On Second Thought: the SENSE OF PLACE issue

A PUBLICATION OF HUMANITIES NORTH DAKOTA

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03.20

2ECOND THOUGHT

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SENSE OF PLACE issue

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16 "Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist." –PAULA GUNN ALLEN

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CONTENTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NOTE 02 The Unanswered Question By Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt

POETRY 46 A Dakota Veteran’s Commendation By Wollom A. Jensen

FICTION 06 The Rope Swing By David J.Haberman

48 In the Wind By Nita K. Ritzke

10 The Tractor and the Tree By Mark Holman 16 Charivari By David Fettig 20 An Evanescence By Kimberly Crowley NONFICTION 24 Fatigue: Obstacle or Necessary Counterpart to Moral Attention? By A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone 28 Everywhere, North Dakota By Margaret M. Barnhart 30 Circle of Concert By Raylene Nickel

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50 All You Need To Do Is Find a Good Line By Shadd Piehl EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Jamee Larson Michael Tomanek Rebecca Weaver-Hightower COVER ARTWORK BY Dakota Wind Goodhouse “Wičháȟ ȟpi Hiŋȟ ȟpáye Wí (The Falling Star Moon),” Watercolor, 2019 Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

Hitched to Everything Else in the Universe: On Walking, Trees, and Grace

By ShaunAnne Tangney

38 Finding My Place by Finding Wendell Berry By Jane M. Schreck 42 The Divine Pervades All Creation By Dakota Wind Goodhouse

ON SECOND THOUGHT is published by Humanities North Dakota. To subscribe, please contact us: 800.338.6543 info@humanitiesnd.org humanitiesnd.org

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THE UNANSWERED QUESTION BRENNA DAUGHERTY GERHARDT

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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here are some absolutely amazing

advances happening in our society thanks to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In fact, it’s been posited that our scientific and technological knowledge base is doubling every six months and one day soon it’s projected to double every six hours. That’s incredible when you consider that it took 1,500 years for knowledge to double from the first year of the Common Era. Not only is the auto industry engineering driverless cars, which will be on the market in a few years, but space travel to Mars will soon be a tourist industry. Social media has created a global community that transcends borders and delivers new information instantly. Right now computer scientists are working on a way to upload our brains to computers so we can live forever. In the meantime, medical breakthroughs have expanded our lifespans by thirty to forty years from just a century ago. From 3D-printed body parts to the eradication of major diseases, now is one of the healthiest times to be alive. Every time I read about these amazing innovations I am humbled, because the field of knowledge I’ve dedicated my life to still hasn’t answered the core question we’ve been asking for thousands of years. “What does it mean to be human?” My job at Humanities North Dakota (HND) is to preserve and promote the humanities, which are defined as these academic disciplines: history, philosophy, law, literature, languages, comparative religion, anthropology and archaeology. Each of these areas of study explore what humans have suffered, struggled for, and achieved throughout the course of human history, and yet in spite of thousands of years of practice and some of the most brilliant minds in history we still don’t have a consensus on the purpose or meaning of human life. And because the fields of science and technology are growing so fast and the humanities are still asking the same old questions, there have been calls to eliminate them at public and private universities and colleges across the country. We are constantly told that humanities majors aren’t employable after graduation because they aren’t trained for specific jobs. During the last Republican presidential debates Marco Rubio declared “we need more welders, and less philosophers.” In fact, the president has eliminated all funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities in his last four budgets. I’m not an anti-science person. I will be the first to celebrate the advances science and technology have offered to the study of the humanities. Elizabeth Fenn used scientific research on climate patterns and epidemiology to write her Pulitizer prize-winning history of North Dakota’s Mandan people. Digital surveying technology is helping archaeologists discover lost cities and artifacts that are giving us new clues into the development of human culture. A group of historians even got together and live

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In the wilderness the desire for esteem is stripped away and bigger desires are made visible: the desires of the heart (to live in loving connection with others) and the desires of the soul (the yearning to serve some transcendent ideal and to be sanctified by that service). –David Brooks

