Endless Thread - PARKS! Pt. 3: Close Encounters with Mato Tipila

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

As of late, Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson has been obsessed with a rock in Wyoming, a lot like the protagonist of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But you won't find Ben in the kitchen, making a replica of the rock out of mud and chicken wire. Instead you'll find him and co-host Amory Sivertson in this episode, traversing Reddit and TikTok and YouTube and Wyoming to find out why hundreds of thousands of people have been drawn to a monolith that has so many names and meanings.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Does this mean anything to you, my fine musically inclined friend? Ray me do dodozo. Are you a soul fage person? Yeah. Okay. Ray do do so.

That was pretty good. How about I give it to you this way? Does that mean anything to you? Nope, never heard it. Okay. All right. Let's see if this helps. Anything there for you? No, but it's got to be from like a, I don't know. It's got to be like something from the 80s, like an 80s movie? You're getting there. I think you've probably noticed by now, Amory.

Something that's a little strange with dad. And I know, I know, Amory, what you're thinking. This means something. This is important. I'm loving this, this journey, by the way. I'm going to stop being weird now, I promise. No, never stop being weird. Never.

Well, yeah, I guess I really won't because I've been a little bit obsessed recently with a movie. The title of the picture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, refers to an intriguing possibility. And that intriguing possibility is? Aliens. Specifically, the idea of coming into real contact with aliens. It is a great movie, but we're not really here to talk about the movie. Let's just say it's kind of playing in the background. Devil's Power, Wyoming, was the first national monument

directed in this country by Taylor Roosevelt in 1915. In the foreground is one of the movie's main characters. Now Richard Dreyfus, as Roy Neary. will share with audiences all over the world. Oh, Richard Dreyfuss is in it? Yep. He stars in it as an electric grid line worker who gets a flyby from aliens. But I'm actually still talking about something else.

I'm talking about a massive, eerie, geological formation that protrudes from the Black Hills area of Wyoming so strikingly that I am far, far from the only person obsessed with this thing. Dreyfus's character in the movie, movie gets so possessed by this place, Amory, that his family flees him while he builds a replica of it out of mud and chicken wire and trash in his kitchen. They flee him because he's so annoying about it?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Don't go anywhere, please. And eventually, he actually shows up in person at this place to meet said aliens, despite the best efforts, by the way, of the military. But Dreyfus and I are really just two of millions of people with this obsession.

over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. And this is a national monument currently, different than a national park, but pretty close. We will get to that in a minute. And what's it called? It's complicated. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sievertson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

We're coming to you from the big screen of the 1970s, from a state my family used to live in, but also just like from my basement at my podcasting desk in front of a computer. Womp, but technically from WBUR, Boston's NPR station.

And we're bringing you a whole series on parks all month. And our latest episode is all about something Ben just won't shut up about lately. He keeps busting out the chicken wire and the mud. I'm in the kitchen,

I'm yelling. I'm like, it's going to be great. You're going to love it. Everybody's just like, sure, okay. But I'm not the only one with this obsession,

I promise. BBJ, can you explain this obsession a little more to me? No. All right, end of episode. I don't know why I'm so into this. It's like a skyscraper-sized rock in the middle of what has long been ranching territory. And in a way, this makes me, of course, exactly like Richard Dreyfus's character in the movie. A huge plot point in the film is that, you know, to his wife,

his children, to anyone else. After he gets a drive-by by by an alien ship, he actually keeps seeing this thing in his mind's eye. He can't stop thinking about it. And that is really kind of what happened to me recently. What did the aliens do to you, Ben? Did they hurt you? Are you okay? We haven't talked about this.

I can't remember. But what I can tell you in all seriousness is there are a lot of people like me, like I said. Do you have evidence that there are a lot of people like you in this regard? Most F, I do. The K-O-A campground near this towering rock plays the movie every night at 8 p.m. on the patio of the main lodge. And there are people who come just to watch the movie that involves this rock, like under the rock every night. Like last night when I left, there was probably about 50 people out there watching the movie. Shouts out to Jeannie, who works at Grosk.

K-O-A and says it's rain or shine every night. People sit out there, Amory, with umbrellas. But why? Again, again, like Richard Dreyfus, I don't really know. But we're going to try to find out. I'm going to bring you a profile of this giant, mysterious spot of rock with the help of some Reddit comments. Because seriously, whether you're on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Reddit, this rock is constantly being talked about. On Reddit, You can find tons of threads about it in R-slash National Parks or R-slash-pix or even R-slash-Wyrd or R-Slas-Misturious Facts. Are you ready for the first Reddit comment? Hit me.

