In the distance the ground seemed to kind of fall away and the Land of Oz was back on earth again. Big time.
Newcombe turned off at the lookout on the edge of the park so we could see the whole thing beneath us. It was absolutely awesome. We got out of the van and walked to the edge, just staring.
Stretching out before us, as far as the eye could see, was a world of badlands. If we had been set down there from some other planet, this is what we would have thought the whole earth was like. There were a million Horseshoe and Horsethief canyons out there. You could just walk out into this place and never be found again.
Newcombe was giving us some information, and even his whiny voice couldn’t make it uninteresting.
“Legend has it that near this very spot a Blackfoot family raised a teepee of buffalo hide, right at the edge. They stayed for a short period and then left. No one knows why. Their people have always believed that this is both a bad and a beautiful land. To them, it is very spiritual.”
Imagine living right on the edge of that! No wonder they’d left. It would be pretty intense.
“This seventy-three-square-kilometre park is the richest dinosaur-fossil resource in the world.”
“Wow,” said Rhett, and Rhett isn’t given to a lot of wows.
It actually took Newcombe a while to drag us away from the lookout. On the walk out we saw a huge plaque on which park officials had engraved comments that people from all over the world had made: from the US, Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere. But the one I liked best was from a Canadian. “The land itself,” he wrote, “seems like the bones of the earth.”
Five minutes later we were descending into the main part of the park. Our first stop would be at the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s field station. A model of a triceratops stood outside, and inside there was a little museum, much smaller than the one in Drumheller. This place was just an information centre, with a ticket booth for bus rides into the Restricted Area of the park, where we were going. We would spend a few hours out there and then head to Calgary and the flight home.
We had a little tour of the field station and then went outdoors to hang out while we waited for the three o’clock bus. Slowly other tourists started gathering. For something to do, Bomb climbed up on the triceratops. Ophelia was on his case like an albertosaurus, and he had to get down. She seemed to have reverted to her old, charming self.
Dorothy hadn’t said anything about the Reptile since we’d left Dinosaur Valley; she seemed to have almost forgotten him. We were now far away from any evidence of his presence, real or imagined. Dorothy had been to the park only one other time, and she was obviously looking forward to her first trip into the Restricted Area.
We all loved the sound of the “Restricted Area.” It was as though we were going somewhere forbidden—we ignored the fact that we would be on a guided tour with a whole bunch of other tourists.
Soon the bus pulled up. Actually, it was a sort of minibus with an all-terrain look to it, for getting around on the rough ground of the badlands, I suppose. When the bus driver got out, Bomber started making eyes at the rest of us. We knew what he was thinking: she was, in his words, “a babe.” This woman was probably twice his age and likely could have taken him on a hike that would have just about killed him, or arm-wrestled him into the ground, but that didn’t matter to Bomb, she was still “a babe” to him—though I don’t think he really knows what a babe is, anyway.
She was a young woman with medium-length blond hair, blue eyes, and skin tanned brown from the sun. She was wearing the dark-green sweater—with a badge on the shoulder—and the lighter green shorts of a park ranger, and a park cap. She seemed very knowledgeable and capable, the sort of person who made you feel relaxed about everything. Ophelia liked her right from the start. And Newcombe, well, he just loved her. I’ve never seen him ask so many questions or listen with such fascination.
Her name was Katie Currie, but she said that everyone called her KD and we should, too. She started out by asking us a lot of questions. She stood at the front of the bus with a microphone and asked where everyone was from. There were people from Japan, England, the US, and, of course, us. Terry spoke up and very carefully explained why we were there. He was good at stuff like that.
KD then told us that Dinosaur Provincial Park was a World Heritage Site because of its unbelievable number of dinosaur fossils, its stunning badlands, and also its large collection of rare cottonwood trees. To be frank, we could have cared less about the trees—the other two attractions were what we had come for.