Tweeted the Civil War on its 150th anniversary giving Americans the opportunity to experience a critical moment in our history in an exciting and engaging new way. These are wonderful things, but I passionately believe that what the humanities has to offer the STEM revolution is even more important. The humanities remind us that the value of human life cannot be captured in a data point. The humanities are important because they cannot be quantified. They are valuable because they are subversive and sow the seeds of doubt in the face of certainty. They goad us to live by our value system even when that comes at a great cost, maybe even at the cost of innovation. Just because we think we can upload our brains to a computer, should we? Humanities North Dakota engaged that question at our GameChanger Ideas Festival a few years ago. The wish for immortality is as old as humanity. If you go back over 2,000 years in Greek mythology the goddess Eos falls in love with the mortal Tithonus. Knowing that their days together are numbered, Eos begs Zeus to grant Tithonus immortal life, and Zeus grants her request. Things are wonderful at first. But one day Eos notices a strand of white in Tithonus’s hair and a few wrinkles forming around his eyes, and she is horrified. She asked for immortal life, but she forgot to ask for immortal youth. As time goes on Tithonus’s strength drains and he withers away until all he can do is lie in a corner making incoherent chirping sounds, wishing for death to find him. When she can’t take it anymore, Eos turns him into a grasshopper and releases him. Today kids are reading about Lord Voldemort’s endeavors to escape death in Harry Potter. Voldemort rips out pieces of his soul and hides them in seven horcruxes in an attempt to tether 3

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himself to life forever, but his efforts render him unrecognizable as a human. He literally loses his humanity in the process. There are hundreds of other stories in religion and literature that explore this same topic and their conclusion never waivers. The humanities teach us that playing God is dangerous to our humanity. To be human means to face our own mortality. HND programs have also questioned how the rise of technology has hollowed out the news industry and ushered in an era of fake news. Finding the truth today is harder than it has ever been, because of all of our technological advances, not in spite of them. We are over connected and under informed. It is the role of the humanities to equip people with the critical thinking skills to analyze a text and question its sources. The humanities trust no one. That is perhaps our greatest strength. The humanities ask about the unintended consequences of innovation, and they remind us to stay humble in the face of our greatest achievements. There are ethical questions only the humanities can answer when it comes to those driverless cars. Do you program the car’s software to place greater value on the life of the passengers in the car or the pedestrians who are outside of it? Should the car swerve to avoid a child who runs out into the road even when that means driving the car transporting three other children into a potentially fatal situation, such as into a tree or down an embankment? And in the case of our medical advances, we need to begin asking ourselves when quality of life matters more than quantity. Who gets to decide when life isn’t worth prolonging anymore and how do we have those conversations with our loved ones in a society that is afraid of talking about death and dying? In truth, every generation and every person must answer the humanities’ core question for themselves and the answers they come up with will never be final, especially in a world of rapid change. When there is so much scientific and technological advancement, the humanities step in and say, “There are many things we can do now that we didn’t think possible, but should we? And if we do, how will that affect our humanity? How will that fundamentally change what it means to be human?” One of my board members who loves science fiction and fantasy novels jokes with me that she worries her future son-in-law may be a cyborg and she’s not sure how she will handle having a half robot/ half human over for Thanksgiving. Her concern isn’t that far off since Elon Musk recently announced the invention of a neural lace he wants to lay over a human brain to increase cognitive function. 4

The humanities don’t seek the finite answers sought by the sciences; they seek the infinite. They search not only for the farthest reaches of our minds but for the farthest reaches of our hearts.

The humanities are valuable because they keep asking the same old questions in the face of progress: What gives your life deeper meaning and purpose? How do we want to be governed? What is justice? What is freedom? How do we balance the rights of individuals with the good of society? What value do we place on a human life? In short, what does it mean to be human? The humanities don’t seek the finite answers sought by the sciences; they seek the infinite. They search not only for the farthest reaches of our minds but for the farthest reaches of our hearts. Instead of viewing the humanities as a box to check off in pursuit of jobs and innovation, we need to view the humanities as a lifelong exercise in pursuit of the Good Life. The humanities can give you the critical thinking skills to make you a good employee, but more importantly they give you the room and time to slow down and ask yourself if you are a good person, if the society you participate in is just, and they help you find a cause greater than yourself to contribute to. The humanities help you not only build a good resume, their ultimate goal is to make sure you have a good obituary—a life well lived: rich in relationships, deep with character, full of meaning, driven by a personal narrative that has an overarching purpose. We will always gather scientific knowledge at a more rapid pace than we can accumulate wisdom, but a life dedicated to the pursuit of self-knowledge, of the human condition, is valuable precisely because it is slowly gained. Science and technology are critically important, and I’m thankful to live in a time with so much advancement. But science and technology cannot tell us why we are here, or why we must die, or assign a meaning to the suffering we will all inevitably face in this life. These matters belong to the realm of the humanities. That’s a cause I’m proud to stand behind. l

