When I was growing up, my dad and I used to make the long trip up North to the Turtle Mountains in North Dakota. We didn’t go alone every year, but a lot of years we did. It was what we did.
And I know when most people think of North Dakota, they think of barren farm land and cold winters and oil.
But that has never been what it is to me.
It’s always been thoughts of running through the woods, picking wild roses and raspberries. Staying out past dark with all my cousins (and there are A LOT of us), drive in movies and food. So much food. I would spend my time in a modest farm house where my grandparents lived. My Grandmother would have a feast waiting for my dad and I when we arrived, no matter how late it was. She was a large polish woman, with hands that had milked cows all her life, and kneaded bread and rolled pie crusts. She wore a kerchief on her head much of the time, until someone special would visit and then she would sit at the table and put her red hair in curlers. She laughed all the time and always told me to enjoy my youth. Every second of it. And to never cut my blond hair. My grandfather was a quiet observer. Tall and lanky and dark haired. But if you sat and talked with him, you would soon find out his humor and whit and intelligence was just hiding in there. To me, it’s stories told of my Aunts and Uncles of their childhoods, almost like you were living it yourself. It was an old fashioned, slow paced way of life. It was a place to escape and find solace in the forest and the hundreds of surrounding lakes.
I haven’t been to visit in almost 9 years. So I took my son with me and jumped in the car and headed down the long road with my dad. We wound our way through fields of purple flax and golden canola and past well groomed farms until we got to the mountains, only a couple miles from the Canadian border. (You can see the border from several of our relatives homes, which is just another tree line.) The Dino Man and I spent a week on the lake. A different way to spend my time in North Dakota, one that I wasn’t used to, but amazing none-the-less. We spent our days fishing, and kayaking and swimming. And we would galavant all over kingdom come. He made friends (of course he made friends, when does he not?!) to boat and jet ski with. We’d run into the grocery store where I would meet a relative I didn’t know I had. We are related to most everyone in the area. We explored with grandpa, the land we’ll have to take over someday. We enjoyed the 4th of July activities of a small town (which throwing candy off of the floats in the parade was a HUGE deal for him, that doesn’t happen in our parades.) We ate and ate and ate. We got to spend time with my family. We got to see a newborn cow, that my dad and uncle had to pull. We found our way past the Candian border to the Peace Gardens (and almost didnt get to come back with my little boy, as I had the wrong passport with me, talk about nerve wracking, getting shook down by the border patrol!) We meandered. We slept. We got to just be. Which was so needed for both of us and our busy, over scheduled lives. We found solace in the forest…and it was wonderful.
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