She explained to us that long ago the area had been a “lush, warm, coastal lowland.” There had been a huge body of water in Alberta called the Bearpaw Sea, and the humid environment had been perfect for many animals, among them the dinosaurs. She said that almost every known species of dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period had been found here. She mentioned the T. rex, the albertosaurus, and the maiasaura, or “good mother lizard,” a favourite of hers, and the only dinosaur with a feminine name.
Once we got into the Restricted Area, we would be welcome to pick up dinosaur fossils. She made it sound easy. Apparently, they were all over the place. All you had to do was know how to pick them out among the other rocks.
“First of all, they have a kind of pink colour. Wet the end of one of your fingers and press it against a rock that you think might be a fossil. If the rock falls off, you have nothing…if it sticks, you have a dinosaur fossil.”
This was going to be amazing.
KD hung up the microphone and got behind the wheel. Off we went, down through the public area where there were picnic tables and campsites. The road we were on was specially marked for tourists to follow—it was paved with brick and painted yellow. But suddenly it ended. Ahead of us, behind a very high fence, was an area that looked deserted. A big sign read, “RESTRICTED AREA. NATURAL PRESERVE. NO ADMITTANCE TO GENERAL PUBLIC. STAY OUT. DANGER!”
Inside the bus we looked at each other and smiled.
“Anyone want to open the gate?” asked KD.
Bomber jumped up and ran to the front of the bus. In seconds he was outside handling the gate. We drove through and he closed it. But as he was about to get back on board, KD suddenly gunned the motor and sped off. The look on the Bomb’s face was priceless. It just sort of fell all over. Then KD slammed on the brakes and backed up. Bomb smiled and looked a little embarrassed as he climbed up the steps and found his way back to us.
“Sorry,” said our ranger, turning around to us and switching on her mike, “just a little trick. But actually I did it for a reason. You saw the look on this young man’s face when I pretended to leave him behind? Well, he was right to be afraid. That was the correct response. I want all of you to stay close to the bus at all times. We will be getting out for a few strolls but I don’t want anyone to ever be anywhere where they can’t see me. Believe me, inside the closed gates of the Restricted Area of Dinosaur Provincial Park without a ranger or transportation is not a place anyone wants to find himself or herself. Let me tell you why.”
She explained that we could get lost, very quickly. Though all the hills in these badlands are different, they have a tendency to start looking the same, especially if you are a little frightened and start wandering off in the wrong direction. Before you know it you’re either going in the opposite way you think you are, or just moving around in big circles. And though it wasn’t the hottest time of the year, it was hot enough. Temperatures could reach 48 degrees Celsius in the park. And there was no water, anywhere.
“We don’t go onto this preserve to protect people from getting lost. So you have to take some responsibility yourselves. We don’t want you to turn into a fossil.” KD liked to joke. But the facts she kept laying on us were no joke at all.
She said that the cactus quills in this area were like needles—they could pierce the soles of even the best hiking boots. The sun could damage your skin in no time. And there were caves all around. She didn’t explain what she meant by that, but it sounded a little scary. What was in those caves?
Then it got even scarier.
“We have all kinds of animals on the preserve. There are coyotes, bobcats, mule deer, cottontail rabbits, and porcupines. But we also have snakes. There are lots of harmless ones—garters and hognoses—but there are others that you don’t want to mess with. We have bull snakes here, constrictors that squeeze the life out of animals. They are at least two metres long.”
“Whoa!” said Bomber.
“And we have rattlesnakes.”
“Rattlers,” said Rhett under his breath.
“The prairie rattlesnake is venomous. It is a pit viper. If it bites you, you will die within twenty-four hours. The poison does evil things to your digestive tract. But it isn’t the only thing with venom around here. We also have northern scorpions. If they sting you, report it immediately. And then there are the lovely ladies of our park, the black widow spiders. If they inject their venom into you, you will get the chills, nausea, and paralyzing stomach cramps…it’s all downhill from there.”