Often, people learn they shouldn’t discuss divisive

topics like religion, politics, or money. Yet these systems shape every aspect of our lives. That means the most important conversations are the ones we are often too fearful or angry to have. At

Humanities North Dakota we make space for brave conversations where intellectually curious people, regardless of backgrounds or viewpoints, come together to explore critical issues and engage in deep reflection. We believe when people

engage with the humanities, they develop deep convictions and the moral courage to live them out.

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THE ROPE SWING by David J. Haberman

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ady turned away from the boarded-up homestead at the far end of the property and faced the small wooden granary. She glanced at the misaligned square caps resting on the roof, hammered tins settled too far from their only task of

keeping rain from the loading chutes. A wooden ladder falling parallel to the fading tilt of the sliding front door, nearly made it from eave to earth but for the missing two bottom rungs. Twenty feet to one side a skeleton of wire rose from a circular slab of crumbling concrete, the wind whistling its ribcage. Jay defined this extinct breed of architecture as a corncrib. Only a few remained near Bushel. The rest had been snapped up over decades, migrating to dairy country to be filled with field corn. The free flow of air between ears keeps the kernels dry and free of rot, fit for shelling all winter for use as a feed additive. She noticed a scattering of naked cobs peppering the grass­—escapees from use as field mulch, fuel, or employed to a rougher task. She remembered the rise in Jay’s eyebrow as he gestured toward the dilapidated outhouse.

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Tilting her head back, she opened to the overwhelming measure of sky and slowed her breath to a meditation, a prayer.

She moved on, examining a curve of branches sheltering the road, a canopy slung low and heavy. This drooping arch nearly completed a circuit of green, a mere gap separating hanging leaf from upthrust shoot. Wandering the tall grass she stopped at the high bank of Boar Creek. Jay indicated the level of erosion in a spring overflowing its banks all the way to a high stain on a distant porch. The river marked its territory, wetting all the way up to the third step. Record melt would leave Boar Creek higher than average halfway through July, after which time it would return to a brown trickle and end the rope swinging season. No fun in dropping to a gooey mess populated by salamanders. Cady peered over the bank. Jay’s description as “relatively fresh” was far short of her experience with sky-blue Minnesota waters. You’ll be okay here for a while, he said. This spot is perfect for a break, as far from the hustle and bustle as you can get. Nothing bites very hard if allowed enough space. You can forge a new vision. Move out of your parent’s basement. Sign a new lease on life. She returned along a path of tree and bush in every stage of blossom. Jay rattled the roll: six varieties of apple, two apricot, two pear, unruly shirttails of raspberry and strawberry. Fountains of rhubarb splashed between uneven stands of plum and chokecherry. Climbing a broken picket arch was a stand of coldweather grapes, suited more for jelly than wine. He explained how an anonymous handful of squash seeds tossed along the tree line half a decade back had been returning for service every year since, winding vines through the stiff steel of abandoned equipment nestled in the dry grass, and sending exploratory tendrils into nearby row crops. Jay reminisced on his nick-of-time removals of ripe orbs during harvest to prevent squashing by lumbering implement tires. He indicated sites of the previous year’s wild asparagus, clusters of dry, spindly stalks dotting the farmstead. 7

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At the farthest extension with weightlessness setting in she let go.

