Podcast Summary

The American West Ep. 24: "Getting Over the Color Green and Learning to Love Badlands"

Host: MeatEater | Guest & Narrator: Dan Flores
Date: March 24, 2026

Episode Overview

In this rich, contemplative episode, Dan Flores invites listeners to explore the history, geology, and evolving aesthetic appreciation of the American West's badlands. He weaves personal stories, artistic history, and geological context to argue that these "barren" landforms—once seen as worthless—are now recognized as unique treasures, both in the West and worldwide. The episode centers on how figures such as Georgia O’Keeffe, naturalists, and explorers helped shift public perception, and how these landscapes offer a sensuous, almost dreamlike immersion for those willing to embrace the “color of the earth” over the lush green of more familiar terrain.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Georgia O’Keeffe and the Art of Badlands

(02:00–08:40)

• Flores opens with a vivid description of Palo Duro's "Spanish Skirts"—banded badlands in West Texas that mesmerized Georgia O’Keeffe in the 1910s.
• O’Keeffe was captivated by the color and forms: "Everything was horizontal and yellow rather than green like the East. But... she couldn't get over the colors and shapes of this canyon incised into the plains. 'It's absurd the way I love this country,' she wrote." (07:11)
• O’Keeffe returned to the West in 1929, settling at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, painting the badlands for decades, and coining names like the Red Hills, the White Place, the Black Place.
• Her work played a major role in transforming badlands from despised waste into celebrated icons of Western landscape.

2. Defining the Badlands—History, Geology, and Perceptions

(08:41–17:00)

• The West's reputation for aridity sets it apart from "green America."
• "The West's badlands are actually an array of distinctive landforms... tend to erupt from the edges of these larger divisions in eroded lowlands of the plains, or at the feet of the soaring cliffs..." (09:50)
• The term 'badlands' comes from early French explorers: "Mauvais Terre"—land that held little promise for agriculture or settlement (11:40).
• Badlands are treasure chests of exposed geologic time—formed from ancient sedimentary deposits, usually from river, lake, or sea beds, and now eroded to reveal colorful bands, fossils, and bones.
• These landforms are found not only across the American West, but worldwide: “The Middle East, Spain, Tuscany, Peru, Argentina, New Zealand, Taiwan… the Danzia formations of China.” (14:58)

3. From Scientific Laboratory to Artistic Inspiration

(17:01–24:00)

• Early scientific exploration of badlands, especially paleontology, brought them prominence.
• “A desert to the agriculturalist, a mine to the paleontologist, and a paradise to the artist.” —John Wesley Powell (12:45, paraphrased)
• Artists and writers—especially women like O’Keeffe, Mary Austin, Evelyn Cameron, Zoe Byler—emerged as champions of the badlands, celebrating their stark beauty and color.
• Mary Austin’s "The Land of Little Rain" and Evelyn Cameron’s photography are highlighted as milestones in establishing a “badlands aesthetic."
• Changing impressions even among early explorers, such as Robert Hill, who after initial revulsion at the "weird, repulsive, spiteful, bizarre and sterile" landscape, found himself drawn to its forms and colors. (17:10)

4. Badlands in Public Imagination—Aesthetic Transformation & National Protection

(24:01–34:00)

• O’Keeffe’s Manhattan gallery shows initially shocked critics: “Some Eastern critics concluded the artist must possess some psychological scar that frightened her of water. Of course, that wasn’t it.” (22:25)
• O’Keeffe: “I like color. In the east, everything is green, green, green… Plus, badlands are an especially fine place to climb around in… It was the shapes that fascinated me, the shapes of the hills.” (22:48)
• Signature O’Keeffe paintings: Paternal and the Red Hills (1936), Red Hills and Bones (1941), Gray Hills (1942), The Black Place 3 (1944).
• Dramatic shift, as many once-scorned badlands become national parks and monuments: Badlands National Park (SD), Teddy Roosevelt National Park (ND), Dinosaur National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante (UT), Death Valley (CA), Big Bend (TX), Petrified Forest (AZ), among others. (25:45)
• Flores conveys his own deep affection: “I’m amazed at the sterile granularity of their mounded surfaces… always excited to discover new stretches with new color combinations.” (27:04)

5. Personal Encounters and Badlands as Experiential Landscapes

(27:33–35:40)

