Again, let's talk about how to talk about North Dakota.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      5 comments      link this post     


A reader of this blog sent me a link to an article that talks about North Dakota with the suggestion that he would like to hear my take on the article.

I'm sure you can imagine just how this will go, but I'll proceed anyway.

The first thing you'll notice when you read the article, once you get past the strange title of "No. 1 Hard: Notes on the emptying of North Dakota", is the 1000 word introduction, the photo. It's a mailbox, leaning slightly to the right, alone in the middle of a great, white nowhere. I guess that's a stand-in description for the state. I guess.

That sight, the snow rippling across the wide-open fields with few trees blocking the edge where the white earth meets the sky, is accurate. If we've had a winter where there's snow, the open fields certainly look like this. I've said to people before that the realization that you are surrounded by nothing, at first glance, either terrifies or brings strange peace to you. The photo of the mailbox alone gives me a great deal of happiness: you can get your mail still but not have all the distraction of the crowds.

The article starts by discussing a town named Heaton, one of many such towns in North Dakota. We have the usual adjectives that seem so apt by a person who neither understands nor loves the place: boneyard, abandoned, vacant, nothingness, desiccates, broiling heat, metal-shattering cold...and so on. There is the usual tactic of finding an earthy or quirky character to be the foil for the article; oh, the delicious quotes, the possibilities, the color that can be added to an article.

North Dakota has a long, embedded reputation as a forsaken place. It's one of the most rural states, with farms covering ninety percent of its land. Not that the land is ideal for farming. The eastern Red River Valley is best, but it floods. The central drift prairie is subject to drought. And the western Missouri Plateau is drier yet, the rocky Badlands having been described as "hell with the fires out." When people imagine inhospitable places, they typically think of craggy mountains and earthquake-prone zones and coastal cities that get struck by hurricanes. But, actually, it’s the flat, mute, unforgiving terrain of North Dakota that’s historically turned people away in droves, their dreams scorched to ash.

That's not to say the land isnt beautiful. It is. Skies dont come any bigger; the terrain is so flat in most places, one can practically see the curve of the earth. There's a quiet, settled feeling about North Dakota, which rests at the exact geographical center of North America. You can stand in a field of grass, hearing nothing but the chirping of bugs, the wind against the earth, and perhaps the beating of your own heart, knowing that this is not just the middle of nowhere, it's the middle of everywhere. The expanse that flows outward in every direction has a way of making you feel tiny, unprotected, and most disconcertingly undistracted.

These two paragraphs are interesting in that the author asserts the place is forsaken but yet is in the middle of everywhere. The writing is lovely and I might just chalk that conflicting juxtaposition up to being writerly except for one thing: it doesn't make any sense. The state is forsaken but is the middle of everywhere. And exactly what kind of truly natural terrain is forgiving? Perhaps people have become too used to asphalt and concrete to understand that any place not beat down by humans is unforgiving.

Though I appreciate Teddy Roosevelt's love of the state, I'm afraid his description that the Badlands were akin to hell minus the fire has done us no favors. Writers latch onto just such ideas and run with amuck with it.

The main highway intersection in Rugby, a town about 150 miles east of Tioga, is anchored by a stone obelisk. Built in 1932 by several local men, along with a group of Boy Scouts, this monument marks the "Geographical Center of North America." Next to it, helpful signs point the way to Acapulco (2,090 miles), Neah Bay, Washington (1,100 miles), and various spots in Maine and Canada. The idea is that if the continent were of uniform density, it would balance like a top on this spot, near the Dairy Queen, the Pizza Hut, and the Cornerstone Cafe. That's pretty interesting to ponder, indeed, and Rugby attempts to make the most of this singular designation. A nearby tourist hut stocks maps, not just of North Dakota, but of every state in the country. Don, the friendly and tidy man who answers questions at the booth, can describe with gusto matters of Indian history, the geological patterns left by ancient glaciers, and even good fishing spots. But when asked who are the typical visitors to Rugby, he turned a little sheepish. "Mainly people who have been to every other state in the country," he said. "North Dakota is the last state on their list."

I'm surprised the rather ugly northern lights sculpture wasn't mentioned. How a writer could miss out on mocking that is beyond me, though the inclusion of the Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut are a nice reference for anyone wondering how to stereotype the people.

::I like Dairy Queen, by the way. So there.::

The next paragraphs are a succint summation of the history of the state. It sounds very depressing, as history is oft to be when described by a person with an agenda. I won't bother with an excerpt, though I do wonder exactly what state in this country has a perfectly cheery history? And a chipper take on the Great Depression?