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Cady brushed back the tall grass beside a spray, exposing the emergence of three white shoots. Jay explained the township honor system--don’t be greedy, pick what you can use in a day, maybe two, leave the rest. With the outdoor studio examined, Cady sat on the tailgate of the pickup and loaded a 36-exposure roll of 35 mm 100 speed color film, which a mindful person could push to 38 or 39 shots, and attached a 50 mm lens. She loaded a second camera with a roll of black and white. She focused on the kids, her charges for the next two weeks, the kind of temporary job that carried few headaches. The three adolescents were socializing in a semi-circle on the grass, picking dandelions, loosely minding a younger trio whirling nearby in game mode, moving in staggers and fits of running, skipping and tilting at butterflies. Pauline, falling between age groups, sat alone, her legs dangling from a rock on the riverbank. Cady called out for everyone to be careful. Pauline nodded. The adolescents acknowledged her voice. The butterfly chasing dervishes were beyond the reach of sound. She retraced her steps, re-analyzing a gnarl of branches within a frame of foliage. She examined curls of paint twisting back from the house’s dry siding. She squinted the sky into rectangles, embossing clouds within an amazing blue. Closing one eye, then both, she steeped in a moment of sunlight and soft breezes. A crouch in the tall grass repositioned the house beneath a single cloud hovering like a puff of smoke over the stone chimney. Back at the road, she imagined drivers racing the gravel path to a release over the edge of the horizon. Returning to the winding cut of the creek, she glanced at the exposed roots in the far bank. Tilting her head back, she opened to the overwhelming measure of sky and slowed her breath to a meditation, a prayer. A burst of laughter jerked her back to reality. The teens had changed into cutoffs and were moving from pickup to creek. “Are you going to swim? I will if you will,” Pauline called out, approaching with hands clasped in earnest prayer. “The rope swing is really fun. I promise.” “How deep is the water?” “Jordy said good enough for jumping until July.” Cady placed a hand on her chin. “Okay. I’ll wade in, then decide. It’s muddier than I like.” Pauline clapped her hands and immediately began chatting like a lifelong girlfriend about how her old swimsuit had shrunk over winter. Mom and I scoured the mail-order catalogs only to discover the selection in town was way better. The perfect suit jumped right off the rack. That never happens! Cady enjoyed the exuberance. A mere agreement to wade in water had transformed

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the activity into a social event. Pauline’s shyness evaporated as long-bottled emotions bubbled up to escape. Pauline changed first with Cady watching for passing vehicles. During her change she felt strangely exposed under the sky’s enormous blue eye. Pauline instructed on the best way down to the water. Twisted roots were excellent handholds. Cady placed the camera bag in the shade under a towel before dipping a toe. Up close the water was clearer, though she lost sight of her toes at knee-deep. By then, Pauline was in the middle of the stream, bobbing her shoulders under. “I’m light as air, walking on the surface of a watery moon. My dad has a big picture book full of astronauts. I like how their space suits make them look like deepsea divers.” “That’s an interesting observation,” Cady said, glancing several yards over where Cory, Minnie and Max were constructing an empire of rivulets and roads along the silty shore. Cady moved deeper, submerging until context shifted to a universe of water. She located the two boys, Jordy and Jones, whose heads were bobbing like planets utilizing gravity to redirect flirty comet tails of water at Caprice, the girl of the group. The boys quickly shifted to attentionseeking displays of physical prowess. Multiple attempts at dunking each other ended when Caprice rushed forward, vaulted onto their shoulders and submerged all. The trio erupted a few seconds later in sputters and snorts, shaking off water like dogs. “Try the rope swing,” they shouted. “It’s really fun!” Pauline grabbed Cady’s arm. “I will if you will.” She smiled at the sea monkey clinging to her arm pulling her against the current and up the worn path to the swinging tree. Cady called out to Cory, Minnie and Max, “Stay put while we’re using the rope swing.” Three small heads turned up, their puzzled eyes flashing “Why would we divert our attention from the most amazing activity ever!” Caprice volunteered for the first rope sortie, taking three full steps back before advancing in a strong forward swing and release to a simple, plugged-nose splash. Jones followed. With the larger audience he pumped inertia into the rope with several back-andforths before releasing into a pin-wheeling arm and leg plunge. Jordy followed, cannonballing in a glorious depth-charge geyser. The treading trio was soon chanting, Cady! Cady! She tugged the rope and ran fingers down the series of knots, the lowest was doubled and large enough for the curl of two feet. She reached up unable to touch the topknot without climbing. “That’s for experts only,” Pauline instructed. “More like for crazy people,” Cady said, sparking another volley

