We just got back from a vacation to the Black Hills (where we stayed) and the Badlands, where I drove and friend of mine and I hiked and visited.
In the space of six days, I returned with four new story ideas!
I’ll tender an explanation after I shared the ideas with you.
1) “Idiot Teenager Rock” On the outskirts of Keystone, SD, there rests a rock, obviously broken off from the towering cliffs that surround it. Of COURSE, teenagers dare each other to climb it! Of course they do! But there have been accidents. More than one broken bone. More than one serious injury. Maybe even one or two deaths…On the day someone is going to climb it, a crowd gathers. Not ONLY to watch, but to chant a litany. A litany of FAILURES. A boy likes a girl. He wants to impress her. But he’s terrified of heights. He sets out to climb…but the story won’t end the way you THINK it might…
2) Far future of the Vertical Village stories: An extended family of Lakota has gathered to take a biannual pilgrimage through the Sacred Badlands. It’s not a SAFE journey, so they are prepared. The pilgrimage is conducted in the old ways – non-motorized, though advisedly along the highway constructed long ago. They are attacked by a band of bofwhig and repel them using tranks and stunners, treating them as bofwhigs treated their ancestors. (All I have here is an image so far…) [Terrorists blew up Rushmore, leaving only Abraham Lincoln. Counter terrorists blew up Crazy Horse, leaving only the face.”]
3) “Harrison’s Hideout” – Physics doctoral candidate went to space to gather evidence for his theory: that alien civilizations use GRAVITY WAVES to communicate, but facing mounting doubt, he returned to his SD home and opened a “real” restaurant across from the local, cowboy watering hole – run by former best friend, long-time antagonist Milton “Custer” Pribyll. After some time, Harrison is visited by a giant, alien kangaroo (Shabe)…
4) Near where we stayed was an abandoned mine. Gold? Iron? Lead? Nope, rocks…there are PILES of quartz with mica intrusions, slate, granite, muscovite shist, rose quartz, feldspar, and endless rocks of white and transparent quartz. After we discovered huge piles of what appeared to be white sand, some research (on my phone!) and at home led me to this: https://www.dakotamatrix.com/content/pegmatites-of-the-black-hills Several photos down show the Etta Mine – with the giant stone I wrote about in #1!!!! The mine I got samples from is probably the Rose Mine. A guy in a pickup truck (yeah, I know exactly how lame that sounds…) said that the mine also dug up, crushed and shipped this ultra-fine white sand to a supplier for NASA, who used it to create pure quartz glass for…the exterior windows of the Space Shuttles!!!! (Which are no longer built…so the mine is abandoned. I found this as well: “Shuttle windows are made from a high-temperature quartz glass that can withstand heating and cooling without cracking. The same explanation applies to the Russian Soyuz and to NASA's new spacecraft called Orion that is under development.” https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/2007/faq-shuttleglass.html). A map I found MIGHT be the Rose Mine the cabin was near: https://westernmininghistory.com/mine_detail/10055784/ It’s NOT this mine, but it looks a lot like the mine we were near – see the link below. Apparently it’s owned by a company called Mintec (https://www.miningfoundationsw.org/Mintec)
Sorry about the "Squirrel!" moment up there. The upshot of this article is this: I said, “Abandoned mines make no sense to me.”
My wife responded, “Abandoned mines?”
I said, smiling, “Yep, not ‘Abandoned Minds’…”
And then: “What if AI are used to mine? Then a mine plays out or is abandoned. While poking around, I stumble across one. What next? Ground quartz is used to make Space Shuttle glass…”
The moral of this rather meandering story, is that you have NO IDEA WHERE YOUR NEXT IDEA WILL COME FROM, so be ready to greet it AND WRITE IT DOWN!
Links: https://www.cmog.org/article/glass-and-space-orbiter, https://www.google.com/maps/place/403+Pankratz+Rd,+Keystone,+SD+57751/@43.887619,-103.420581,134m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x877d2d1984c98da9:0x5581705fe0269db7!2sRose+Quartz+Mine!3b1!8m2!3d43.7158186!4d-103.5154715!3m4!1s0x877d36476d51c453:0x5c2a23156076003e!8m2!3d43.8878439!4d-103.4201578?hl=en
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