The pattern of untenable weather persists. In 1997, the Red River of the North, one of the only rivers in the U.S. that flows northward, rose up and destroyed much of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. And currently, due to more than a decade of above-average rainfall, the aptly named Devils Lake, situated in the eastern part of the state, has been overtaking trees and homes. At Shelvers Grove State Park, along the lake's northeast shore, a playground stands submerged up to its swings in a bright green swamp. A water spigot juts from the lake like the mast of a sunken ship. The citizens of nearby towns like Minnewaukan, which didn't used to have lakefront property, are understandably concerned. That's why the lake, which has no natural outlet, will be connected to the Sheyenne River, which connects to the Red, which runs up into Canada. The plan has given Canadians pause: Since Devils Lake has been self-contained, they worry that exotic species and bacteria will harm Canadian fish.

At one time, the semiarid central portion of the United States, reaching all the way down into Texas—first dubbed the Great American Desert and then the Great Plains—was left to natural thrivers like bison, prairie dogs, and prairie grasses. But, as society marched forward, the buffalo were killed by hunters, their habitat divided up and replanted to make farms and cattle ranches. New York native Theodore Roosevelt was one such rancher, who thought western North Dakota, especially the Badlands, touched by a "curious, fantastic beauty." At least that was his impression until 1886, when the weather turned especially hot, grasshoppers ate all the grass, and a fall fire destroyed much of what was left. That winter, North Dakota's blizzards came early, and so did the attending bitter cold and deep snow. Cattle starved by the tens of thousands—it’s estimated that three-quarters of those in the northwestern part of the state died. It was a downer for the gentleman Roosevelt, who complained that "for the first time I have been utterly unable to enjoy a visit to my ranch."

The rather unusual flood of 1997, far from the norm, did not destroy Grand Forks. If you go there today you'll find a lovely little city that took what devestation there was and turned it into a great downtown with sculpture and greenways. And they also kicked out a bunch of people and tore down homes that would be in a flood-prone section should such an unusual year occur again. There's much to be learned here, but the main point is that 1997 was then, this is now. We are not held down in a strangle-hold over what happened then.

Curiously, does the weather become more manageable, more teneble, once you cross the state border into Montana or South Dakota or Minnesota? And how is it that the midsection of North Dakota is described as too arid to be good farmland and now the wet cycle is rued, all in the same essay? What place on earth has a supposed perfect balance of weather? It is implied that this state is particularly unusual for its weather. Tell that to the states that were flooded in 1993 by the Mississippi River and then had a nice bout with drought.

There are those who would like to return parts of North Dakota, along with the rest of the central grasslands, to the bison, to wipe away the billboards and silos and virtually all other signs of human inhabitation. The proposal, called "Buffalo Commons," was floated in 1987 by a professor and a graduate student from Rutgers University, Frank and Deborah Popper. They suggested that the federal government buy land unsuitable for agriculture and turn it into an enormous national park. "We believe that over the next generation the Plains will, as a result of the largest, longest-running agricultural and environmental miscalculation in American history, become almost totally depopulated," they wrote. "We are suggesting that the region be returned to its original pre-white state, that it be, in effect, deprivatized." The two branded federal programs such as the Homestead Act as failures, and described the resulting abandoned landscape as "an austere monument to American self-delusion." They also predicted that matters would get worse, as global warming would eventually raise temperatures in the region.

More recently, the Poppers have suggested that their plan is coming about naturally, without the proposed push by the federal government. Not only are there fewer people living on the plains, but "the total number of buffalo on U.S. and Canadian private and public lands approaches four hundred thousand," they wrote in 2004, "a remarkable figure for a large species that nearly went extinct less than a century ago." According to a 2003 survey conducted by the North Dakota Buffalo Association, there were more than twenty-six thousand buffalo in the state, a ten percent increase from just four years earlier.

Contrarily, U.S. Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, a Democrat, is committed to saving rural American towns and farms. Dorgan’s great-grandmother packed up six kids after her husband’s death, got on a train, and settled in a tent in Hettinger County, on a piece of land she’d acquired through the Homestead Act. "You’ll find that same story with most people in North Dakota, and Minnesota, and other Plains states," he said. "Exactly the same story." Dorgan has introduced for several years running a bill that would enact a new version of the Homestead Act. There wouldn't be free land this time, but the program would offer other benefits to those willing to put down roots in underpopulated counties: partial payment of student loans, help with home financing, and even matching funds for savings accounts.

