change clothes after church on Sunday mornings so that we could go out in the Hills as soon as the service was over. I remember standing and looking in the mirror of the women’s bathroom as my mom pulled off my tights or lifted my dress over my head. Then off we’d go on an adventure.
We camped. We climbed. We hiked. We took pictures. We laughed. We lived life. We did it all in the woods, the intimate mountains of South Dakota. The coldest water I ever had to endure in a bathing suit was at Sylvan Lake, and to this day I abhor cold water for swimming. I caught snails. I chased tadpoles. I fished, walked on frozen lakes, cut down Christmas trees and walked to the tallest peak between the Rockies and the Alps. I walked in snow, rain, hall and sunshine, often with a John Denver song playing in my mind, because he was at the height of his mountain loving popularity.
This was my childhood. This was where we laughed with friends, explored together and passed time. My parents were together, and there was not a hint of divorce between them. It was the time of childhood oblivion. My brother came along, and he used his tiny little fingers to hold up fish, play with sticks and pick up pine cones with me. He ran in the meadows and giggled with me, often veering off to explore his own imagination in the woods. It was a glorious time. It was the soft, safe cocoon of childhood, and I loved it there.