She paused and smiled. “So…we have deadly rattlesnakes, constrictors longer than you are, black widow spiders, scorpions, bobcats, and coyotes. We have caves, blistering heat, cacti like knives, no water, and a labyrinth of hills that stretches as far as the eye can see. Even searching for lost people with airplanes or helicopters is almost useless. It takes special pilots who sometimes aren’t available for days and people are very difficult to spot from the air here anyway. Understand why you should stay close to the bus?”
We understood.
“And another thing. If, God forbid, you ever do get lost out here, look for the flag. There is a red flag on a hill right next to the field station, the highest hill in the park. It can be seen from everywhere in the Restricted Area. If you follow it, you can find your way out. But you won’t be needing that…will you?” She smiled.
“No, we won’t,” snapped Bomb. What a card.
KD placed the mike back on its hook, got behind the wheel, and we rumbled and banged forward on a rough gravel road. Occasionally she would rev the motor and start going pretty fast. It was a bit like a carnival ride when she did that. The tourists loved it. She started pointing out all sorts of things. She said there were three levels of soil in these badlands—sandstone, mudstone, and ironstone—though there were many more layers of history. She said the rate of erosion on this land was the fastest in the world. And she used some big words (which Terry wrote down in the little notebook he always carries) when she was talking about the glaciers. And she called the badlands “time-independent landscapes.” I only partly knew what that meant, but I loved it, very cool…“time-independent landscapes.”
There were funny things, too. Some of the land formations out there actually looked like animals. There was something the rangers called “the turtle,” another one that looked like an “elephant head,” and best of all, “Fred the Camel,” who came complete with a nearby pyramid. The hoodoos were incredible—they made the ones at Drumheller look like they were minor league. We saw millions of them, huge ones and small ones, new ones and old ones. There was the “lonesome hoodoo” sitting off by itself, the “hairdoos” that actually looked like they had Beatle haircuts, and ones that KD called “nudoos,” which were naked hoodoos—ones whose caps had fallen off. But it wasn’t until we were well into the Restricted Area that we came to my favourite formation. It freaked me right out.
It was really a whole area, like a mini-canyon in the preserve. On all sides of us, hills started rising up and we seemed to be sinking. The hills looked like buildings from some sort of magical kingdom. And when KD told us what the area was called, it made perfect sense. “This,” she said quietly, looking up as if still amazed, “is the Valley of the Castles.”
“Awesome,” said Dorothy quietly. I knew why she liked it. It looked like some sort of world far away, like something you might see in a movie. And it was kind of spooky, too.
At one point I asked KD about the legend of the living dinosaurs.
“I’ve heard that, too, but you’ll never see them.” She laughed. “It’s said that they’ll only show themselves to bad people. The story goes that they hate the fact that their ancestors are remembered as monsters, so they hide themselves. Dinosaurs only killed to survive, not to be evil, but we seem to really like the flesh-ripping side of them. I suppose that says something about us.”
That made me feel a little guilty, and when I glanced at the guys, they were all kind of looking away.
“So,” KD continued, “they won’t show themselves to everyday folks.” She laughed again. “At least, that’s what they say!”
She let us out of the bus a couple of times at designated spots along the way. She showed us a bone bed that had been preserved and covered by a glassed-in case, another in a small building, and we had a great time finding fossils. What she had told us was absolutely right; they were everywhere, and if you licked your finger you could pick them up. They just stuck to you like glue. Me and the guys found tonnes.
We could see the places where the snakes gathered to lie in the sun, and when we climbed up several of the little hills and looked off into the distance, we could see badlands that just went on forever. It was getting very hot. A couple of times I asked Dorothy for a drink from her canteen. She let me, but she was very careful about it. I would barely get my lips to it and she’d pull it back.
Every time we stopped we stuck close to the bus. Once I looked up to see that red flag, high on the hill near the field station.
Little did I know that very soon I would search the skies for it…in absolute desperation.