Drought and Bumper Crops

August 2, 2010

Traveling as many back roads as possible to attend my grand nieces wedding, I was surprised how incredibly green the landscape was. The weather was perfect traveling through Wyoming and the Dakotas.

Gentle rains freshened the air as intoxicating fragrances from nearby fields of grain nourished my senses.  The country side was luxuriantly green.  The heads of wheat, flax and oat crops were already bursting at their seams, heavily weighing the stalks that were just beginning to ripen.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I walked into several fields, and to my astonishment the crops were almost to my hips and the growing season was not yet over.  There was a bumper crop in the making, and I was ecstatic for the farmers.

I was drawn to take several gravel roads, which beckoned me to explore dirt paths as well.  Scurrying along the paths, wild turkeys, pheasants, ducks, fox, geese, and grouse darted in and out of ditches dense with towering, pungent grasses.  I never was quick enough to catch them with my camera.

South Central North Dakota

As I walked inhaling  the breathless scene around me, I mounted a gentle knoll. Embracing oceans of green stretching for hundreds of miles, I remembered a very different and cruel summer of my youth.

I was quite young when we suffered a severe drought. Spring was particularly disheartening, and foreshadowed a disastrous summer and meager harvest.

My dad came home day after day from spring planting shaking his head in disbelief.  The winter had been bitterly cold, and very, very dry. Without snow and early spring rains to saturate the soil it was impossible to plow. When the earth is sufficiently wet, it turns over easily. As it was, the soil was so dry that it simply would not turn over, but instead created clouds of dust as it briefly caught air and crumbled beneath plow shears.

I could tell my dad was worried by the way he paced back and forth in the kitchen.  Day after bone dry day he searched the sky for rain clouds  as we worked the fields together.  At night he would sit on the entrance steps, and look towards the West hoping moisture would come at last.

On rare occasion storm clouds would gather, with the smell of rain carried by a breeze, as thunder and lightning streaked the skies, but produced no precipitation. Dad stood in the door way watching and hoping for a down pour, and praying it would not hail.

He was distressed. His eyes were sad and anxious as he nervously paced. The heat was so intense it parched the earth creating deep cracks. The air was so dry and hot it made breathing extremely difficult.

Very slowly signs of wheat, oats, corn and flax began to break through the dry, cracked soil.  It was pitiful as they appeared weak from the struggle to break the surface without water.

The crops had barely grown two inches, when swarms of grasshoppers anchored strips of wheat and oats, and began munching their way towards the center. Within four days they had eaten their way through a quarter of the rain starved crops.  I had never seen such huge grasshoppers. They were nasty, and they bit everything in sight.

The heat was searing as well as relentless. The entire countryside  wilted before our eyes. Pastures were burning quickly, leaving our cattle grazing on barely green stubs of grass. Our large herd demanded more grass than was available, and we were forced to sell off over half of our livestock. I could see the disappointment on my fathers face when he returned from the cattle auction. The beef market was flooded plummeting prices to  to an all time low. Dad had to sell our cattle  for 7 cents per pound.

One early, hot, August day, we awoke to  dark ominous clouds on the horizon. Ordinarily my dad would have been thrilled, but he knew it was not a good sign.  Hail, the size of a half-dollar, pummeled the already sagging stalks of grain,  shredding them to bits.

By mid August my dad knew there would be no harvest. What was left of the crops was too short to swathe, much less combine, and the heads of grain were only half full.  We mowed down the crops and fed our reduced herd of cattle, hogs and chickens, hoping it would be enough to see us through another bitter winter.

The memories of that drought, hail, and bug infestation destroying our crops, drastically reducing our income to poverty level, are still etched in my mind.

