We saw it from the highway first, a grey thumb pressed against a sky the color of dishwater, and Lia leaned across the dashboard to look. Neither of us said anything for a while. There is a strange authority to Devils Tower that photographs flatten completely; it does not sit in the landscape so much as command it, and the closer we drove the more the flat plains seemed to be there only to hold it up. By the time we parked at the base, the sun had dropped low enough to turn the columns amber, and I understood why people used to think it grew here by something other than geology.
Walking the Base
The trail that loops the tower is only a little over a mile, and we did it slowly, our necks craned the whole time. Up close the fluting resolves into hexagonal columns of phonolite, some of them cracked and toppled into the talus, and I kept putting my hand on the cool stone as if to check it was real. Lia found the prayer bundles first, little cloths of red and yellow tied to the pines, and we lowered our voices without discussing it. This is sacred ground to more than twenty tribes, who call it Bear Lodge, and the loop trail felt less like a walk than a slow act of paying attention.
The Climbers
Halfway around we spotted them: two specks moving impossibly slowly up a crack in the rock, roped together, their voices carrying down thin and cheerful. I am not a climber and never will be, but I stood there a long time with my head tipped back, watching them inch upward while swifts cut around the summit. A ranger passing by told us the tower sees hundreds of climbers a season, though many honor a voluntary June closure out of respect for Native ceremonies. Lia said she liked that, a mountain shared by careful negotiation rather than conquered outright.
The Prairie Dogs
I had come for the monolith, but it was the prairie dog town near the entrance that made us laugh until we cried. Hundreds of them stood sentinel over their burrows in the meadow below the tower, chirping alarms and diving underground in comic waves as we walked past. Lia crouched at the edge of the field for the better part of an hour, entirely forgetting the eight-hundred-foot marvel behind her. We ate our sandwiches there on the grass, the tower glowing pink now, the little animals bickering, and it was one of those hours that arrives without warning and lodges in you for good.
Getting There
Devils Tower sits in the northeast corner of Wyoming, and there is no fast way to reach it, which is part of the point. We drove up from the Black Hills of South Dakota, about an hour and a half of two-lane road through Sundance and past hayfields, though it also makes an easy detour off I-90 if you are crossing the state. The nearest real airport is Rapid City, roughly two hours east. Come in late afternoon if you can, pay the park entrance fee, and stay for the light; the campground at the base fills quickly in summer, but the sunset over those columns is worth arranging your whole day around.