‘South Dakota boasts a peculiar slogan, ‘Great Faces, Great Places,’ and they would have you believe this was in sole reference to Mt. Rushmore. Beyond this, they would have you believe that Mt. Rushmore accounts for all of the stone faces available along the Wayside and that it is the creation of a species that, admittedly, so enjoys seeing itself that a great portion of its artistic endeavors attempt what a mirror or camera or a well-programmed 3D printer could create in an instant. Can you imagine, reader, if we were not alone in this motivation? Can you imagine the statue of a buck fashioned by its own hooves, the pointed horns a still-green pine branch that shivers in the wind and the eyes, black stone?
The truth is that there are faces everywhere and there are more faces every day- the warped faces in the wood grain of your childhood wardrobe, the crude gaping mouths of cliffsides and ancient trees all early stages of the same phenomenon. These faces did not always exist but, having recognized the faces in the Black Hills, the nation can no longer contain them.
The first time the faces were brought to the attention of America’s colonizers occurred when a pioneering woman named Leana Brookings fell into a sinkhole that she hoped would lead her to gold. In excavating several similar pits nearby her family revealed the face of a great uncle, screaming (or yawning) at the cloudless sky (the initial pit being just one of his deep-set eyes). So struck, were they, with the dread of deep space and dark water (seeing something so familiar made monstrous) that they set to leveling the land. The second recorded incident was of ‘The Overhang Smile,’ a beloved natural fissure observed by the denizens of a canyon settlement. The fissure is said to have dissolved in a sudden rockslide, killing a man and simultaneously revealing his own smiling face below the rough caricature that had previously been the center of sentimental stories (most of which seemed to suggest the white man had always been in the Black Hills).
The faces occur on a small scale as well, looking down from cavern ceilings, their gaping mouths serving as handholds to unwitting spelunkers (whose lights make shadows and faces of everything in the dark). Some emerge, smooth and cool, from river-washed stones. Others break fully-formed, a blight in the crystal hearts of local geodes. No matter the size, the faces play on the human psyche like an itch- sometimes fearful like the crawling of an invisible insect and sometimes annoying like the peel of a dried scab. In either case, the faces seem to call a viewer to scratch and, in either case, the scratching only seems to worsen the condition.
Aside from Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse (which emerges inevitably despite a concerted private effort to demolish it), undamaged specimens can be viewed in a shallow cavern outside the ‘Gas n’ Begone.’ Zelda Flanders, owner, does not publicly advertise the faces but will sell you instructions to the trailhead and rent you a flashlight with the same demeanor a conservative drug-store cashier might employ in selling condoms to a nervous teen. She will offer no rules to guide your tour, secretly hoping that someone will do away with the silent audience that darkens her property like mold in a closet.’
– excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
