Still Fighting for My Place

By Sam Larson

Why? Why do I stay? I get that question a lot.

It comes from every angle, everywhere. East Coast. West Coast. Gulf Coast. Even people from my generation that still call North Dakota home question it. What makes me feel such an attachment to this place? I question that myself sometimes.

In fact, I have questioned it… A lot.

Editor John Irby of the Bismarck Tribune published a story this past June titled, “North Dakota’s Primary Export: Young People,” talking about the cold hard facts of outmigration problems we face. He brings up some of the same stuff I talked about as a student at UND five years ago in a class, captivatingly called Populations. As about-to-graduate college students, we discussed what makes us go and what makes us stay. It’s all very surface. Just as Editor Irby mentions, some of the reasons he dug up in an article by USA Today included “the weather, isolation, landscape, and ‘the inability to find a date on a Saturday night’…especially in small towns.”

Most of that, I can agree with. However, with more and more hi-speed internet access coming out to our countryside comrades, perhaps some of those lonely weekends can now be filled with sites like horseandcountrysingles.com, which promises to “Unite equestrian singles and country lovers from all over the world!” My family has actually looked into some of these for my oldest brother, a 33-year-old bachelor who hasn’t spent much time off the farm. With the average age of marriage for men being 27 in this country (and 28 in North Dakota, to my surprise), he’s considered a serious cause for concern. Everyone seems to be seeking out female companionship for him. My aunt, who manages all of the apartments in my old hometown, honestly interviews every young semi-attractive woman that comes her way, asking if she has “a boyfriend or anything.” My other brother and his wife have tried to set him up, pleading with him to take this friend or that friend out on a date, claiming that they just want another couple to go out with! My grandmother scopes out the newspaper every Monday morning, hoping to find a new nurse or teacher that’s moved to town. If the gal has a job, great. If she’s single, even better (those types of things are published in some of our fine, local newspapers). The final analysis generally ends with a conspiratorial whisper over coffee with my Gram-mama, “And she’s cute enough, too.”

All I have to say is at least my brother is still here, keeping our farm intact, watching all the ESPN and History Channel he wants, and making good money. And, he’s more than cute enough, too.

But, it has been his choice to stay, despite the slim pickens (as my dad would say). It’s kind of a matter of sacrifice. There’s a good side and a bad side to almost everything, including the staying or going debate experienced by a lot of “kids” my age (with the median age in North Dakota being 38.8, it seems like nearly everyone under 40 is still called a kid in this state).

I know my brother is waiting for the right girl. He has high standards. Given his love for country music, Bud Light, trucks, and worn out, comfy t-shirts that still fit him from high school, I’m sure he’s not going to find the woman he wants in any big city girl. But that’s where most of us country girls go – straight to Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle – anywhere but here. We get out. Take flight.

I grew up on a farm that ran up to 2000 head of cattle at a time, surrounded by more than 3000 acres of farmland and pasture, and I barely lifted a finger besides shifting the riding lawnmower into high speed and pushing play on my walkman, riding full blast to The Beatles. (If you are from North Dakota, especially a farm, you may already be calling me lazy, and if so, just bare with me through this explanation). I wasn’t a crazy little helper girl, even though I desperately wanted to be. In a way, our farm was too big with too many hired men for my parents to feel comfortable letting me run around with the rest of the crew. But a big piece of me developed because such a long part of my life was spent growing up on the open prairies, hearing the stories of my father and his ancestors, time and time again. Fights at the county fair, old silent videos of all the good old boys branding cattle, the time my dad started the grain elevator on fire, and the time my dad started a truck on fire, and the time he saw a bobcat in our shelter-belt while he was shooting birds with his Red Ryder (with Christmas coming, I just have to say, he never shot his eye out).

It’s about the country culture that I was brought up in as the world was changing, and as North Dakota was switching from a state of rural people to dying towns. I was a little girl raised in a very nostalgic era, brought up on a farm, a man’s world, and set free from that with very strong, determined, country bird wings.

When I think of my own personal upbringing, I look back on battling the snow-drifted roads on my way to school each morning. Eating burgers from a cow recently butchered in town that had come straight from our farm. Riding a four-wheeler to a place where nothing and no one else could ever find me. Driving a pickup before I could see over the steering wheel. Bouncing along while the boys and men chased cows. Smelling the branding barn. Watching the fields grow, my father’s pride of planting completely straight rows, and then imagining God’s finger touch our land as the guys combined everything down, returning it to the ground. I used to ride along with my dad in the fall before I got to be old enough to go to school. When I’d fall asleep, he’d send me home with mom when she brought lunch out around 4:00. My nephew, now almost 5, rides with my mom to the fields when she takes lunch out to the boys, just like I used to. Mom recently told me that Carter started calling the country sausage, mayo, and white bread concoction she whips up “Combine Sandwiches.” He hates meat, but he loves those things. It’s the feeling. The culture.

Today, my love for natural things in life is often mistaken as some kind of new age, contemporary hippiehood rooted in mystery since I’m from such a conservative place. A friend from L.A. once asked me, “How did such a hippie come out of North Dakota?” Looking back on that question, and in all reality, it’s just a simple lifestyle, brought from being raised on a farm, in North Dakota, in the middle of nowhere, without any real access to anything except wide open spaces and my own imagination. I believe isolation and solitude have a certain, unique affect on our development. It creates an appreciation and ability to observe beauty in almost everything. For the record, I am not a hippie. I am a descendant of true blue country folk. (My grandmother, the matriarch, was raised in some backcountry hills just outside of Nashville, TN. I don’t know the exact details, but I’m pretty sure they seldom wore shoes and there was some kind of chicken farming going on. Now that’s country.