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of invitations from the treaders. “Can you show me how to do this the best way?” “Sure!” Pauline beamed. “Since this is your first time, you should rest on the second knot and put your feet on the bottom one.” Pauline pulled the rope back to a bald patch of earth. “Start from here.” Cady sat on the second knot and rested her feet on the first. When Pauline let go, Cady swung out over the water once and returned to where Pauline could give her a giant shove in the back. At the farthest extension with weightlessness setting in she let go. An instant after crashing through the surface she was at the silty bottom. Once the slight current became noticeable, she kicked up and sputtered life back into her lungs. She waved to Pauline. “You’re right. It was fun. Your turn.” Pauline retreated four short steps and launched with a shrill scream that followed her under. A moment later she was bobbing nearby with an ear to ear smile. “Thanks for swimming with us.” “Thanks for inviting me to the party!” Cady said, returning to the bank for a second jump. This time she remained submerged until her lungs were ready to burst. She surfaced to a vision of acrobats twirling across the sky. Cady drifted to the far bank and sank into the background, staring at the swinging tree until its upper branches became roots embedded deep in the belly of the sky. Content to watch, she lifted the camera and peered through the eyepiece, offsetting cloud from creek while capturing errant giggles in mid-flight. She emerged from the muck onto a flat stone to steady the frame. From there she climbed atop a tree stump for a series of shots to later stitch into a panoramic scene. One bookend would be the construction trio raising Sandtown from the silt, the other, a universe away, the swinging, glee-club quartet. The aperture found favor in the latter group, snapping to the beat of the mid-air frolics in a four-body crescendo, fixing measures in clicks and splashes, testing the limits of rope and branch as time scrolled until innocence filled every frame. l

DAVID J. HABERMAN was born in Breckenridge, MN a stone’s throw north of the confluence of the Bois de Sioux and Ottertail rivers, the source of the Red. Growing up twenty miles west on a family farm near Barney, North Dakota, he followed the Red River of the North to the University of North Dakota. He has worked somewhere in the valley ever since, currently at the UND Law Library in Grand Forks, where he lives with his wife Cathy. 9

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Like a derelict ship sunk in the middle of a vast ocean to create an artificial reef, the ancient tractor, like an iron atoll in a sea of grass, became a hub of life.

THE TRACTOR AND THE TREE by Mark Holman

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ometime before the final frantic years that preceded the end

of the global civilization of billions, a tractor was left on the edges of a tilled field. It

may have broken down in that very spot during a period lost to history. Or, it may have been left there because it was no longer useful in an age where human hand and foot power provided more utility. The antique from the age of iron machines that once quite literally moved the world, rested on the prairie surface, little more than a landmark and reminder of a different time. Sturdy and robust, the bricklike solid steel mass would hold court in that very spot for centuries as the only thing higher than the grass for as far as could be seen. On the oral story maps of the prairie dwellers, the place had been called Lone Tractor Plain for as long as memory. 10

The tractor rested, unmoving through every season. Though it did nothing but exist, it created a unique, endemic community that welcomed, protected, and fostered life. The sequestered spaces beneath and around the tractor created microclimates within which all kinds of living things could sprout and flourish. Animals burrowed beneath it in protected warrens, while birds and small mammals nested within shrouded cavities. Hawks sat atop the higher points, surveying the landscape, while diminutive creatures cowered silently inside labyrinthine burrows deep within its bowels. In wetter seasons, water collected around the machine, and it became a perch and nesting place for waterfowl, while turtles basked in the sun on flanks just above the waterline. Moss and fungi found purchase on old gasket materials and in crevices that had collected layers of moist sediment blown in on

the ever-present winds. Small bonsailike communities of plant life grew where windblown soil had settled over the years in spaces and cavities. Like a derelict ship sunk in the middle of a vast ocean to create an artificial reef, the ancient tractor, like an iron atoll in a sea of grass, became a hub of life. The living and the unliving intertwined in a post-human symbiosis for a thousand years. In the distance, standing like a lonesome sentinel in the ocean of grass, a man could see a solitary cottonwood tree on the horizon. A giant, venerable, stately tree towered above the surrounding plains beckoning as an oasis of shelter, an island of calm surrounded by windswept sameness and the severe extremes of open vastness. Cottonwoods, the resilient, long-lived giants of the plains, rooted deep and provided an island of shade and shelter in a place where there was little of

