1200 miles
If I ever decide to change the name of my blog, I think I’ll change it to “Nothing Wrong with North Dakota.” Cuz even if it’s better in Wyoming, my long weekend trip with Dad up to ND was pretty damn alright.
Somehow I expected it to get colder when we crossed the ND state line. But even up there it was hot, damn hot. I think we set heat records every where we went. Minot was supposed to break its 90-year-old record by hitting 103.
Teddy Roosevelt National Park, just off of interstate 94 in Western North Dakota, encompasses an area that has been affectionately referred to as “Hell with the Fires Put Out.” It’s got that feeling to it, too—that feeling, like the badlands in South Dakota and the desert canyons of Arizona, that you’re not in a welcoming place. The kind of place that makes you feel uneasy and maybe even a bit god-forsaken: that you’ve stepped out of favor with the compassionate forces of the world. The kind of place that you might get sent to after you’d committed some terrible crime against society.
Plus, while we were there, it was hot. Damn hot. Stopping at the Burning Coal Vein trail to check out the evidence of a coal seam that had burned underground during the mid-1900s and then created a sunken area, I could almost imagine the heat rising up from that long-extinguished burn. But it was just the heat of the sun reflecting back up off the striped rock formations.
But even a place like Hell with the Fires Put Out has its own beauty. We saw buffalo there, and some horses grazing out at the end of a green ridge, silhouetted against the clear sky. Something I think the Indians understood, in a way that Christianity sometimes undervalues, is balance. The trickster tradition inspires me to appreciate the necessity of dark places, of barrenness, of heat and death and risk. Wikipedia (the authorative source for all things), says that the function of the trickster is to break rules of nature or god, and that this disobedience allows for a connection with the sacred. The trickster is essential to creation or birth, and the laughter he inspires makes it possible for us to escape rigid adherence to rules that discount life’s complexity.
So even though the trickster is about laughter, for me he is also about accepting the not-beautiful as part of the beauty of our lived existence. In some ways the truism that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” reflects the lesson of the trickster, that we can learn to live with, and even laugh at, the mistakes we make.
Leaving the badlands, we headed back down the interstate to Dickinson, then up towards Killdeer, along a scenic route that was alternately lush green farmland and dry barren rock. Along the route we crossed the Little Missouri River again:
And then we rode up to New Town, where we stopped to read about Lake Sakakawea and Like-a-Fishhook Village, before we headed out on state road 23. The 60 miles between New Town and Highway 83 were my favorite part of the trip, even though I didn’t stop to make a picture of this stretch.
North Dakota strikes me as a landscape that doesn’t lend itself well to photographs. Part of its majesty is the openness, the flatness, the expansive vistas that stretch all the way across one’s field of vision. A picture of that type of view is like listening to three-second bits of your favorite songs: it can remind you of what you liked about the place, but it leaves you unsatisfied and feeling that there’s so much more to see and hear and smell.
Riding open-throttled across highway 23 we saw field after field of lush green crops, and straight rows of trees planted long ago as some protection against the cold winter wind across the prairie, and old homesteads slowly falling into odd-angled masterpieces, and the steeple of a country church rising above the trees marking a small farming community, and clear ponds ringed with reeds, and the endless ribbon of highway stretching before and behind straight as an arrow as far as the eye could see. And grain silos and tractors and other machinery of agriculture, balers and combines and rakes. And old one-room school building standing alone off the north side of the highway, looking a bit worn but solid and proud.
** **
We arrived in Minot in the late afternoon. We knew, from talking to some people at a gas station near Roosevelt Park, that Minot was hosting the state fair, but we headed into town anyway. I was doubtful that we’d find a place to stay, but dad, in his typical fashion, seemed untroubled. We passed through town and stopped at a hotel on the north end of things. The stop confirmed my suspicions: the hotel had no rooms and was skeptical that we’d find any rooms in town or any campgrounds where we could throw up the tent. Dad suggested that we start back towards town and stop at a couple other motels we’d seen. At the next place we stopped, the clerk was on the phone. The phone call was a cancellation, and we happily took the room, unpacked out bags, showered up, and had dinner at the Roll-N-Pin Café out front.
Next morning we gassed up the bikes and consulted the map. Discovering that we were only 50 miles or so from Canada, we decided to cross the border for some breakfast. We ended up at the Heritage Café in Pierson, Manitoba, a community-project café that allowed the tiny town to offer a limited menu to the locals. My breakfast sandwich was served on a toasted hamburger bun; the ‘hashbrowns’ with dad’s breakfast were tater-tots. But it was a pleasant, clean place, and I always like the charm of a small-town joint better than the predictability of a Perkins or Village Inn. The waitress was a high-school girl who told us she planned to go to college in Winnipeg after she finished her senior year.
Then we headed towards Highway 83.
** **
A few months ago Dad traveled a stretch of 83 from Nebraska down into Oklahoma and had been impressed by the scenery. A tentative goal for our trip was to travel a northern section of the highway. Since 83 is a CANAM route that runs from Canada all the way down to Mexico, I hoped we might be able to hit part of the Canadian portion of the road.
We traveled 83 from Manitoba, back across the border, back through Minot, and down to Bismarck. We stopped in Washburn along the way, where the municipal pool looked to be quite popular on that hot Sunday afternoon. We ate some cherries and drank some liquid outside of the 83 Express gas station, the type of gas station that you wish every town had, where the restrooms were clean, the area around the gas pumps was well kept, and the cashier was friendly. In other words: the kind of place where people give a damn.