Devil's Tower, National Monument, Wyoming. Okay, this was more of a Reddit post with an amazing picture. So it's not that interesting to listen to. I'm going to share a picture with you. Okay. Can you just describe this place for me? Oh, okay. It's like a big, a very, very tall plateau.

I mean, like a mountain, but plateaued at the top that looks like it is just reaching up from the earth. It's hard to get a sense of how tall it is, but there are trees seemingly at its base. And the formation itself is very curious because it almost, looks like... Mashed potatoes? Does it remind you of mashed potatoes? No. No, it looks...

Sorry, that's just... That's me. It looks to me like a bunch of wooden planks. If you were seeing this from a distance, you wouldn't even think that it was made of rock. Interesting that you say wooden planks. Interesting. Yeah?

Yeah. Would you like some more info? Yes. I got a guy. My name's Tyler Devine. I'm an interpretive park ranger here at Devil's Tower National Monument. I'm currently speaking.

to you below that 867 foot monolith that we know as Devil's Tower or Bear Lodge. There's actually many different names for it, but maybe we'll get into that later. Okay, immediately interested to know if interpretive park rangers do interpretive dance? I mean, you're not far off? I like to say, I'm the fun ranger, not the gun ranger. Oh, boy. Tyler is quick to point out that his colleagues who do carry guns are also, he claims, pretty fun, but interpretive rangers are tasked with interpreting the cultural and natural resources for people to better understand and connect with the park.

So I do the campground talks. I do 20-minute chats. I do guided walks. He's got all of the public interaction vibes that I don't, that I don't possess. I love his energy, though. Yeah, as do I. He seems to have kind of. a bottomless well of it. We're going to have our annual bat festival. It's going to include an inflatable cave. We'll have all sorts of fun activities, bat-themed activities for families to enjoy. We'll have a kids.

Very wholesome. But what's the difference between a monument and a park? Okay, so the way Tyler describes it, the difference is, some ways, you know, size. Like Devil's Tower towers over 1,300 acres of land. Really the difference, though, is between an act of Congress, which you need for a park, and an act of a single president. They can utilize this thing called the Antiquities Act of 1906, and that's when we became a national monument. We are actually the first national monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. And one thing to say is, in some ways, things haven't changed a ton since then.

My family lived in Wyoming for a while, and one of the reasons that this geological marvel is so much, marvelous is that it doesn't have a lot of competition for attention in the area. Redator Shankster 1987 knows what I'm talking about. Hello, my name is Riley Shanks, and I'm from Detroit, Michigan. One morning, after driving all night, I got to this park. I had to use all the change I had left to pay the fee at the drop box because nobody was in the booth. I got out of my car to stretch my legs and look around when I heard of wrestling just off the lot.

I looked down and not even 20 feet from me is a bear. I backed away until it couldn't see me, then ran away, jumped in my car, and drove off because bears are scary when nobody's around and nobody in the world knows where you are. I, too, would have noped right out of there. Same. Speaking of doing things on a whim, though, a lot of various commenters online point to one particular story about the tower which resulted in one man being the butt of many jokes. the Butte of many jokes. Tell me the story of George Hopkins. Nice, yeah, George Hopkins.

The only guy to get to the top of Devil's Tower without climbing it that we know of. George Hopkins was a daredevil who in 1941 decided to parachute onto the top of this isolated flat-topped hill with steep sides, a.k.a. Bute. It was a whole thing. He was in the papers. There he go. He served with the RAF and was a Dunkirk.

Now, finding life at home too dull and slow, he maroons himself on this rock. We can see his parachute and George himself as we fly around the top with a camera, but he can't get done. So he landed on top successfully, got that rope ready to go, strung it down, but then that rope got stuck in all sorts of cracks. So now he was stuck on top of the tower, started to holler down, You know, people started to see him up there. This guy does not sound like he had a fully fledged plan here.

Yeah. Some people might call him kind of an idiot, but he was a famous idiot, and he did make the place famous too. Another thing I learned from Reddit comments about this place, Amory helicopters, like helicopters that could, like, hover and land on things. Not really a thing in 1941. I think even Goodyear offered this new technology, this thing called a blimp to come and pick him off the top of the tower. Yeah, none of that ended up happening.