When it was suggested that the depopulation of many rural areas may be inevitable—the natural order of things as the nation becomes less oriented to farming in general and small family farms in particular—Dorgan turned fiery. "Seventy percent of the rural counties in the Great Plains have seen their population shrink by at least one-third," he said. "That's the heartland of America, the seat of family values, where independence is nurtured. We lose something when we lose that part of our country, our economy, and our culture.

"When America's cities were suffering from blight and decay, this country worried about the death of American cities. It rallied around with urban renewal and other programs that pumped money in and it made a big difference. We saved American cities. Are we going to save the heartland?"

Dorgan called the Buffalo Commons proposal "a nutty idea" thought up "by some elitists who know the worth of nothing and the cost of everything. What’s the difference between having difficulty in the weather and difficulty in getting to work? Sitting in traffic, that’s not difficult?" Then he threatened to launch against Deborah and Frank Popper one of the most lethal weapons known to North Dakotans. "I’d like to send the authors of that proposal one male and one female prairie dog," he said with a menacing chuckle, "and they could put them in their yard and it wouldn’t be long before they had a whole lot of prairie dogs."

Yeah. What Dorgan said. Except for the prairie dog thing being our most lethal weapon.

It's sure nice to hear a bunch of outsiders say that lives of people who only came into being because of the influx of people from the Homestead Act were merely bad calculations. It's nice to know that people are going to go to bat and repopulate the flooded Ninth Ward in New Orleans because of a supposedly great culture as opposed to up here where evidently only a bunch of white potatoe-eaters live; we should be pushed off of the land because we clearly haven't contributed nor will contribute anything of worth. Our lives and the culture created up here isn't as valued as some jazz trumpet player who eats jambalaya.

Some of the state's efforts to draw capital have born the mark of desperation. One of the most highly publicized cases involved funding for a hockey stadium in Grand Forks. Hockey is highly cherished in a state that sees a lot of winter; it's said that kids in North Dakota learn to skate before they can walk. So, in 1988, when Ralph Engelstad, who once played goalie for the University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux, offered to pay five million dollars for improvements to the stadium, the school was thrilled. The only problem was that Engelstad, a Las Vegas casino owner who died in 2002, was a blatant racist. The Nevada Gaming Control Board had once fined him $1.5 million for damaging the state’s reputation—no easy task. His offense involved throwing birthday parties for Hitler, complete with swastika cakes and German marching music, and owning a bumper-sticker printing plate that read, "Hitler Was Right."

The Vegas controversy posed a real conundrum for the people of North Dakota, who are mostly gentile. Not wishing to jump to conclusions, the university sent a delegation to Las Vegas to speak with Engelstad personally. And even though one member of the group told The Chronicle of Higher Education that she saw a Nazi propaganda poster among Engelstad’s collection of memorabilia, the university eventually accepted Engelstad’s five million dollars. The man was not a Nazi sympathizer, officials reasoned, but someone who merely displayed "bad taste."

Whew. No critique on anything is worth a dime without a Nazi comment. I was worried the author wouldn't get that in. Yes, we are mostly gentile. German and Scandinavian to be exact. Draw your own conclusions on what the author was trying to say by saying that this episode put us into a tight corner because we're gentile.

By this point in the article, North Dakotans are starved, deprived, covered in dust or flooded out, aging, to be pitied, our biggest and best cities are huddled up against the border with Minnesota implying that they are also trying to escape and now we are, evidently, tip-toeing gentiles.

Then the article moves onto Fargo with the requisite mention of the Coen brothers movie and then onto how wonderful and vibrant Fargo is, creating a contrast with the rest of the state as previously described in the essay. It doesn't take a genius to see what is implied.

On the southwest end of town, in what locals refer to as "Little Mogadishu," sits the African Market, a modest grocery. Nwinel Taoh, who moved to Fargo from Nigeria with her husband six years ago, leaned against the counter at the front of the store, drinking water from a milk carton. Her hair in braids, she spit a little water onto the floor through a gap in her front teeth. "I don’t love it here," she said, "but I can’t go anywhere else." She explained that the couple didn't know anyone when they arrived, though they have friends now, nor did she speak English. The whole experience was rather a shock.

