No. 269 – Breath

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriters: Stone Gossard, Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Year: 1992

Definitive Version: None.

It’s hard to believe I started this here blog two years ago today. In some ways it seems as though it was only yesterday; in others it seems as though I’ve been doing this my whole life. Now onto today’s entry, already in progress …

After Scott and I were allowed to escape that backwater third-world land known as Canada into our country in the summer of 1993, we made a beeline for South Dakota. We stopped for breakfast, but our interest in Montana otherwise ended when we left Glacier National Park.

The plan at this point of our epic Seattle to Chicago vacation was to get to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Being locked out of our country and sleeping at the border afforded us an extra two hours of time. By the time we got to Belle Fourche and checked in at our motel, we were able to drive back to Wyoming (we cut the corner on our trek to South Dakota) and see Devils Tower.

I knew Devils Tower, as I suspect most of you do, from Close Encounters, which upped the mysticism of the place even more than a huge dark chunk of stone sticking up out of the middle of nowhere otherwise would have. No question, there was some serious juju working on that place, and we could feel it as we approached via a winding two-lane road from the east.

Because of the hilly nature of the area—it’s called the Black HILLS after all—we couldn’t see Devils Tower for a long time, and Scott and I played a game of who would spot it first. We both won.

We came around a corner, and all of a sudden, there it was—still miles away, seemingly sticking up out of grassfield like an ugly thorn. From our angle, it appeared to have a slightly squashed top and gently sloping sides, as though God stuck a gray pushpin into the ground but pressed just a bit too hard on it.

Woah. Scott pulled the Pontiac Sunbird to the side of the road so we could take pictures and just kind of soak it in. Wow, he said, I got the creeps just from seeing it. I also felt a little tingly. Like I said, serious juju.

From then on, we always had a view of Devils Tower as we drew inexorably closer, but when we arrived at the entrance of the park, we found that it would cost us $20 to enter. The sun was starting to set, so we wouldn’t be able to spend much time before getting the boot, and we passed on going in. Instead, we drove back to South Dakota and watched from a bar as Ken Griffey Jr. tied a major-league record by homering in his eighth straight game.

We had a fairly big agenda the next day—Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. I made a tactical mistake—my second in three days. If you haven’t been and you plan to go to the Black Hills, do yourself a favor and go see both, but definitely go to Mt. Rushmore before you go to Crazy Horse. We didn’t.

I had heard of the Crazy Horse Memorial for some time. When I was a kid, my friend Marty and I were heavily into Logan’s Run. The comic-book series was much better than the movie, which was better than the book. Neither the comic nor the movie mentioned Crazy Horse, but in the book, it was a key landmark. That was the extent of my knowledge about the memorial commemorating the Sioux warrior who wiped out Custer and his men. Scott knew nothing about Crazy Horse.

I can attest that Scott knows about it now. As we pulled in, paying the $10 admission, the memorial was miles away, yet it still dominated the countryside. At the time, the operation was bare bones—just a few workers (mostly Natives) who led us into a room for a slideshow that talked about the history and the plans for the future. After that, we went outside to a viewing platform to take a look at the mountain where Korczak Ziolkowski began 45 years ago to sculpture of Crazy Horse atop his steed.

Scott was blown away. I’d never seen him so beside himself. The sheer size of the project was awesome enough, but what really put the zap on him was the realization that he’d never see it completed. “This will not be done in my lifetime,” he said over and over, letting the enormity of it sink in.

And he’d never known this existed before this day. He had no idea! Scott said it was by far the favorite thing he saw on our vacation. It was for me, too. He stuck a Ten into the donation box.

Then we went to Mt. Rushmore. Laying aside the notion that Mt. Rushmore is an insult to the Natives who treat the Black Hills as sacred ground only to have their vanquishers carve their faces into their holy land, it just wasn’t impressive in context. It was cool and would've been fine had we stopped there first.

But all four presidential heads could fit into just the head of Crazy Horse. Heck, they could put the heads of all 44 presidents up there, and it still would pale in scope. I imagined that it would have been like seeing The Monkees in 1967. I like The Monkees—two of their songs are on this here list—and I suppose they’d do a pretty good show. But I just saw Jimi Freakin’ Hendrix open. How do you follow that? You don’t. And you don’t follow Crazy Horse with Mt. Rushmore. Trust me on this.

Still reeling from our Crazy Horse experience, we headed east towards the Badlands …