This NYT story is about a driving holiday in the southwest corner of South Dakota.

When I lived in Saskatchewan, I did the Black Hills a few times -- even made it to Deadwood before gambling (re-)discovered it -- heck, before there was even a show named Deadwood!

As a preamble, one time I drove through Nebraska on the way back from a driving vacation through the U.S. south in the fall of 1992.

One small thing about that: When you leave a place called Grand Island, you go about 30 to 40 kilometres to the northwest on your way to South Dakota, and there's a place where cornfields inhabit the east and north side of the road ... and then it's short-grass prairie for a visual eternity to the south and west.

Central Nebraska scared the absolute living shit out of me. A complete sense of dread haunted me that day.

You may ask why. My answer is this: It's rare that I've come across people who seem so defeated by life (to get a glimpse of that life, check out the movie Boys Don't Cry; this was just before the time of the Brandon Teena story on which the film was based. I didn't hear about the case until I read a stunning New Yorker piece about it in 1997, I believe).

Anyway, I simply couldn't drive through there fast enough. The landscape just crawled by (and keep in mind that I generally like driving on the prairies).

Entering Pine Ridge from the south was also somewhat trippy.

To the southwest of one intersection sat an octagonal subdivision with really nice houses -- protected by a chain-link fence with barbwire at the top and an electrically-controlled sliding gate.

Across the intersection in the town proper was the Third World in the heart of America: Crumbling buildings, rusted, abandoned frames of cars.

Pine Ridge is one of the most impoverished, violent parts of the United States.

The troubles of the area are well-known to U.S. history. In nearby Wounded Knee, about 150 Lakota Sioux and 25 U.S. government troops were killed on Dec. 29, 1890.

In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement were involved in an armed 71-day standoff at Wounded Knee with the federal government.

The AIM and the "establishment" Indians, for lack of a better word, hardly got along. Murders and arson were regular parts of life on the reserve in the 1970s, culminating with the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents -- for which AIM leader Leonard Peltier was convicted -- and the 1976 killing of Anna Mae Pictou-Acquash.

For a cinematic treatment of that time and place, check out Incident At Oglala for a documentary version and Thunderheart for the razzle-dazzle Hollywood one.

As I left Pine Ridge, a place where I knew violent death has often made its painful mark, I did so feeling much calmer than I did when during my time in central Nebraska earlier that day -- a place I knew nothing about but left me feeling suffocated and trapped.

The difference between the two? The time of day, perhaps. In the late afternoon, that warm, beautiful golden light of the pre-dusk period was gracing the landscape with its presence.

But I could also start making out the Black Hills.

To the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills are sacred. Called Paha Sapa in Lakota, they were a place where warriors went on vision quests and held Sundance rituals and burials.

They were ceded to them by the U.S. government in 1868 as part of what became known as the Fort Laramie Treaty, but the discovery of gold in 1874 changed that (for books, check out In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Mathiessen, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown. For a film treatment, there's Little Big Man or Dances with Wolves. The latter might be a tad romantic, but I never saw so many Indian people in a movie theatre as I did when it screened in Regina).

While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Lakota's favour in 1980, a cash settlement was offered. The tribe refused to take the money.

For me, I've always felt very peaceful in the Black Hills. Maybe it's just the astonishing beauty of the natural environment there. Or maybe there's something more to it. But I do think some places become known as sacred places for a reason.