In North Dakota, nearly every woman is or has been a country girl. If we weren’t raised on a farm, chances are, our parents were. Maybe I’m one of the few that’s still here. Still fighting for my place. Even though it’s not back with the boys, finding seeds to sow.

I do know my story. I know where I am. 46.89°N. 96.79°W. Fargo, ND. For now. I’ve almost left more times than I can count, starting at age 14, when I realized students in Madison, WI, could actually take theatre classes in high school. I was an arteest, you see, all my life. My sister 10 years my senior had recently moved to Mad-town (one country girl down) and upon my first visit, I fell in love with it instantly. It was new and fresh and different and it had cute, little trendy shops. The capitol building looked like the same one I’d seen in pictures of that big one in D.C. It was the hippest, trendiest place this North Dakota native had ever seen. My sister offered to be my new guardian if I wanted to move there, and all weekend, I imagined myself walking through the halls of this enormous building that looked like the schools I’d only seen on TV, with their gothic revival architecture and sprawling, green-lawned campuses. It was an easy visual defeat to my high school, built of brick in the 1970’s, with laminated flooring and two long hallways that formed a boring L shape, always smelling of floor cleaner.

As my mom and I headed back up 94 following that venture the euphoria of moving away once and for all held strong. Until we hit the Minnesota border. Then home was just one state away, and I got to thinking, I’d probably have no chance of making the basketball team in Madison. Or the volleyball team. Or the track team. Or student council. Or homecoming court. Or anything else I was able to do back home. If I left North Dakota, who would I be?

So, I stayed, and that thought stayed with me. Through high school, I continued to ponder, and I figured I’d definitely be ready to be on the out path once I turned 18. For sure. For certain. Definitely. That’s college. And everyone has a chance to move away then. It’d be my choice. Finally.

The chains ended up clasping down two weeks after I turned seventeen. It was a car accident. A mistake. A tragedy. Whatever you choose to call it. Perhaps, it was my moment of calling. Awakening. That start of an ongoing sense of free-falling.

That happened going on ten years ago. That’s what I keep thinking. To someone who is twenty-five-years-old, that feels like a long time, yet no time all at once. Perhaps you know the intersection on Highway 15, or if not, you may know one just like it. Perhaps you even know the story, or again, one just like it. It was the summer before my senior year of high school was about to start. July 15, 2001. That date always gives me chills, and puts an ache in my chest where a scar now stands, always reminding me of the two people who lost their lives at my blinded befalling.

One of the two was a deeply loved woman, mother of three, adorer of her grandchildren, who was making her weekly Sunday afternoon trip to see her husband at a local nursing home. She never saw it coming.

The other was a deeply loved friend, sitting beside me, watching the clock as I took us nonstop through a very obvious STOP sign, hoping to be not too late to her niece’s birthday party, which we were running fashionably late for, as usual.

A screech. A stop. A “Sam” gasped out loud. Then silence. That is what has kept me here. That moment, and every single one since, has been in either the front or back of my mind, in every decision I have made. Until recently. Until now. After years of counseling. And breathing. And uncertainty. And Whys? Although I’ve always wanted to, this is one of the first times I’ve shared even a small part of this part of my story beyond a small, hushed, not-really-knowing-what-to-say crowd.

I’ve been making a living here, trying to make the life for myself I’ve always imagined, between the borders of a place that doesn’t necessarily have all the opportunity I’d be able to potentially dive deep into somewhere else. But still, I stay. I stay. Just in case… Always on guard. I stay because I have learned to cherish and love all that life has to offer here. All that never goes away. The ghosts of our past that haunt us and yet make us whole. Complete. They often ground us with deep roots, soaked with some kind of unfortunate love.

I want to make it better here. I appreciate and laugh in love with the small group of good sports that can survive the weather and the floods and the grudge. But I know my experience and the secret sense of community that lies across this state. It’s been eight years for me since then. I went to college at UND because I wanted to stay close to home, to help, to fix what I had done. That’s what I meant by “just in case.” Just in case I found a way.

Nothing came quick. I started to beat my head against an imaginary wall, wishing something would break for me. Wanting to make all the pain of their families disappear. Wanting to start something big. To heal a community. All while they were the ones who were trying to help heal me. That’s North Dakota. And nobody forgets it.

When I graduated from college, that’s when I thought I could go. Get out. I thought I could’ve made something happen by then. For sure. “I had four long years to make this right,” I thought. But still, I felt like I’d gotten nowhere.

My last semester I spent studying abroad in Norway. It made me miss North Dakota more than ever. I learned a lot about the benefits of being part of a collective, supportive community there. That’s what I saw there too. It reminded me of home. It reminded me of my hometown, and all the support I received after my accident. It made me want to stay. To help communities. To make things right. Again, I thought I could.

I went to Fargo then, after graduating, in 2005. Now, it’s 2009. I still can’t see any huge things that I’ve done. But there are little things. Little changes I’ve contributed to through lasting friendships and working to serve my community. I keep telling myself, it’s all in the little steps, and I’ve had a lot of them. And all the rest has come up from the roots that hold me here. That’s just a part of life.

I’ve been finding my place. Just like everyone else. When things have gotten tough, I’ve wanted to run. Biologists call this the “fight-or-flight response,” and I go through it almost monthly. When I hit a wall, or face a challenge here in North Dakota, whether it be the “weather, isolation, landscape, or the inability to find a date on Saturday night,” I only know to do what I’ve always done. I just do what I know.

I fight.

Whenever I feel the need to justify someone else’s actions, I always take a minute to think about their past before looking them in the eyes, closing my mind to any other path or possibility, and asking “Why?” I just wonder if the same goes when they look in the mirror. All the kids that go. And what that feels like.

Flight.

Sam Larson currently resides in Fargo, ND, and is pursuing graduate studies at North Dakota State University. She spends much of her time traveling and volunteering with national and community service initiatives.