Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, Nebraska
A hike on the Daemonelix Trail in Agate Fossil Beds National Monument leads to the Lakota’s Ca’pa el ti, strange spiral burrows of a long-extinct beaver. The New Territory, Issue 03.
“It’s only the middle of June and already it’s hot as hell out here in the far northwestern corner of Nebraska, where the Niobrara River cuts through the prairie’s tough hide like an old, half-healed knife wound. A wiry pelt of vegetation swaths the undulating slopes, but in the steepest places, the crumbling, pale gray flesh of the earth shows through. The afternoon sun bounces off the bare bluffs, throwing heat and light back at me as I scan their flanks, and sweat trickles down my spine. Perfect weather for checking out what the homesteaders who settled these parts in the 1800s called the Devil’s Corkscrews.”
