I don’t care for extreme heat. For some reason I seem poorly equipped (from a physiological standpoint) to handle it, so I tend to stay out of it. But since I was already handling an outdoor task with a friend, and we had finished said task, I decided to do some photo fetching. Once again the sun was a giant orb in an otherwise hazy sky, so I bolted to one of my Secret Spots to aim for an unusual perspective.

I used to live in Big Sky, Montana and work for the ski patrol there. I basically got paid to snowboard all day at a time when few resorts actually allowed snowboards; the sport was pretty new in the late 80’s. My best friend Corey was from Detroit Lakes, and referred to North Dakotans as “Flatlanders.” One would have thought the drive through the Badlands would have enlightened him, but he still held the view of many Minnesotans whose only experience with North Dakota is the Red River Valley. Well, the land surrounding Bismarck-Mandan is anything but flat.

This sunset is taking place just north of the Square Buttes. If you go out to Double Ditch Indian Village and park in the little parking lot on the north end, you’ll see some educational signage describing the Square Buttes. They’re a little hard to see from there, as they reside a few miles north on the Mandan side…but they’re there, they’re enormous, they’re real, and they’re spectacular. Beside the two large, flat-topped buttes sits this rugged set of features, overlooking the mighty Missouri.

I’ve had some neat Square Butte photos before, even at sunset, but this time I left out the wide, flat buttes to just concentrate on the jagged lines of the hills to the north. Once the sun had receded past the horizon, however…that’s a different story. With a different lighting situation and the sun out of the picture:

This allowed me to capture the last remaining bit of color in the sky and highlight the wide open area of the river without having the distraction of the sun on the horizon. I’m the kind of guy who, if shown a photo like this with the sun still poking up, would try to get a closer look at the sun. So in this case I decided to accomplish the task of capturing the moment with two photos. This area looks completely different within the span of five or ten minutes.

If you get out of Bismarck-Mandan even a very short distance and look around, you’ll see some really dramatic landscapes. We have lots of hills, buttes, mesas, and valleys that tend to blend into the scenery unless one is looking for them. For example, the next time you’re stopped in the southbound lane of State Street at the intersection with Divide Avenue, look straight ahead toward the southwest horizon. There are some pretty cool hills out there! When the sun is right, it looks like what we’d imagine as a Southwestern USA horizon. Just because ours have grass on them doesn’t make those rugged hills any less beautiful…and they’re right in our own backyard.