Why Scoria?

I have always been fascinated by trips through southwestern North Dakota. The landscape is one to wrestle with, rugged and tempting, lonely and intimidating.

From time to time, there is an unmistakable feature you'll see carving its way across hills and around buttes. "Scoria" is the rusty colored rock that paves the way to many farms and ranches. The scoria roads look their best after an early evening rainfall, with the backdrop of deep-blue thunderheads marching to the east, while golden sunlight slips in behind from the west. Like light in a good painting, the scoria on the prairie catches the eye.

The North Dakota Geological Survey says the stone is called "scoria" locally, but is actually referred to as "clinker." You tell me what sounds better. Scoria" is sandstone, clay, or shale baked by burning lignite coal.

After passing through western Dakota in 1864, General Alfred Sully called the badlands "hell with the fires out." He wasn't the only one who noticed. Scoria also caught the attention of Lewis & Clark.

Said Clark, "Saw an emence quantity of Pumice Stone on the sides & feet of the hills and emence beds of Pumice Stone near the Tops of them, with evident marks of the hills having once been on fire. I Collecte Somne of the different sorts i.e. Stone Pumice & a hard earth, and put them into a funace, the hard earth melted and glazed the others two and the hard Clay became a pumice Stone glazed."
On April 16, 1805, Lewis wrote the following:
"I believe it to be the strata of coal seen in those hills which causes the fire and birnt appearances frequently met with in this quarter. where those birnt appearances are to be seen in the face of the river bluffs, the coal is seldom seen, and when you meet with it in the neaghbourhood of the stratas of birnt earth, the coal appears to be presisely at the same hight, and is nearly of the same thickness, togeter with the sand and a sulphurious substance which usually accompanys it."

If you google scoria, you'll find it's really volcanic rock. It comes from the Greek word σκωρία, skōria, rust.

I love the thought of our journey through life, upon a fiery road, not knowing what's around the next corner. Scoria stands out among the golden-brown fields of the badlands, as if it's leading to a promise of something better along the way.