We ended up having Jack Durrance from Montana come back down and climb his route that he established a few years prior to George Hopkins getting stuck up there. Jack Durantz climbed his, yeah, made his climb of the Durrance route, which is the most popular climbing route on the monument, you know, on Devil's Tower still to this day. You're telling me, this guy who marooned himself and forced a bunch of other people to climb up and save him is a hero. I mean, he was one of the people who put Devil's Tower on the map. And Shankster, 1987, and his bear running aside, they do actually get a ton of people during the busy warmer months, including thousands and thousands of raw climbers. Tyler actually says they get over 500,000 visitors a year. And for them, that is plenty. He says that, like many national park and national monument locations,

the infrastructure of Devil's Tower as a public space is really strained and out of date. The visitor center was built six years before George Hopkins parachuted onto the Butte. Tyler feels like they're at a bit of a breaking point in trying to balance conservation with requisite. Even though he really does love getting visitors. Does Tyler have a favorite kind of visitor? He definitely seems to have a least favorite kind, identified by Reddeter Narl 88. Some people out there actually consider them to be stumps

from ancient giant trees, believe it or not. Oh, a tree stump is a good way to describe it. Like a really big tree stump. Yes. And there are a lot of people, Emory, who have, actually seem to believe this. Put Tyler in the knot category. We have no evidence of petrified wood or anything like that here.

This rock that we see is called phonolite porphyry. It's very, very close to granite, except that it's missing a quartz. But yeah, as far as we can tell, you know, I mean, this is an old magma pocket. Maybe it could have been a volcano. There's actually four different accepted theories from a geologic standpoint. I'm going to spare you the details because all of these theories are very geological. So is this still a mystery in terms of how this thing got there? Well, there are things we know.

I would say as far as some type of volcanic activity, that's the consensus. But also things we don't. Like, is it an actual spot of a volcano? Is it like a giant volcanic caldera filled with lava? but it never erupted. Is it a lacalith or a pocket of magma that crystallized underground in this very specific way that created this cluster of massive rock columns only found in a few places in the world? There's one, by the way, in Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland.

One thing we do seem to know is that the top of Devil's Tower actually reflects where the ground used to be. And erosion, over time, has brought all of the... other ground around it down, except for in this one spot. What? Yeah. Why in that one spot? Because the rock is rock hard. Over how much time?

About 50, 60 million years or so. If you were to look at it from a top-down view, it kind of looks like a bullseye where you have the hardest rocks right in the middle. That's Devil's Tower. Around that, you'll have these softer and softer and softer sedimentary rocks going out in concentric circles all around it. So, you know, it's been slowly eroded down. But that phonolite porphyry, that core, is just so much harder rock than, yeah, sedimentary rock. So this igneous core. Okay. So to review old rock, special rock, volcanic related, not a giant tree stump.

Tyler hits to disappoint the endless line of visitors and internet commenters who bring up. But yeah, that's that's right. It's super fun to think about that stuff. But I think sometimes, you know, on the internet, things can get a little out of hand with that and arguments can ensue. And, you know, any of our Instagram, Facebook posts, many of those comment threads degrade to, it's a tree. It's not a tree stump. You know, it's, you know. Really? Is that true? Alas, the tree stump thing will truly not go away. As evidenced by a TikToker, I won't name. Why do people get so upset whenever you say that the devil's tower is a tree that had been cut down and this is just a stump?

I posted a few videos and prove without a shadow of a doubt that this is the case. But at least there's this other guy whose TikTok has about a million more views. The indigenous folklore surrounding this site claiming that it was a trunk of a giant tree that was scraped by a bear has been turned into a lovely TikTok conspiracy theory, Which seems just about as disrespectful as renaming it to devil's tower, but I guess that's not really my call to make. Either way, this is bullshit. Okay, a lot in there to unpack. True.

TikTok, YouTube, Reddit conspiracy theories probably can't be blamed on folklore. But the folklore itself is both varied and pretty fascinating. Like, close encounters of the third kind, it's connected to the big sky and brilliant stars. You can see out there in Wyoming around this place. It is connected to space. And it is connected to space. something that seems to have been true long before this massive piece of igneous rock from volcanic magma

was a national monument. This place really does draw you in. You kind of can't explain it. And there's something else I want to say, which is that as I reported this story out a little bit, I started to feel pretty weird about calling it Devil's Tower. And in the conversations I was having with folks, I stopped. And I started to call it by a different name. Mato Tipula. I'll tell you more about why in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs.

