Hello,
I am well rested and ready to meet my next destination, Deadwood, South Dakota.  But first, a recap...

On Saturday morning, I rolled into Mulberry Grove, IL.  I arrived to see the trailer with completed subfloor (only those of us who worked on Sarah's floor can truly understand how relieving this is!!) packed with all my building SIPs.  Ken of Eagle Panels and his employee helped me get rolling.  It seemed the trailer brakes didn't work, but everything else was ready. I drove through Kansas, stopped at a truck stop service center to inquire about the brakes... with one flip of a dial, all brakes were in excellent working order. But I noticed as the mechanic fiddled with brakes that the boxes on the trailer had migrated forward about 12 inches. The OSB floor was slippery! I needed a forklift. That night I stayed in Kansas City. On Sunday afternoon I stopped at Home Depot.  Mike and Nathan took an hour out of their day to put the boxes back on center with a forklift and make other fixes.  Problem solved. That afternoon I drove North on I29 through the most beautiful state in the midwest, Nebraska. Imagine Illinois cornfields, plus trees, hills and rivers!  It took all night, thanks to multiple detours for flood repairs, but I made it to Sioux City, IA by 4am Monday morning.  After a nap that lasted til mid-morning, I drove onward, into South Dakota and finally to my current location, my first wild destination, Badlands National Park!

Last night, Monday at 5pm, I wandered the grounds of my hotel.  (I checked into the Badlands Inn because it was raining, and I'm lazy!)  I took photos like a true tourist, then hoofed it to the lodge and back, making the most of the lasting light.  The night sky cleared, and the visible milky way shot many a star above me.  Farther west, a lightning storm flickered, so I perched myself on the fence to watch the show.  Apparently, it was a vantage for the locals, because a giant bird, either a hawk or a owl (it was too dark to determine which) flew in and perched next to me on a park sign about ten feet away.  He purred, literally!  And the wind howled, the crickets played, and I heard the sound of myself unravel for the first time in many months.

This is what EcoDance, for me, is about.  Unraveling.  Hearing deeper sounds, sounds beneath the mental twitters and chirps of the urban life.  Urban life is a requirement as a dancer-- it is the only place where enough dancers congregate to make a dance community.  But urban life doesn't provide one necessity, and this I realized as I walked past a lonely little wild sunflower last night.  As a dancer, I need the wild because it doesn't need me, or my art.  I need it to survive in it, live briefly in accordance to laws above my understanding, the most complex and perfect aesthetics I have ever observed.  THAT is what feeds my work. To live in a place that is greater than any artwork, if only briefly, is what feeds my art.

This morning my hotel-mates packed up busily at dawn, preparing to DO something remarkable, to observe this fabulous place.  But, their emphasis is on the doing-- driving to the perfect view at the perfect time of day with the perfect picnic packed, parked in perfect lot slot. By 9am, the only people left to keep me company were two young asian girls.  They paraded back and forth past my balcony window, cupping their hands to peek into my uncurtained window (the mountain view from this bed is fabulous), chatting to each other and waving hello.  Together we watched the cliff shadows shifting underneath the rising sun, without doing anything, really.

Okay, I'm packing up, next destination, Deadwood.  I won't be online for a couple days... more later!  Thanks for reading. -Hallie