Slowly I made my way back to the road, and continued toward my destination.  I realized experiencing the waves of abundance before me is much like life itself.  There is always a drought of time, money, food, or love, followed by a bumper crop.  We just need to learn how to be resourceful and have faith that our trials will pass.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, The Bad Lands

May 11

Only once during my youth my parents took a very long day’s journey, with me and my younger sister in tow, to visit the Badlands. I don’t remember very much of that trip except Medora’s tiny bath tub. She must have been very small. Ever since I left home I have wanted to explore the Bad Lands from various entrances, but like many must places to see, it too fell through the cracks as I had a career to build and other places to see.

Years later, sitting around my sister’s table, with my niece’s and nephew’s, telling Norwegian jokes, my nephew Dean, offered to take me on a tour of the Bad Lands.  Dean’s friend, whose acreage abuts the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, gave him exclusive access to the park through his land.  Naturally, I simply could not pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity.

I remember Dean as a child with, beautiful sea-green eyes, and before he could speak, he was drawn to engines and all those tools that still baffle me.  As co-owner of a business catering to the oil industry, the engines and tools have grown bigger and more baffling.  Along with his success comes a high degree of stress.

As adults we discovered what great friends we were, and how easily we discussed events and delved into a range of topics. Even though we disagreed, we would listen to each others’ point of view without judgement and the necessity to be right.  Dean manages to navigate his feelings without fear, and in moments, his heart is on his sleeve. I love him dearly.

Always eager to discuss politics, ethics and religion, this trip was no exception.  We left Williston in the wee hours of the morning, and over breakfast in a small road side restaurant we discussed the ethics of religion. Whew!  Now there’s a hot topic for those who have the courage to admit their own frailties.

The Bad Lands of North Dakota

As we entered the Bad Lands I knew I was entering Dean’s sanctuary. This is where he found solace, cleared his mind, and erased his stress. With a source of pride and pleasure he took me over narrow passages of rock, down gullies, and up steep banks, where views of wooded ridges, bluffs, buttes, pinnacles and rolling plains, converged and stretched into the horizon.

Each area of the country has their own spectacular beauty, which all of us can put into words.  The Bad Lands of North Dakota has rock formation’s that simply cannot be adequately described. Only an ace geologist can explain how, over millennia, ice and water eroded soil and rocks to form Daliesque contortion’s that defy gravity.  I was amazed, how this rugged, dry, territory supported wandering buffalo, elk, big horn sheep as well as deer and prong horn antelope.

Never having ridden an RV, I was hesitant at first, but after a few minutes I was grateful to be chauffeured over very rugged terrain.   I felt very safe through out our tour, but there were a few times I thought surely we would flip over, and roll forever down a steep embankment.

I had a serious OMG moment when we had to stop, and hike over difficult paths where the RV could not maneuver through to reach certain points.  Dean reached out his hand to help me down a very steep but, short incline.  I was wondering why he was helping me when, OMG, I realized what he did was what every young person does to help the ELDERLY.  ELDERLY?  ME?  WWWHHHOOOOOAAAA! NO! NO! NO!

Roaming through the Bad Lands without designated roads, NO TRAFFIC, not a single person within 25 miles, made me feel absolutely free.  Not a care came to mind.  Each of us is uniquely affected by the same experience, but I felt Dean and I were in sync as we left his sacred space.  I cherish the memories of our time spent together in the wilderness.

Little Lutheran Church On the Prairie

April 13

Rivers and time are unending movements which cannot be controlled. Our frail efforts seek to manipulate, and out smart both, but nature and time determine their own rhythm.In our rush to become adults both seem to stand still, and once we have  reached a certain age we long for them to once again cease.

Our farm was close to a small town. I had always heard of the people who lived and worked their farms “back by the river,” which meant they lived in a remote part of the county.  I was always curious  who those people were, and how their lives were different from ours.  There was always the emphasis on the phrase “they live back by the river” when referring to a family, who seldom came into town to shop, as if they were from another planet. I left home and never made the time to explore the “back by the river” territory.

