This time I laid my body down in the grass. I found one of the many ditches dug over 200 years ago by the Mandan Indians and eased to the earth on a slant. I dropped my head on a thick biography of Thomas Jefferson and looked to the sky.
My hands rested on my forehead with my elbows up. They combined to frame the blue sky above. The architecture of prayer. I stared at it for minutes. It was such a soft color I began to see sunspots in my eyes. I knew Crown Butte was straight in front of me, Square Butte was to my right, and a 3/4 moon to my left. The prairie wind welcomed me in pulses, gusting here and there across the brown stubble. I live by heart. I hoped nature would rain on my soul. This is a place you'll find me.
At one time it's estimated 10,000 Mandan Indians lived here. It started around 1490. I wondered about them, great planters of the prairie. They raised corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. They dug ditches by hand for protection and women built the earth lodges. What magnificence. Buffalo were abundant as were fish and birds. The river provided fresh water and the high hill a majestic view of in three directions.
I think it's the humanity that draws me here. On this ground they lived and loved and fought and ate and played and discovered and learned and gave birth and died. Life advanced. So did time.
By 1785 Double Ditch was abandoned. A small pox epidemic wiped out much of the population. Perhaps 1200 were left by 1800. When Lewis and Clark came through on 22 October 1804, they noticed several deserted villages.
I sat up from my book pillow. The sky around me changed as the sun eased into the horizon. Clouds formed like wispy purple-blue ghosts far from the sun. Soft pink settled gently in-between. I fixed my eyes on the flaming mango-orange sunset. Ordinary turned sublime. It is one of the stories of my North Dakota.
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