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Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, I'm getting a picture here. We've talked a lot about the annual tourist visitors to the rock and mentioned that it's a popular spot for rock climbers

and people hoping to connect with the ecology or wildlife or even just its geological uniqueness. Yes, but our interpretive ranger, Tyler, also carefully acknowledges a whole other layer to this place. We have 26 different affiliated tribes that find this place spiritually significant, and some of these tribes, you know,

put it on that pedestal of calling it a sacred site as well. The more we learn about this massive structure, the more we learn that its name, its purpose, has been contested. A particular example of this was a set of court battles that pitted rock climbers

and Native American tribes against each other over the place. Climbers want to be. wanted unlimited access. The National Park Service came up with accommodations for native groups who wanted to use the space for longstanding spiritual ceremonies in the summer. Some climbers wouldn't accept that. Their appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court. And did it get settled? Sort of. The month of June is now a so-called voluntary ban on climbing, where Park Service folks ask climbers to stay off the formation. And NPS representatives say

there's been an 80 to 90% reduction in climbing during that time. So it goes from over 400 people in a month to maybe 30. For his part, Tyler acknowledges that this arrangement isn't perfect, that climbers scaling the tower might be akin to watching a bunch of people clamber all over a cathedral for fun. At the same time, he says he's met Lakota climbers too. Depending a bit on who you talk to, the sharing of this space is going okay.

Hello. Hey, is that Bunny? Yes, it's Bunny. Hey, Bunny. How are you? I'm doing great. Beautiful day today. Where are you? I'm nine miles from Mato Tipala, the northern edge of the sacred Black Hills, yes. Bunny sounds like a real honey.

Bunny is a honey. She says she's the great granddaughter of Chief John Grass of the Lakota Dakota Nation. Bunny sings wolf Machichina, Sukmonitou, Lwampi. My given name was Bunny, Bernice Bunny May. My spiritual name was given to me later. Bunny Sing's Wolf remind me to speak and teach and travel strong like a wolf teacher and not hide like a bunny anymore. Bunny helps run the website Lakota Dakota Nation.org,

and her mission in life seems to be bringing the many different groups that might be identified under the larger Lakota moniker together. Some of that, every year, happens at Matto-Tipala. Matto means bear, and Tipola means home, or Titi, home of bear. And bear is a huge medicine symbol for healing. And so as calling it home of bear, there's a deep, meaning to that because indigenous people all across Turtle Island here from many nations understood there to be the animal that taught us about plant medicines and about our own ability

to heal from within. Bunny used to work in a gift shop on the outskirts of the monument, and she says that whether we're talking the obsession of people in the Close Encounters movie, Native peoples who have lived in the area for thousands of years, ranchers, or tourists, there really is something to this place that you can't describe. I've had a number of people visiting from all walks of life and all nations I've talked to as they visit here. They say, I'm not a spiritual person. I'm not religious, but I come here and I just want to cry and I want to pray. I feel a power here. And I always tell people, well, that's nature's art.

As to whether we're treating this place with respect to its deeper history and its more recent history, do you feel like there's balance there? Yes, that is a beautiful question because, yes, we were able to conduct our first Sundance ceremony there. Bunny says that a number of Lakota and Native tribes ceremonies, some of which lapsed over the last three years, are back in full swing. And that this is, in part, thanks to efforts of National Park Bayloric, personnel in working with tribal leaders to ensure space for them to do various summer ceremonies.

And do people share that perspective? Are they cooperative? Great question. And I think a thing I didn't really think about when I first started looking into this is just the sheer number of different perspectives and stories there would be in connection to this place. My name is Craig. Where I'm at is, and what I do is design and build this place, but I'm also the door.

but I'm also the director of the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies. The acronym is Karen's. We founded this organization in 2004, and so next year will be our 20th anniversary, and the offices are located here at Wing Springs. Well, congratulations on almost being a full adult. Right. Thank you.

And Craig, just so I get this right, are you a doctor? I have a PhD in architecture and anthropology from the University of Michigan. Craig seems like he knows a lot about a lot. He does, especially about Lakotan culture and history. And an important point he makes is that saying Lakota is almost like saying Southerner or like Midwesterner because Lakota covers a ton of different tribes that live in the area that stretches across what is now Wyoming, South Dakota, and a number of other states.

So I'm a citizen of the Ogillala Sioux Tribe, and I'm also a citizen in the United States, and this is key because I am not a citizen of the state of South Dakota. Because important sidebar, Craig says the Supreme Court has put tribes and the country in a category above states, which have residents, not citizens. Oglal-A-Su tribe is one of, actually there's six Lakotan tribes in the United States. Five are in South Dakota. And Lakotan is one of three divisions, the other two being Nakhotans and Da-Kotens. Craig stresses that obviously representing such a large and subdivided group of people is basically impossible.

