Have you ever dreamt of being alone on an island with the sun shining on you while holding your favorite book? It happened to me today, and I had Hemingway.
I put the kayak in north of Bismarck. It was my first trip down river, past places I'd been many times in a boat.
Things look a lot different close to the water. You feel bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger for experiencing nature in this way, smaller for realizing the world is a big place and you're one wave away from swimming in current. It is good to feel small, a minuscule part of something so sweepingly beautiful. It's like the sand on my favorite beach north of where the Heart flows into the Missouri, one speck in a trillion. When I fall into its luxury I scoop up handfuls of it and let it fall back down, my fists forming a human hourglass.
My maiden journey reminded me a little of the Old Man and the Sea, I hooked to some great fish leading me away. "Take me somewhere," I thought about the kayak. "I want to see things I've never seen, I want to feel things I've never felt."
The word harmony is on the end of our paddle. I loved that there was no noisy, smoking engine. I could hear the kayak cut into the river as it moved forward, the trickles of water off the oar. Nothing interfered with the bird songs or the whispering wind.
A half hour after I started, I stopped at a sandbar in the middle of the river. The cool water was welcome relief from the heat. I sat down in it and splashed it up on my face and back. I drenched my hair. I watched some boats go by and I tried to remember the paths they took. When I cooled down, I circled the small island, maybe 35 yards long. The rippled sand felt good underfoot. I found a dry spot in the middle and, using my life jacket as a pillow, opened For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robert Jordan is planning the bridge attack during the Spanish Revolution. He has a trusted friend in Anselmo. He is in love with a perfectly imperfect woman, and a great snowstorm has struck. All this from an isolated island in the middle of the Missouri River on a 90 degree day near Bismarck, North Dakota.
I return to the water along the east shore. Two guys ask me where I started. "Up north near Double Ditch," I tell them. "That's a good day," they reply in stereo, raising their Mountain Dew bottles to toast my adventure.
I am told for a peaceful voyage to stay away from the main channel and take the shallow, narrow tributary-like route behind Christmas Tree Island. It is good advice. For maybe two miles I oar and stop and float and oar and stop and listen. The sun beats down on my brown arms. I see a bald eagle. There are many switchbacks and I learn to read shallow water along the way.
There's Grant Marsh bridge. A couple dozen people are walking up onto the riverboat. Above, traffic races both east and west along I-94.
The kayak gracefully turns the corner from the main river channel to the boat ramp. I wonder what people think of me. Perhaps I started in Montana, a man with a gypsy heart and a book and somewhere to go. Or maybe they think I'm crazy, or brave, or out of place.
With the vessel loaded onto my shoulder, I walk up to a park bench. I stretch out and read more pages. Candace pulls up with the pickup. She brings refreshing cold peaches and a half can of Diet Coke.
It is good to be on my way home, yet still I think of the river.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Double Ditch at Sunset (2008)
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.
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.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Sixty-four colors
Candace and I drove up to Double Ditch a couple weeks back with the intention of writing, reading, soaking in the sunset, the sounds of prairie grasses, and the history. We had to arm wrestle Riley into coming with us.
It is sacred ground--no doubt--deserving of respect. But this is not always easy to do when trying to appease a 7 year old. That meant a stop at Wendy's on the way out to get chicken nuggets and fries, a southwest salad, and a spicy chicken sandwich.
So we pull into the circular drive, gather our things, take the paved path out to the blue bench and plop down. By now we have violated just about everything Clay Jenkinson mentioned in his recent Tribune article! But I think maybe we have achieved a balance of being able to enjoy the landscape, the sweet air, the caress of the breeze, and the symphony of crickets and grasshoppers mixed with the crunch of fast food bags, the odor of greasy fries, and the slurp of a fast melting frosty.
It was good for about ten minutes. Quiet was just settling in , the soul of the place was weaving into our minds and hearts, the taste of the air was replacing that of the spicy chicken and chili--when Riley informed us he had "to go."
So the sun didn't set on us from the beautiful buttes as we had planned. We didn't get a chance to fall into the grass and look up into the heavens, we didn't open Mary Oliver--Orion did not start his creep from eastern horizon to west. Instead we gathered our stuff, left the sun hanging like a family picture on a wall, and scurried back into Bismarck.
The thing is, the trip was beautiful in its own right. Far from perfect. Far from expectations. Far from simplicity. But beautiful. No doubt Crayola is jealous of North Dakota skies--hard as they may try, the colors can only be matched by the memories they burn into my mind. Each night when I lay down, I review these fleeting sunsets hoping they drift into my dreams. I see the colors again as I want to remember them, and am glad in my imperfection to be a North Dakotan, a husband, a father, and a friend.
It is sacred ground--no doubt--deserving of respect. But this is not always easy to do when trying to appease a 7 year old. That meant a stop at Wendy's on the way out to get chicken nuggets and fries, a southwest salad, and a spicy chicken sandwich.
So we pull into the circular drive, gather our things, take the paved path out to the blue bench and plop down. By now we have violated just about everything Clay Jenkinson mentioned in his recent Tribune article! But I think maybe we have achieved a balance of being able to enjoy the landscape, the sweet air, the caress of the breeze, and the symphony of crickets and grasshoppers mixed with the crunch of fast food bags, the odor of greasy fries, and the slurp of a fast melting frosty.
It was good for about ten minutes. Quiet was just settling in , the soul of the place was weaving into our minds and hearts, the taste of the air was replacing that of the spicy chicken and chili--when Riley informed us he had "to go."
So the sun didn't set on us from the beautiful buttes as we had planned. We didn't get a chance to fall into the grass and look up into the heavens, we didn't open Mary Oliver--Orion did not start his creep from eastern horizon to west. Instead we gathered our stuff, left the sun hanging like a family picture on a wall, and scurried back into Bismarck.
The thing is, the trip was beautiful in its own right. Far from perfect. Far from expectations. Far from simplicity. But beautiful. No doubt Crayola is jealous of North Dakota skies--hard as they may try, the colors can only be matched by the memories they burn into my mind. Each night when I lay down, I review these fleeting sunsets hoping they drift into my dreams. I see the colors again as I want to remember them, and am glad in my imperfection to be a North Dakotan, a husband, a father, and a friend.
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