I first learned of Devils Tower in 1977 in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss sculpted the image out of mashed potatoes. In the movie, the tower was a rendezvous point, a landing pad for alien visitors who were returning some borrowed people.
At the time, I was dating a girl who liked to smoke marijuana. We sat acutely stoned in the first row of the cavernous Uptown Theater in Washington DC, peering almost directly up at the screen. During the entire movie, we hunkered in our seats, terrified and giggling and devouring popcorn like crazy. I never smoked again.
In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt designated Devils Tower as our first National Monument. Even I couldn’t miss this one.
From my vantage point, still miles away from the Tower, it was impossible to tell exactly how big it was. But it was big and it was eerie: a huge craggy cone with deep creases running up and down its surface.
I pulled over to the side of the road to clean my glasses. I hate watching a smudgy world. The slightest mote of dust on my lenses sends me into paroxysms of cleanliness (though my obsession does not extend to other areas of housekeeping.)
…
Without my glasses, I squinted at the gnarled eastern face of Devil’s Tower. Bizarre images flashed to mind.
The burial mound of a Titan.
A Brobdingnagian Caesar imprisoned in the earth, only his enormous pate visible above the surface, flat-topped and laurel-crowned and creased with the cares of empire.
A child’s sandcastle a thousand feet high with serrated sides from an enormous scalloped bucket.
A gigantic subterranean dolphin with a tree-capped dorsal fin.
Or an alien landing area.
If I were an alien, I would head for Devils Tower. No matter how fantastic my appearance, I’d be sure to blend in.
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