So feelings about sharing Matatipala are as various amory as the names, that different groups have called this place over time. And this leads us to another Rediter comment. Devil places, this, Devil Falls, etc., are almost always sacred places for Native nations. The names were given to push the Christian movement of manifest destiny and denounce natives as devil worshippers. Oof. Does Craig agree with that?

Yep. And I just say this every time. Anytime you see a landmark, with the word devil, probably a sacred site to American Indians, to some American Indian tribe. That's a sacred site. And that's what happened here. And white settlers did this to...

There are examples all over the U.S. of these kinds of names. And this is where things get really tricky. Because another story that gets told about Montaipola, including by our fun ranger, Tyler, is that the Devil's Tower thing, is actually a story about a phrase lost in translation. That basically this guy, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge,

named the place in 1875 because a Lakota guide gave him a description that sounded like bad God when he was really saying Black Bear. It was likely a mistranslation. This gets told over and over, and Craig rejects this version of the story. And Emery, when you look at,

look around at other locations on the U.S. map. There are a lot of lost in translation explanations for white settlers misinterpreting things as devils something or other. It's practically its own meme. So I think overall, as we try to profile this incredibly unique, nearly thousand-foot place, this is what I keep coming back to. It really means all kinds of things to all kinds of people. But to everyone, it means something. That is apparent in the thousands and thousands of posts about it on Reddit and YouTube and TikTok. It is apparent at the K-O-A campground nearby where gaggles of tourists are watching the movie every night.

And it's also true when you talk to people like Tyler, who also watches that movie often and does the Bat Festival and so much more as part of the park's services strained but positive programming schedule. I think Devil's Tower has a pretty special place in my heart. There's no doubt about that. I think, you know, when you come to Devil's Tower, there is a certain mystique power about it. In the summer months, of course, it's very busy and very hectic. But taking those moments in the mornings to just look up for a little while, I think I find myself, yeah, getting to that level of kind of transcendence. What does it mean to Craig? So Craig left me with one final thought.

There's this interesting connection between this place and the stars. One thing to know, this part of the country, great for stargazing, by the way, which is probably part of why in close encounters, the starry sky features prominently. In fact, at one point, the alien ships in the movie basically appear as a constellation that starts to move in the sky.

And as you might imagine, the Lakota were stargazing here before most people, and they used to stars a lot in their storytelling. For instance, some native stories say that women who were fleeing bears and prayed to their relatives were saved by Matatipola rising out of the earth, and then they were put into the sky, seven of these sisters, which correlates to what we might know as the Pleiades constellation. But in trying to understand the significance of this place, there's this other mystery about Matotipola that Craig wants to solve. In Lakotan, it does have another name, Patee Hehi, gray buffalo horn.

Craig says that one thing people may be missing is that the sacred place isn't actually the Butte itself. It's a place on the map from which you can view the Butte and see you. something else where the stars and the landscape meet. There are times of the year where that constellation, when it sets in the western sky, if you're, there would be an arc of locations where you would see the horn of the landmark and the constellation mirroring that horn. So it looked like two horns, two horns, two Buffalo horns. So can you picture this, Amory?

Like, one horn is the Butte itself, right? Matotipola, the giant rock. Okay. And one horn is sort of opposite it. And that horn is a constellation. Okay. Which in Lakota is itself, by the way, I call the Matatipola.

Oh. And Craig thinks that this special viewing spot from the north and east only available for part of the year gets at the real sacred nature of this place, at least for the Lakota. In Lakotan thought and philosophy, the buffaloes, they're called Pate. And they're the Pateo Yate, the Buffalo Nation.

Those are the ancestors of Lakotans. And they live, the Pateo Yate, live in the underworld and serve. And I just, it's really symbolic that you'd have this connection then between the underworld, where this head would be of the earth, and then that one horn would be coming up, and this other horn would be coming, quote, unquote, down from the celestial. So we'd be relating the underworld, this world, and the asthmel world, the upper world. Whether you see it in the stars or in the rock or in the ground,

Matotipola might have this drawing power in part because, simply put, it connects our worlds. And I think that's a nice thought to end with. Yeah, I agree. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by me, Ben Brock Johnson. And co-hosted by me, Amory Sieverts. It was sound designed by a guy whose eyes are glued to the sky, production manager Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Quincy.

C. Walters, Grace Tatter, Matt Reed, Emily Jenkowski, and Samata Joshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between internet communities, a fun ranger, and a gun ranger. If you have a story that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR.org. Next week in our park series, a theory for tackling climate change that excites Redditors and makes conservationists nervous. I definitely encourage anyone that's thinking of filling death valley with water to visit

first and see what's there. See you next week, friends.