Sunday, August 12, 2012

Saponification Sunday...Badlands Soap

Do you know Wall Drug? If you've ever been on that long dull highway that drags endlessly across South Dakota (I-90) then you know of what I speak. It is a sad Oasis on the edge of the Badlands, a place to pull over, buy a few overpriced Jackalopes, hit the toilet with four crabby kids, grab a few donuts and some thick black coffee and then get back on the road to Rapid.

Prior to THAT road trip there was another. In this version instead of being a young mother I was an even younger woman making my way cross country with a backpack and an extended thumb. I was picked up by a seemingly nice trucker fellow who turned bitter halfway through the same Badlands area. "Disappointed " over my unwillingness to make his day, he tossed me and my backpack out of the cab of his semi as it continued to move forward like.

Fortunately, my backpack hit the ground first and I landed on the backpack. No harm done...except to my feet. After walking several miles through those Badlands in the middle of a very hot summer, my blistered heels and I were  finally given another ride by an elderly couple who had none of the ulterior motives the young trucker did. Lesson was learned. It was the last time I ever hitchhiked.

This soap I made last week brought it all back.


Introducing,Badlands , the soap
I did not plan the look or the colors really , mixing Indigo Powder with Clove powder and a little Titanium Dioxide. I ended up with the colors of a common Badlands Sunset and I love it. Scented with the masculine Amyris Essential Oil, I was even happier to see the crackly effect of the TD making the bar look quasi desert-like.

Badlands,South Dakota, the place
My rather dangerous teen years expressed as a bar of soap once again demonstrating how much I've cleaned up my act.


16 comments:

  1. Your stories always make me smile. Strangely, many times reflect on my earlier lifestyle as a youth.

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  2. We can swap stories on that one...and yes, never again! Your Badlands bar is a beautiful, petrified and personified landscape painting. Bravo!

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  3. My own first impression was 'cooked shark steak', but then I'm funny like that!

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  4. The soap is great, and what a fine narrative...I can feel the dust & grit in my teeth! So glad it all worked out safely for you....BTW, I think that's part of what makes us "midlife" gals interesting, don't you?

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  5. Loved this post, you turned out so great gives me hope for one of my kids!!! The soap is beautiful.

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  6. The Badlands + you, somehow that doesn't seem right! Love the photo with the soap similarities.
    p.s.
    I have used and/or given as gifts all my last soap order. Will email you!!!

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  7. Love the Badlands soap, Donna! The look and the fragrance fit it perfectly. I'm glad you gave up hitchhiking - it's scary to think what could have happened with that trucker. Good on the elderly couple that came along and gave you a ride!

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  8. Thank you Doug. We baby boomers (alhough I beleive you are quite abit younger than me) often did some wild thimgs in the 70's. It was a srict requirement of that generation.

    Cocobong, et tu? Well well well. Good we turned our wilds hairs towards something productive...like thick lather.

    Cro, it also looks like a wonderful flakey tuna. yum

    Soap Sister. yup that's me "intersting" which is anice way to say "nut job" my own mother's favorite nickname

    Anon. He'll be fine.

    Susan. Every word is true! And fortunately the police records has been destroyed in a supicious midnight fire

    Whispering writer. Many many thanks

    Jenny, if that couple had not come along when when they did I might not be blogging today. I was thrown out in the middle of the Pine Ridge Indian resevation, not a safe place for a single female just post the Wounded Knee Era

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  9. How amazing that you pulled that out of your subconcious - it represents that photo perfectly!

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  10. If You had tried to make a Badlands Soap after the foto, it surely would not have turned out like that. Great soap. Good that You gave up hitchhiking. Terrible story.
    Petra

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  11. Not to far off...your husband only has 1 1/2 years on me.

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  12. Donna, hitching in the bad lands - you were one brave and crazy girl. Myself I hitched up into Canada with only a backpack, tent and 10 bucks to my name. Fun times, at least back then.

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  13. I remember you mentioning that story. Still can't believe you did it--it brings out an odd mixture of awe and disbelief about the whole thing.

    Cool soap, far less dangerous, hopefully! :D

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  14. Isn't it strange how some images and smells can bring back old memories - glad to hear you were safe after all that!

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