Many years later I arrived at my sister’s farm to celebrate her wedding anniversary.  Her son Gary, had arrived shortly before me, and was shyly waiting to greet me.  Having seen him only once as an adult, I had to look twice before I recognized him.  He is a very handsome young man, and I remember visiting my sister in the hospital right after he was born, and being struck by how he was the most beautiful new born I had ever laid eyes on.

We fell into an easy conversation.  Suddenly I thought of “the river” where I had never been.  It didn’t take much to persuade Gary to take me on a tour, and within seconds we were on the road.

The river’s wide curves held farm steads nestled amongst dense stands of trees.  We crossed the Souris River on a trestle bridge and began a gentle, up hill climb, that led to alternating fields of wheat, corn and oats; each crop flaunting it’s spring greenery as if in competition at an Easter Parade.

Norway Lutheran Church

As we rounded a curve the small, *Norway Lutheran Church came into view.  Standing proudly on a hill over looking the Souris, and fields of grain; the immaculate grounds and structure had an air of heavenly elegance that seemed to dominate the plains on which it was built.  Driving towards the Church it looked lonely, but the near by cemetery, surrounded by a beautiful wrought iron fence, and what looked like pearly gates, is it’s constant companion.

I couldn’t help but wonder about all the memories this beautiful, small, church must hold; people traveling on horse back and in horse drawn  wagons to attend Sunday services.  How proud and happy parents must have been watching their children christened. How sad the gathering of friends and families must have been at funerals, bidding farewell to loved ones as they laid them to rest.

How many happy couples were married in this Church on the lonely prairie?  Hmmmm.  Ok, I have seen countless wedding pictures around the turn of the last century and not one bride or groom was smiling.  It does make one wonder if happiness was ever contemplated in those days.

Small communities customarily have their cemeteries at a considerable distance from their churches.  Cemeteries are usually situated on a donated plot of land outside the towns’ city limit’s, making it seem a lonely place for the departed.  The beloved who are laid to eternal rest in the Norway Lutheran Cemetery are comforted by a soaring, divine, spire watching over them, the river, and the surrounding grain bearing fields.

As Gary and I lingered watching the sun set behind the church, chatting about various topics; I couldn’t help but admire his soft-spoken ways, his gentle, sweet, demeanor and wisdom beyond his years.  I was grateful I had those few precious hours with him, and for a few moments time and the river seemed to cease their advances.

*(Built in the late 1800’s, by Norwegian immigrants, The Norway Lutheran Church has been in constant use. Tourists, from as far as Norway, drive many miles to admire the late Gothic architecture once they arrive in North Dakota.)

Welcome to Back Road Less Traveled

Cities are fun.  Where else can we go and have a fabulous dinner with fine wine, enjoy live music and theatre, visit museums, art galleries, take in a sports event and always be sure that there will be something to entertain us 24/7 if we choose?

I enjoy large cities, but I feel most comfortable seeing nature when I wake up in the morning.  Having a view of mountains or an endless sea of prairie calms me and makes me happy that I am part of a more natural environment.

After musical studies in college I moved to a large city.  While I enjoyed all the cultural amenities of a large city, I was also stressed by traffic, elbow to elbow people, polluted air and hardly any time to be in nature. I now live in a smaller city where mountain views and open spaces are less than a five minute drive.

When my busy schedule allows me to take a road trip, I can hardly wait to point my car in the direction where open spaces and back roads are readily available.

Many times I toss my map aside and take hard left turns onto small gravel roads. I really get excited when I find a dirt path to follow.

I love open spaces, and as my photographs reveal, I love unobstructed views.

South West North Dakota

Ok! A lot of you are probably wondering if I have completely lost my mind.  Many people bemoan the fact that driving through the plains states means withdrawal from a city and the excitement of “things to do and see.” “There’s nothing there”, is the cry frequently heard from friends.

OMG, where else can you see green fields stretching endlessly into the horizon with intense blue skies as a back drop? Where else can  you breathe air filled with the aromas of sweet, wild grasses, and crops and earth still wet with dew?  I miss the smell of the earth producing food.