Drift Prairie

June 30, 2009

Filed in: North Dakota

So we’ve had three lovely days here in the Bismarck-Mandan metropolis. Setting aside the terrifying clouds and 50 mph winds that greeted us at the airport, and the all-caps severe storm warnings scrolling across the screen in our hotel room when we checked in (they’d had a tornado touch down less than 24 hours earlier), the weather has been cool and clear and dry, though everywhere there are signs of floods, both recent ones and the earlier ones from this spring.

So what’s it like? What do I think? I think it’s very, very hard to get a bead on North Dakota, and I like that in a state. It’s not at all like Texas or New York or California, which are right up in your face the moment you arrive, all “we’re all this, as you already know from our fabulous reputation that precedes us.” ND is almost the exact opposite, which means you have to work very hard not to look around and say, “this is nowhere,” and keep moving.

Apparently, they’re used to people saying just that, and doing just that, and they maintain something of a sense of humor about it. Taking a tour at a National Historic site pretty far out in the middle of the prairie – the place where Lewis and Clark met Sakakawea – when the guide found out we were from Boston, she guessed 1) you’re traveling cross-country 2) you’re here seeing relatives. When I told her it was 3), trying to get to all 50 states, she nodded and said, “Oh, yes, we hear that too, only a lot of people tell us we’re their very last state.” (Poor ND! Picked last for gym class and not afraid to admit it.) Then she pwnd me by proceeding to introduce a little boy in the front row who is trying to do all 50 by the time he’s 12. Thanks, kid, and good luck with that.

The most important thing to know is real North Dakotans speak exactly, exactly the way Frances McDormand did in Fargo – man did she nail that accent – and that it’s an incredibly musical and lovely and optimistic way of speaking. As a crusty New Englander, I’m normally loathe to engage in chatter during various small commerce transactions, but when I hear that someone has that real ND accent, I have been going out of my way to ask them something/anything in an effort to hear more.

The next most important thing, for me anyway, is the country outside Bismarck (and the country begins immediately outside – this is the state capital, and literally 7 miles from the very, very ugly capital building you can find cows and bales of hay and 2-lane highways and not a hint that you’re near any city, much less the capital) is some of the most beautiful land I have seen in America, but that might just be because I’m partial to open space and grace and gentle unfolding undulations rather than big, showy, jaw-dropping Scenery with a capital S.

This mid part of the state is “drift prairie” (how much do I love that phrase?), meaning it’s not the flat flat flat of the eastern part of the state (and of, say, Iowa to the southeast) and not the super-strange hills and buttes of the Badlands (where we are heading today). It’s all rolling, rolling grasslands for miles and miles. You can see very far in any direction --the sky really does go from one horizon to the other—but in between are valleys and swales and sudden graceful turns and jogs in the road, and everywhere grass. I read in a letter to the editor of the New Yorker that human beings are hard-wired to like grassy plains because the open spaces were safe – you could see your predators coming – and fertile – so you could eat. (The letter-writer was using this to justify Americans’ love of lawns, which is silly, but the factoid was appealing nonetheless.)

It’s topography that makes you want to be on a bicycle, or a horse, somewhere closer to the grass than a car, but moving more quickly than on foot. We saw a lot of ATV tracks running beside the roads, and though I normally abhore those things as noisy and planet-trashing, here you could see the appeal.

Two more things you notice right away: it’s always windy. Always. Obviously this is why their summer storms and winter blizzards are so bad. Only around the rivers do the trees grow naturally. It all reminds me of the Little House on the Prairie books, when Pa would disappear into the river bottom for a day or two to do some logging to build the outhouse or whatever.

And once you start looking, everyone seems either very Scandinavian/Norwegian/Northern European (big blonde gals everywhere) or slightly Native American (there are three tribes – the Mandan, the Hidatsa and the Arikaras, all nearly wiped out by smallpox and the American army. The story isn’t pretty).

That’s all what hits you upside the head about ND. Tomorrow: the murky rest, plus a genuine mystery: donde estan los yuppies?