A Crooked Mile: Report from the Snort Fort

Our minds are captured by the great and small alike. After touring through the Pacific Northwest with towering redwoods, the Golden Gate, and the vast Pacific greating me every morning, I headed east to quainter locals. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing, or the idea that my family came from such a place, but the idea of these small towns has always seemed more than slightly romantic to me, so that each time I head to North Dakota (of the three times I've done so now) to visit where my family calls home with a more nostalgic tone than that which they use for their residence, it calls up a Wobegon, or a Hill Valley, or at least a Stars Hollow. But it's a tangible thing to, where my father lives in the house of his family, where my aunt lives down the street from both Grandma and Grandpa, where my parents met and in some future tense, where the hint of my life began.
We began in Fargo, don't you know, and headed out to Climax, Minnisota. To reassure even even Anne, who is from the state herself, yes Climax is a real place, and yes their slogan is "Climax, MN--More than a Feeling!" It's a fun place though, from what little I know of it. The last time I was there, over Christmas, we had a bit of excitement during the celebrations as my aunt was gazing out the window and noticed a strange car pass by. Several phone calls later, the identity of the driver confirmed as visiting relatives, we settled back into the holiday, but the day was slightly ruffled after that. This time was only slightly less eventful as I happened to show up on the celebration of my cousin's birthday, and we all had a rousing round of Birthday Bingo, from which I walked away with some Silly Putty as a consillation prize.
But time was spent in other places as well. After a brief sojurn to South Dakota, driving sort of past the home of Laura Ingles Wilder, we made it to Park River, North Dakota, where a good chunk of my family can be traced back to. It's a nice town, pictured below, with one real main street, one school for all ages, an annoying bell that sounds for lunch and dinner times as well as for ten o'clock to serve notice that all the kids should move in off the street. Just outside of the town limits, on private land, my father took us out to his hunting shack. The whole thing was a slavage-built operation designed to barely house a couple of men for the season, just hidden in the woods off the side of the fields, next to a river that cuts through the mostly flat land offering a brief moment of terrain. In search of a beaver dam I heard about, I headed into the woods and up the game trails. While I never really saw much trace of beaver, I kept being distracted by some butterfly or another floating pass, a frog jumping around in the undergrowth, a deer rushing away at the incessent loudness of my clomping through the grass, and high-banked winding river that cast me back to the words of Annie Dillard as she discussed the beauty, the pleanty, and the profigacy of the wild. Comming out of the thickets and standing in the spread of the green cropland, waving just so in the wind, patterns dancing on the verdant matting, another book and other thoughts sprung to mind. I was currently pouring through The End of Poverty, by Jeffery Sachs, and thinking about the solutions needed in Uganda. The image of starving people filling that incredibly fertile land in another continent cast against the thoughts of myself plumping up nicely in this time of rest and feeling the breeze as it whipped through the grains. It wasn't really a flood of guilt at the providence given to me, but more a continued pushing into the investigation of what is enough, what brings contentment, and what breeds greed. I have mentioned briefly before, the struggles with doubt, as I feared my plans falling apart only to find my every need accounted for and life falling easily into line. Somehow the thoughts of feeding the masses of a country from the growing bounty around me echoed and attempted to complete these thoughts.
Also in the town, we walked into a large building that once held a church, but now housed a small family and a glassworks shop. The artisan was constructing a series of tiles as we came in, interupted his work to simply admire the beauty and sadly not purchase the slightest piece. But he entertained us for a while, discussing his craft, his house, family, and life. He offered me one of the most amazing things I've heard in a while as he explained that costumers have displayed a tendancy of large towards more simple patterns and that the natural prairie art that he tended to produced was now valued all over the country. His theory behind this was simple. After the ravages of attacks and war, our country has been left with a pure desire for simple order that comforts in its beauty instead of the chaos that titillated us before. The people who look at his work, he's noticed are seeking a soothing gentility that he's happy to provide, as he's found the same thing moving from California to this distant town where he can obtain a house for the prices his friends find on cars. His family feels safe and comfortable, he has found provision and satisfaction.
Not that any of this hints towards some upcomming move on my part. By no means am I heading out for green acres to call my home, but I can still try to appreciate it. I can look for what my father sees in it, as he returned after a great many and a few difficult years away, and what my mother found in an entirely different location but all smacking of the same thing. It's nice to think of, and maybe someday I'll find myself there or somewhere like it, hopefully closer to the coast, but those days are far off, and there's many other fashions of contenment and comfort to find between now and then.

A few pictures: