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"Turn the radio up. Roll the window down. I lean back in my seat and feel the cool autumn breeze running through my hair, brushing its gentle fingers across my face. I slide my hand out the window and assume the classic position of the American automobile driver; sunglasses on, head nodding with the beat of a Tom Petty song. Into the Great Wide Open. The endless ribbon of asphalt stretches out to the horizon in front of me; and the setting sun is just above that, just a little bit to the left. The Japanese engine purrs quietly in fifth gear, and the speedometer reads a constant sixty-five miles an hour. In the middle of Anywhere, on my way to Nowhere in Particular, with a pair of beat up cameras next to me on the passenger seat. Other than their company, and the company of my millions of thoughts, I am alone." -- From a journal entry, 4.7.2005
The one thing I will definitely miss about North Dakota, years from now when I am far away and gone, is the freedom. The lonely, giddy kind of freedom that can only be found when one decides to drive around the countryside for a few days, picking an empty highway on a long-outdated map and setting the cruise control. During my most recent travels around North Dakota, we averaged 1,100 miles per weekend, in every kind of weather imaginable. We plowed through snow, rain, hail, sleet, high winds, freezing cold and burning heat. We passed through nearly every county, met plenty of good people; and in the end, we went home with a hard drive full of pictures and a few stories to tell. |
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I have been living in Grand Forks since 2002, when I enrolled at the University of North Dakota upon graduating high school. I was just a city kid with a pilot's license and a plan, which got blown out of the water shortly after I arrived. This wide open prairie sky has seen some of my worst days, and quite a few good ones, too. When I was a sophomore, I got my hands on a black Toyota pickup, and used every free moment I could get driving aimlessly around the countryside near town. Some friends and I could leave my apartment on any given day, and ten minutes later, we'd be in the middle of nowhere on some dirt road, playing "horse" with a deer rifle on a pile of rotten sugarbeets. Just like that, you cross the edge of town, and the world is an ocean of grass. That took some getting used to. Grand Forks always seemed like one of those nameless towns you pass through as a kid, when Dad decides to pack up the van and haul everybody across the country to see a damn tree that's a million years old or something. In from the highway, out in the morning... and now I live here. I've learned a lot in North Dakota, however, and I can now honestly say that I can't see myself living in a big city ever again. My friends say I've got the "hillbilly bug" or something, but they don't understand how free a man can be in a place like this, with so few walls to block the view. |
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We had some of our best times Out West, even when the border guards didn't let us cross into Sasketchewan. Cities like Crosby, Stanley, and Bowbells will be in my thoughts forever; while stories, like the time we tried to spend the night in a self-service car wash to avoid a snowstorm, will be told to friends and family for years to come. Last summer, Jeff and I slept at an abandoned farmstead in Divide County one night, and the next day we were near Washburn, enjoying a bluegrass music festival on the shores of the Missouri River. We were back in Grand Forks that same night, and Jeff was back in Minneapolis the next day. Mike and I cooked pasta over a fire, somewhere along Highway 200 west of Killdeer; and we got run out of White Earth by an unknown party in an old pickup. We saw nuclear missile batteries nestled in empty grassland, and Thad and I spent Easter weekend hiking in the badlands. This is the kind of freedom that will put a smile on your face. Robert King, in his incredible book, Stepping Twice Into the River, says that most of North Dakota could be anywhere; from Texas to Nebraska to the middle of Kansas or Montana. The spirit is the same, and often the land is the same, it is only the names that become different. While I can't speak for any of those places, I can say that it's all still America, and it's all worth the drive. Go explore. |
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Copyright 2006 Brian Hartley. All rights reserved.