Here’s a plea that was stuck in my head during my summer in the Black Hills.
“No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs–anything–but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they too are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.”
It’s a quote from author and environmentalist Edward Abbey in his nature work, Desert Solitaire. Like Abbey and his disgust with tourists and vacationers in the desert Southwest, I spent a fair amount of my summer clenching my teeth at the descendants of Abbey’s tourists in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
During the summer months, the Black Hills are flooded with tourists. After spending my summer living a stone’s throw away from Black Hills National Forest, it occurred to me that there is a problem with tourism that goes beyond Abbey’s revulsion of cars.
The next time you see a map, try to point out the Black Hills. After that, try to point out the tallest mountain range east of the Rockies in the United States. If your finger stayed in the southwest corner of South Dakota, then you make up the small amount of Americans who are aware of the geological gem that is the Black Hills.
Rodney Fahey, longtime resident of Rapid City in the Black Hills, however, is fully aware of all it has to offer.
“The Black Hills are special because it’s a relatively unknown place. Despite Mount Rushmore being here, there are a surprising amount of people who don’t even know where South Dakota is, or that they have mountains. It’s a beautiful place that isn’t too crowded,” Fahey said.
However, since my personal experiences included only the summer months, the Black Hills did seem crowded, and for what seems like the wrong reason. The Black Hills are a mountain range surrounded by the Great Plains. They were inhabited for thousands of years by Native Americans before Euroamericans came and discovered gold. But what do you do once the gold has been found and claimed, and mass injustices have already been committed unto the Native American people?
Someone must have asked this question before deciding that the Black Hills would make a great place to carve some faces into rock, build some hotels and casinos, and then set even more tourist traps for the millions of Americans travelling to the Hills. After that, they would decide that the Black Hills would be an even better destination for a “giant party,” (as Fahey calls the Sturgis Rally) for motorcyclists to travel thousands of miles for. All this might as well have been set in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
“If you’ve ever been to the Hills, you’ve seen all of the mini-golf courses and mazes and slides and amusement parks which have absolutely nothing to do with the uniqueness of this place, yet they draw people in. It seems like these places take away from the genuine beauty of the Black Hills,” Fahey said. “I feel like many of the tourists and rally-goers who come here don’t actually realize what this place is before making the decision to come. Maybe if people slowed down and took in all the natural beauty of this place, they’d be a bit surprised.”
Slowing down might mean leaving the air-conditioning of your fuel-burning car. This also might mean making your kids walk and sweat when you take them in fifteen years. Walk the mile or two of sidewalks in Keystone, Custer, Hill city, or Deadwood, but don’t go back to your cool hotel room afterwards.
Leave the car and concrete behind. Hike some of the shocking 450 miles of trails in the Black Hills National Forest. Go camping, fishing, swimming, kayaking or canoeing, cycling or mountain biking. And don’t turn back when your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend starts to drag their feet and complain about the heat or humidity. Cherish that bead of sweat on your forehead and forget about carrying water for a couple of hours. Maybe after you return to your car you won’t take that cooler full of plastic water bottles for granted.
Above all else, remember where you are. The United States has some of the best landscapes in the world set aside for people to visit and enjoy. Don’t let the tourist industry compete with these vast natural places by putting price tags on them and selling them in a gift shop. The natural amenities of the United States should be utilized in ways that incorporate outdoor recreation, not indoor tourism that takes away the beauty from the natural landscapes.
And although parts of the Black Hills have been developed for tourism, remember that the standing trees still make up a forest and the forest is still a sanctuary, not one big gift shop. Anyway, forget the $45 dollar sweatshirts in Keystone, SD. They sell the same ones for $5 at any of the Walgreens.