• Flores shares personal adventures—driving solo from West Texas to South Dakota’s Badlands, hiking North Dakota’s Teddy Roosevelt Park, Kauai’s Waimea Canyon.
• Vivid sensory description: “The feel of champagne air on your skin… a sense of flow as your body moves through receding and approaching elemental earth forms, barren of obscuring vegetation with bands of color, a wild visual riot at every hand.” (29:52)
• Most memorable experience: Filming with Anthony Bourdain for Parts Unknown at Ghost Ranch, including horseback rides amid the Red Hills. Flores admits: “At the time, I must have been paying attention. But later, all I could recall was nudging a really fine horse through the red hills that 80 years before had become the type specimen of an iconic new kind of Western landscape.” (32:51)

6. Conversation with Randall: Badlands as Global and Geological Phenomena

(35:40–47:13)

• Randall notes the “regional distinctiveness” and global analogues of badlands.
• Flores: “They’re found all over the world in conditions that sort of mimic those of the American west… where arid climates, and mountain ranges or canyonlands or plateaus… often produce badlands at the bases of the larger formations.” (36:22)
• Paleontological importance: “These are places that scientists have been digging dinosaurs for at least the last 75 or 80 years. I mean, this has become kind of the target sort of landscape for the dinosaur hunt around the world.” (37:20)
• Randall connects the layers and forms to a unique blend of emotional, tactile, and intellectual experience, distinct from “a big granite peak.” (42:35)
• Flores elaborates that badlands have a unique human scale, and their ever-changing surfaces allow for continuous discovery: “Unlike, say, a granite peak that pretty much remains the same throughout your lifetime, this is country that is changing at a pretty interestingly rapid rate.” (45:20)
• Randall: “It connects us to a story that’s millions of years old… brings into relief that long history of environmental change.” (46:09)
• Flores: “You do get to imagine these kind of vast sweeps of time. And you know that that’s part of the appeal of the West.” (46:45)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Georgia O’Keeffe:
  “It’s absurd the way I love this country.” (07:11)
• Dan Flores:
  “Classic badlands throw up wild shadowing when hit with low angle sun. Their particular drama of shadows and light must have made little impression on people looking for a home. But there was an aesthetic drama there, and ignoring it wouldn’t prevail forever.” (12:08)
• John Wesley Powell (as cited by Flores):
  “A desert to the agriculturalist, a mine to the paleontologist, and a paradise to the artist.” (12:45 paraphrased)
• Georgia O’Keeffe (via interviewer):
  “I like color. In the east, everything is green, green, green. I looked around me and wondered what one might paint. Plus, badlands are an especially fine place to climb around in... It was the shapes that fascinated me, the shapes of the hills.” (22:48)
• Dan Flores (reflecting on his passion):
  “There’s a strange passion to all this. It’s not that I fail to appreciate high alpine meadows or towering redwoods... but for some reason, I find wandering around a place like Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park or the Painted Desert of the Navajo Res, easily as thrilling as climbing up to a glacial cirque in the Colorado Rockies.” (30:36)
• Mabel Dodge Luhan (as cited by Flores):
  "[The Badlands]... a journey through a pink and yellow dream." (31:50)
• Flores (on change over time):
  “Every time you go, things have changed... These clay mounds are pretty friable, and so they can be altered by weather… So unlike, say, a granite peak that pretty much remains the same throughout your lifetime, this is country that is changing at a pretty interestingly rapid rate.” (45:20)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction to Badlands, Georgia O’Keeffe & the Spanish Skirts: 02:00–08:40
• Geology and Global Context of Badlands: 08:41–14:58
• Scientific Significance & Artistic Embrace: 12:45–22:00
• Transformation into Protected & Celebrated Landscapes: 24:01–27:32
• Flores’s Adventures and Sensory Experiences: 27:33–35:40
• Randall & Flores Conversation — Global Badlands & Women’s Role: 35:40–40:09
• Aesthetic, Emotional, and Temporal Reflections: 42:35–47:13

Tone & Style

Flores delivers this episode with a blend of poetic language, scholarly insight, and personal storytelling, marked by awe for the wild, arid beauty of badlands. The conversational interlude with Randall retains an accessible tone, highlighting both intellectual curiosity and emotional connection.

Conclusion

This episode invites listeners to abandon the "green" bias of traditional American landscape aesthetics and to embrace the unique, vividly colored, ever-changing formations of the badlands. Through stories of art, science, and lived experience, Flores compellingly reframes badlands not as barren waste but as icons of the American (and global) imagination—places where deep time, beauty, and personal meaning converge.