Every photographer eventually builds a list of places they almost visited. Wind Cave National Park went on that list during my 50 at 60 journey through the Dakotas — I was in the area, saw it on the map, noted it as somewhere I should head. I was tight on time. I kept moving. The park stayed on the map and in the back of my mind, which is exactly where unfinished business tends to live.
The color of the Badlands is what most visitors remember and most photographs fail to communicate accurately. The formations are not one color — they are dozens. Cream and tan in the upper sedimentary layers, deep burgundy and rust in the iron-rich bands below, lavender and gray in the volcanic ash layers, the whole spectrum shifting continuously as the light angle changes. At midday those colors flatten to a washed-out beige. At sunrise and sunset they deepen and saturate to something that looks almost impossible — the kind of color that makes first-time visitors stop mid-sentence and just look.