Posts Tagged ‘Devils Tower’
Devils Tower
The famous movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind features the Devils Tower. Anyone who sees it knows it.
Richard Dreyfuss’ character sees Devils Tower everywhere he looks. Soon after having the visions he constructs a crew sculpture in his mashed potatoes. Needless to say his family is alarmed. Soon the obsession consumes him. He paints it and then really goes nuts. When he brings in piles of dirt from the yard to create a scale replica in his living room, his wife and kids leave him. Many people remember this scene.
Eventually Richard’s character travels to Wyoming to see the real Devils Tower. Authorities try to stop him, but he makes it past them. He becomes witness to something wonderful. A huge alien vessel lands and communicates through music. Then formerly missing people exit the vessel. Richard decides to enter the ship to learn from the aliens. This movie would be a good source for a remake. There are extra scenes in some versions that show the interior of the vessel. It’s rather boring.
Let’s discuss the actual Devils Tower. It’s in Wyoming. Scientists call it a monolithic igneous intrusion. It can also be called a lava neck. Magma flowing into a volcanic vent creates it. It’s generally the sign of an active volcano. It’s not certain that this formation is such a plug. But many geologists believe it is.
Devils Tower is a subject of Indian legend. Sisters walking in the wilderness stumbled onto some bears. The bears chased them. The Great Spirit helpd the girls by raising up the land upon which they stood. The bears kept trying. They tried to climb up to the girls but as they neared the top slid back down. Their claws left ridges in the sides of the mountain.
Another legend, this one told by the Sioux Indians, was of two boys wandering far from their village. A giant bear called Mato came upon them. It wanted to rip them apart with its claws so it could eat them. They prayed to the Creator to give them assistance. He raised the ground where they stood. Mato, like the bears in the other story, kept trying and failing to climb. The mountain is now scored by it’s tremendous claws.
The Devils Tower is as interesting as the stories that surround it.