Bad Spirit Land in Winter

Our earth has been catastrophically marked from pole to pole by the great Flood. The remnants are everywhere, from the tropical fossils in the Arctic and Antarctica, to the ocean fossils on mountaintops all over the world.

Makoshika, or "Bad Spirit Place", is one such fascinating spot. Though I personally haven't succeeded in finding them yet, some of our friends know of places within the park where you can hike around and find fossilized shells and shark teeth just lying on the ground. Glendive, the nearest city, is just over 2500 feet above sea level, and Makoshika is farther uphill than that.

Not only did sharks and shells somehow wash over a thousand miles inland to a hilly country 2500+ feet above sea level, but numerous dinosaur bones have been found there, as well.

One of the most famous is an excellent specimen of triceratops skull. Fossils of nine other types of dinosaurs have also been found, including the Thescelosaurus Jack Horner's team found in 1997. A park manager found a bison fossil in 2009.

Snow covers much of the ground, drifting fairly deep in some places. Not everyone was dressed for a hike, coming straight from church as we were. Technically speaking, all of us were unprepared, to some degree or other. Five out of seven of us had improper footgear, some VERY improper. Others of us had less than ideal clothing.

I was in fairly good shape, in my Winter Church Chic look: skirt, Eskimo jacket, thick gloves, black long johns (since after all, I was dressing up more formally), and warm boots. It could have been worse. Tiggy wore pants...capri pants. If not for the thin boots she borrowed from me, she would have had trouble. Jack wore underarmor under his dress clothes, but his slip-on shoes weren't intended for snow hiking. Tina had dressed much like me, only with black stockings instead of black long johns.

Worst of all was Cowboy Devon, wearing my unwittingly borrowed jacket (grrrr!), a western shirt, blue jeans, and yep, cowboy boots. He had already fallen on the ice twice, and apparently wanted to see how much more trouble he could get into. As usual. As usual, he was able to answer that question with flair.

All the way along the trail, Jack stepped exactly in our friend's footsteps, so he didn't get much snow in his shoes, even in the deep places. There's bound to be a good lesson in there somewhere.

Devon did not follow the path so clearly marked out for him. There's bound to be a good lesson there, too.

He tried to follow the other kids up hills and down coulees, right until his boot got stuck in the snow. Be sure to check in with Tina's blog in the next day or two or three for an excellent photojournalistic documentation of the rescue operation. We had to take the long way around to the other side of the gully, while Devon warmed his now-bare feet on Tiggy's abdomen.

Being the kind, warm, caring mother that I am, I carried him on my back most of the way back to the car. Even mother love balked at hauling him up the last steep hill, so he had to make a dash for it. "Eeech, aaatch, ooootch, ouch," trailed behind him all the way.

"I wish I hadn't brought these old bootcycles," I said to myself. (If you haven't already heard the story, remind me to tell you about that tidbit of family history later.)

Despite a temperature of -3F, I was sweaty, um I mean rosy, when I got back to the vehicle. As thin as Devon is, he is also surprisingly solid. Add snow clothes - wet snow clothes - and you have a nifty workout.

He didn't even have frostbite this time, thanks more to Tiggy than to him actually learning a lesson about dressing appropriately for cold weather.

We all had a nice trip home, all three hours of it, especially once Devon fell asleep. Oops, did I say that out loud? Now we're looking forward to going back and visiting the Creation Museum. Who would've thought they would have one so close to us?

Before I snuggle up and go to sleep, I want to leave you with one final thought - if the story of Noah's Flood is a myth, as so many believe, or was just an exaggerated version of some local flood, then why does virtually every culture on earth have a Flood legend? Even remote tribes only recently discovered have these legends, often with such details as eight people saved in a boat, while the rest of the world perished. Well worth looking into, for the open-minded.

That doesn't even begin to cover Ooparts, or a host of other odd things that don't fit within the traditional framework of evolution, but I said one final thought, so one final thought it shall be. Er, one final thought it already was.

Exhausted from the adventure,

Noni Beth

PS Although I color-correct my photos as often as I can when using my other computer, the overwhelming blue cast is actually a pretty accurate representation of the winter light here. It's so beautiful, with all sorts of blue and purple pastels from morning to night. It only drives me crazy in my photos.