Devil’s Tower

Who doesn’t love a good road trip? Road trips can be spontaneous, you just drive to see where it leads you. But they can also offer a level of control over the when, where, and how long to spend on the road. Travelers can choose when to depart, such as before the sunrise hours, after morning traffic, or early evening. They can pick a place on the map, near or far, and decide how long they want to spend on the road. How long they wish to stay anywhere. There’s also a certain beauty a traveler gets to enjoy while on the road. There’s so much to see.

Back in 2017, our family decided to complete a road trip. My mother and sister were visiting the United States from San Juan, and I wanted to show them great sites during their three-week visit. It was rare for my mother to travel, and she didn’t get many travel opportunities in her younger years. I wanted to fix that somehow. A road trip seemed fitting.

The road trip started on a rented minivan heading from Texas to Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs led us to South Dakota. From there, we planned to head straight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, until we realized a natural wonder was nearby. So we stopped at a place called the Devil’s Tower.

The Tower

The Devil’s Tower lies in the Black Hills, and it’s steeped in Native American oral histories with sacred narratives.

Let’s get technical/scientific for a bit. The Tower rises at 1,267 feet from the river valley, also described as a skyscraper. It is a geological wonder formed of a rare igneous rock and phonolite porphyry (see if you can say it three times fast). If you take a closer look, the Tower appears to have columns. The term for it is called columnar jointing. Basically, either lava or magma erupted from the earth straight up. It went from a liquid to a solid state as it cooled down. But we know what happens when things start to cool down, they crack. When this process occurred to the Tower, it created perfect hexagonal shapes.

Furthermore, it appears these events happened 50 million years ago, one to two miles underground. It wasn’t until between 5 to 10 million years ago that erosion started to occur. As it stripped away the earth, it revealed the Tower.

Mother nature is a true artist.

Hiking Trails

One of the hiking trails is short at around 1.25 miles, and it encircles the Tower. We decided to venture out on this trail since it could be completed in a short time. The trail involved many turns with highs and lows despite the paved terrain. It wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle (my then almost-four-year-old daughter hiked it like a boss).

As we hiked around the foundation, we saw a different side of the Tower each time. There were sections where we got a closer look and noticed climbers working their way up the Tower. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

No Aliens Encountered

As we left the general area of the Tower in our minivan, we stopped at a local gift shop where many of the featured gifts involved some type of green extra-terrestrial beings.

The Tower is featured heavily in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where Roy Neary’s life changes after an encounter with a UFO. Note: There were no close encounters with beings outside of planet Earth during our visit.

Takeaway

Overall, it was an amazing experience to be able to visit such a natural wonder. It goes on to show what mother nature is capable of creating over time.

***

Photos and story by ©Diana Lotti 2021.

The original story appeared on Medium.