That's where Lutheran Social Services comes in, providing English classes and job training. "We have a huge call for certified nursing assistants," said Asche. In fact, the demand for bodies to provide medical care to North Dakota’s aging population is so great that the medical industry partially pays for the English lessons. One thing Asche can’t prepare newcomers for, however, is the winter. Taoh said, as a handful of customers browsed the aisles, that she's adapted to her new home. But when asked about the cold, she slumped on her elbows. "I stay inside," she said. "The winters make me sick."

An African immigrant finds the winters unbearable. Imagine. This is cutting edge, point-proving stuff. We go out of our way to help immigrants but it's OK that they don't love it here because it's too cold. Just one point of clarification: the winters don't make me sick; they make me feel alive, senses sharpened, hard-edged. Some people like the cold. None of these people made it into the article, however.

In some ways, Taoh seems as isolated as Myrtle Hawks, living with her family out in Heaton, in the middle of Fargo's enormous and empty back yard. Like Taoh, Hawks is trying to scrape by, make a go of it, in a landscape that doesn't forgive. She used to have a store, called Hawks of Heaton Gift Shop, where she sold the homemade quilts and pillows she sews all winter long while the snow piles up, decorated driftwood from Devils Lake, and Indian jewelry. In 2000, Hawks traveled to Fargo for open-heart surgery. Pulling aside her collar to reveal a nasty scar, she said, "When I came back, somebody had kicked in my door."

Hawks shook her head, wondering what gets into some people. "My dad taught us three things," she said. "Don't touch stuff that’s not yours, don't lie, and don't steal." She paused, and then added, "I also know how to ride a horse, and tie all kinds of knots.”

[...]Hawks looked out at her town, at the ramshackle buildings collapsing into nothingness. "When I moved in, there were more people," she said. "But nobody wants to live out here." So, as the businesses closed and the people moved away, she began taking over the various structures. With entrepreneurial gusto, she filled them up with crafts and collectibles, and with the aluminum cans she gathers. "Two years ago," she said, "I sold 1,380 pounds of cans. I got more than four hundred dollars for them."

In outstate North Dakota, you take what you can get.

Even Fargo is getting the old vacuous treatment with its "empty backyard." And again, the landscape is unforgiving, as if we were some sort of religious people looking for nature to be kind to us, to make our sin of attempting to settle there be OK. Only a city fool makes the assumption that the earth and the weather and nature want to be kind.

This woman from Heaton is one woman, one experience, one town. There are also examples, had the author wanted to find them, that would not uphold this depressing view. I mean, dreamcatchers. Come on. We're not all up here making dreamcatchers and macrame holders for pop bottles hoping to earn a few dimes to continue our horrific existance.

No, in outstate North Dakota we don't take what we can get. We don't live a table-scrap life. We live a very normal, full life. We aren't all on Social Security, aren't all defacto mayors of empty towns, aren't all Nazis, aren't all filling up our out-buildings with aluminum cans to the delight and laughter of city folk, aren't all aren't all aren't all. You can find your crazies, your lonelies, your last-of-a-kinds, your struggling rural people, your quirky crafters, your battered economies in any place in the nation. You can write this same depressing take on any city or state if that is what you want to do. Read any travelogue; you'll find plenty of shallow assumptions.

It's just easier to come to the middle of the continent, call it the middle of nowhere, and feel like you have a clue.

Listen, to all you would-be journalists out there: this story concept, that North Dakota is hell on earth and vast nothingness, has been alive and well since the 1980's. Just about every newspaper and magazine has had their field day with poor, pitiable North Dakota. Find a new place to torment. As you pointed out, our population is low and we're going to be running out of gap-toothed hermits for you to interview.

The cycles have been forgotten. Wet cycles, dry cycles, population cycles. Writing without understanding the cycles is always a mistake. Number 1 Hard [Red Spring Wheat] is a plant, and not a motto of the state no matter how creative a writer needs the title of their essay to be. With the continuous proliferation of essays on North Dakota such as this one, no wonder the state is the last on everyone's list.

LINKS:
Fargo is bad enough
How to write about ND





| tag: north dakota |

Labels: north dakota

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger  2/13/2006 11:31:00 AM   (5) comments   Links to this post    

Like this post? Subscribe to the feed.    Help support this site.   Facebook | Stumble It! | Del.icio.us | DiggIt! | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | Newsvine

>> JOIN THIS SITE

THE WHITEBOARD
(v 2.0)

Content, design and imagery © Julie R. Neidlinger. All rights reserved. Please read the blog End User License Agreement (EULA).
All work by Julie R. Neidlinger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

HOME | CONTACT | HELP | SEARCH