Somehow I expected it to get colder when we crossed the ND state line. But even up there it was hot, damn hot. I think we set heat records every where we went. Minot was supposed to break its 90-year-old record by hitting 103.
Teddy Roosevelt National Park, just off of interstate 94 in Western North Dakota, encompasses an area that has been affectionately referred to as “Hell with the Fires Put Out.” It’s got that feeling to it, too—that feeling, like the badlands in South Dakota and the desert canyons of Arizona, that you’re not in a welcoming place. The kind of place that makes you feel uneasy and maybe even a bit god-forsaken: that you’ve stepped out of favor with the compassionate forces of the world. The kind of place that you might get sent to after you’d committed some terrible crime against society.
Plus, while we were there, it was hot. Damn hot. Stopping at the Burning Coal Vein trail to check out the evidence of a coal seam that had burned underground during the mid-1900s and then created a sunken area, I could almost imagine the heat rising up from that long-extinguished burn. But it was just the heat of the sun reflecting back up off the striped rock formations.
But even a place like Hell with the Fires Put Out has its own beauty. We saw buffalo there, and some horses grazing out at the end of a green ridge, silhouetted against the clear sky. Something I think the Indians understood, in a way that Christianity sometimes undervalues, is balance. The trickster tradition inspires me to appreciate the necessity of dark places, of barrenness, of heat and death and risk. Wikipedia (the authorative source for all things), says that the function of the trickster is to break rules of nature or god, and that this disobedience allows for a connection with the sacred. The trickster is essential to creation or birth, and the laughter he inspires makes it possible for us to escape rigid adherence to rules that discount life’s complexity.
So even though the trickster is about laughter, for me he is also about accepting the not-beautiful as part of the beauty of our lived existence. In some ways the truism that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” reflects the lesson of the trickster, that we can learn to live with, and even laugh at, the mistakes we make.
Leaving the badlands, we headed back down the interstate to Dickinson, then up towards Killdeer, along a scenic route that was alternately lush green farmland and dry barren rock. Along the route we crossed the Little Missouri River again:
And then we rode up to New Town, where we stopped to read about Lake Sakakawea and Like-a-Fishhook Village, before we headed out on state road 23. The 60 miles between New Town and Highway 83 were my favorite part of the trip, even though I didn’t stop to make a picture of this stretch.
North Dakota strikes me as a landscape that doesn’t lend itself well to photographs. Part of its majesty is the openness, the flatness, the expansive vistas that stretch all the way across one’s field of vision. A picture of that type of view is like listening to three-second bits of your favorite songs: it can remind you of what you liked about the place, but it leaves you unsatisfied and feeling that there’s so much more to see and hear and smell.
Riding open-throttled across highway 23 we saw field after field of lush green crops, and straight rows of trees planted long ago as some protection against the cold winter wind across the prairie, and old homesteads slowly falling into odd-angled masterpieces, and the steeple of a country church rising above the trees marking a small farming community, and clear ponds ringed with reeds, and the endless ribbon of highway stretching before and behind straight as an arrow as far as the eye could see. And grain silos and tractors and other machinery of agriculture, balers and combines and rakes. And old one-room school building standing alone off the north side of the highway, looking a bit worn but solid and proud.
** **
We arrived in Minot in the late afternoon. We knew, from talking to some people at a gas station near Roosevelt Park, that Minot was hosting the state fair, but we headed into town anyway. I was doubtful that we’d find a place to stay, but dad, in his typical fashion, seemed untroubled. We passed through town and stopped at a hotel on the north end of things. The stop confirmed my suspicions: the hotel had no rooms and was skeptical that we’d find any rooms in town or any campgrounds where we could throw up the tent. Dad suggested that we start back towards town and stop at a couple other motels we’d seen. At the next place we stopped, the clerk was on the phone. The phone call was a cancellation, and we happily took the room, unpacked out bags, showered up, and had dinner at the Roll-N-Pin Café out front.
Next morning we gassed up the bikes and consulted the map. Discovering that we were only 50 miles or so from Canada, we decided to cross the border for some breakfast. We ended up at the Heritage Café in Pierson, Manitoba, a community-project café that allowed the tiny town to offer a limited menu to the locals. My breakfast sandwich was served on a toasted hamburger bun; the ‘hashbrowns’ with dad’s breakfast were tater-tots. But it was a pleasant, clean place, and I always like the charm of a small-town joint better than the predictability of a Perkins or Village Inn. The waitress was a high-school girl who told us she planned to go to college in Winnipeg after she finished her senior year.
Then we headed towards Highway 83.
** **
A few months ago Dad traveled a stretch of 83 from Nebraska down into Oklahoma and had been impressed by the scenery. A tentative goal for our trip was to travel a northern section of the highway. Since 83 is a CANAM route that runs from Canada all the way down to Mexico, I hoped we might be able to hit part of the Canadian portion of the road.
We traveled 83 from Manitoba, back across the border, back through Minot, and down to Bismarck. We stopped in Washburn along the way, where the municipal pool looked to be quite popular on that hot Sunday afternoon. We ate some cherries and drank some liquid outside of the 83 Express gas station, the type of gas station that you wish every town had, where the restrooms were clean, the area around the gas pumps was well kept, and the cashier was friendly. In other words: the kind of place where people give a damn.
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