Michael Totten’s got some breathtaking pictures up right now. God, just go over there and keep scrolling. It’s been years since I drove across the country … it’s been years since I’ve seen a sky that big.
When my boyfriend and I drove cross country (in our soon-to-be-doomed Westfalia) – I was particularly blown away by North Dakota. North Dakota filled me with an exhilaration that I can only describe as spiritual. It was a transcendent landscape. I’m a New England girl, a sea-level kind of girl. Only at the ocean can we see all the way to the horizon. Everywhere else you’ve got wooded hills, and forested streets, winding up and down … It’s beautiful, but you do not get the perspective. North Dakota was a blasted-open landscape, big land, big sky, and I felt very very small and also very very huge – all at the same time. I loved that state – I’d love to go back.
Sheila,
I’m always fascinated by peoples’ reactions to my home state (and James Lileks’ home state, as it happens).
If you get a chance, read “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography” by Kathleen Norris. Norris was a Soho writer and poet who, back in 1974, got a letter saying she’d inherited a ranch in South Dakota (just across the NoDak border). She and her husband took the trip out there as a lark, figuring on selling it – and thirty years later, are still there (she’s an acquaintance of my mom’s, actually). Sounds like a sitcom, no?
The book is a wondrous look at both the beauty of the high plains – a school girl called the sky “Big and blue and full of the mind of God” in Norris’ book, maybe the best description I’ve seen ever anywhere – and the insular, stoic, “monastic” nature (Norris’ metaphor) of the people; a nature I fled when I was 22.
But there are times I miss exactly what you and Totten point out – something I’m going to have to post on very soon here.
(By the way – if you drove across NoDak on ’94, I grew up in the town with the big cement buffalo on the right of the freeway as you drove west…)
I was there in 1991. Wow – “big and blue and the mind of God” –
My memories of the place are so vivid. Watching a rainstorm begin miles away, the black earth, the rain-washed pavement, the gleaming of neon in the middle of nowhere – a gas station – random buffalo – and the wide open spaces – It was always grey when we were there. Raining, or cloudy – with (at times) sun rays bursting through – like a caricature of a miracle happening in a movie.
One of the most spectacular places I have ever been.
I will have to check out Kathleen Norris – thank you!
Doh – I mean on “I-94” – my hometown is Jamestown. And I moved to Minneapolis in ’85.
And there is nothing like seeing a squall line forming up fifty miles away, and watching it march across the sky toward you. Amazing – Lileks called it something like a huge painting that changes every ten minutes.
I remember, too, my boyfriend and I had this weird random almost poetic encounter with a little tow-headed boy, who was perched on top of a fence – by himself – with a field of buffalo behind him. No adults around, and his hair was white, but he was 8 …
We talked to him for a while about the buffalo, and the sunflower fields, and the rain … I’ve never forgotten that little kid for some reason.
I’ve driven through ND a few times and done a couple of pheasant hunting trips there, around Ashley ND. I love that area.
If you didn’t see it in 1991 and get the chance again, I’d say make sure you see the Badlands, Theo. Roosevelt Park. I thought that was spectacular.
I’ve been an East-coast guy my whole life, and can’t really imagine living anywhere else. But on a cross-country trip with a buddy after graduating college some years back, I can vividly remember listening to some great music, looking ahead to the horizon that seemed impossibly far away, and thinking, “So, this is where America is? Makes sense.”
Despite almost ten years of distance and time between myself then and now, I still think the true heart of America lies on those open plains.
I was there the day before yesterday. Ate lunch in Murdo. Slept in Sioux Falls. I’m afraid that after Montana and Wyoming the days before it, SD didn’t make much of an impression on me. Folks were friendly in Murdo, though.
Red, if you loved North Dakota, you would positively *swoon* here in Montana…stunning doesn’t even begin to describe the beauty and majesty.
Visit the Little Big Horn National Monument, where Custer and his troops died, on a late summer day, and walk up to the top of Last Stand Hill — you will then understand why Montana is called the Big Sky State, and the impression on you will be lasting.
Well, on my cross-country trip we covered all of these incredible places you mention.
Badlands was like visiting another planet. UnREAL.
Montana was just like what everyone has said. It’s like – Montana has always existed in my imagination, I had ideas of what it would be like – and when I got there, I thought: Of course – it is JUST like I pictured. Amazing.
This is just my impression – and I know that people actually live in North Dakota – but one of the things that really struck me about ND was how empty the land felt. It was like we were alone with nature. Montana felt more obviously inhabited – even though all of the farms and houses were spread out – You could feel the presence of humanity. In ND, at least where we were, it was just us, and the rain, and the fields. And that random little white-haired boy.
Just beautiful.
We went to Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, Minnesota, Montana, etc etc … Every state has its own character, and landscape.
I highly recommend driving cross-country, to anyone who hasn’t done it.
I just happen to live north of ND and Montana – in Saskatchewan. I’ve got some photos on my home website http://www.katewerk.com and on my blog, but you have to search for them.
It’s addictive – this wide open space. And the pace of life – spend some time hanging around in a small farming community and you’ll learn the true meaning of “laid back”.