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either. The area around tree and tractor was a special place that broke the monotony of the prairie and provided comfort in the unforgiving landscape. The tree would make a great place to shelter for a few hours and wait out the midday heat that was beginning to beat down on him, the man thought. As he walked closer, he saw what appeared to be a great, flowing mass of rusty rock beneath the tree. Stepping closer, he could make out the shape of what had once been a machine of the ancients. The ubiquitous hulks of what had been tractors, cars, and other forms of transport and power were everywhere in the landscape. Lacking purpose in the antediluvian age, they were little more than landmarks, sources of raw materials, and occasional shelter. In past epochs, humans had mined the Earth for resources to build an unrivaled, now myth-shrouded civilization with the help of these machines. Now, a much-diminished human population mined the limitless resources embodied within the things made by that mysterious and magical civilization of almost unfathomable extent and size. The ancients, often called the Old Ones in the prairie vernacular, had been great, but not enough to save themselves. The onslaught of decades had left the general shape of the tractor intact, but the solid metal, eroded by the elements, now took on more of the form of an amorphous, red rock. In places, it retained its original linear right angles. In others, the wind, water, and seasons had sculpted sinuous curves and produced crumbling flakiness that gave the appearance of a wind-worn, iron-rich boulder. The wheels had been stripped away long ago to outfit someone’s hand or ox cart. Even the engine’s cylinder head, pistons, and crankshaft were missing. Any easily removable extrusion had been carted away, leaving a lump of frame, engine block, transmission, and drive train. Only one piston still rested in its cylindrical home. Long ago, the wayward piston had driven itself into the cylinder wall, abruptly silencing the life force of the machine. In the columnar cavity atop the life-ending calamity, a tiny community of plants now grew from the windblown soil collected over decades. Inches away, one side of the engine block had a large piece that had broken away. It likely had been carted off to be recast as something useful like an iron pot. Decades before, when the area had dried after a wet spell, the tractor preserved just enough moisture beneath its hulking mass to shepherd some of the innumerable early summer cottonwood seeds to life. One had the tenacity and just the right conditions to continue and thrive. The giant cottonwood, stretching nearly 100 feet into the sky, spread its canopy almost as broadly, 12

shading tractor and the ground around it. The tree had been nursed to life in the womblike cloister of the tractor, coddled by additional moisture and special conditions. Now, the cottonwood reciprocated the favor, shielding the unfeeling beast, more element than machine, from the most extreme vagaries of nature, adding years or centuries to its long existence. In a peculiar irony, the tractor, at one time a wholesale killer and scourge of trees, found itself protected by the shade of the tree. The strange partnership of chance, between life on the plains and an inanimate object, would endure for centuries. In years to come, the cycle of tractor nursing tree and tree shielding tractor would repeat itself several times. Which would be the last to grace the spot, or could it be sustained forever? The tree eventually died. Hit by lightning, its life force slowly ebbed, and it melted into the ground, fertilizing the land around the tractor. Before its dying breath, seeds sprouted in the protected enclosure of the tractor. A century or so passed, and the tree once again died. This time, it left no descendants, and the remains of the tree decayed, enriching the soil beneath the tractor. In time, the tractor stood alone unshielded from wind and storm. The tractor, exposed to the full force of its severe surroundings, struggled to remain whole. Centuries of wind, rain, freeze, and thaw, slowly eroded the tractor into a more organic, barely recognizable, entropic shape. The cycles of heat and cold, wet and dry, aided by soil and root, slowly worked at the joints until once tightly bolted spaces pulled apart and broke, spilling gears and contents within upon the ground. The shifted iron created new areas that fostered a fresh and vibrant community. Small animals nested within previously inaccessible spaces, while windblown soil and rain congregated within newly created reservoirs, encouraging new life communities depending on weather and season. New tree seeds sprouted, and the cycle began again. A new cottonwood tree rose in the space between the split halves of the tractor that had once been whole. Before long, it grew and began to push at the iron shroud that had nursed it to life. Too heavy to move, the tree started to grow around the metal. In time, the tree and the iron began to become one. The tractor, protected within the womb of the tree, would add centuries to its life as a ferrous whole.

A new man reciting the story map to Lone Tractor Plain, saw the only tree for miles around spread broadly on the horizon. As he

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There had once been powerful magic in these machines. Cars, trucks, tractors, and wheeled machines of all types had once swarmed over the landscape like the buffalo now did.

walked closer, he could see that the tree was old, its trunk covered with cankers and deeply furrowed bark. Beneath, protruding from the base, was a rounded lump that looked like a rock. As he walked closer, the general shape of a human-made object emerged from the obscuring of countless seasons. In places, it was hard to tell where the tree began, and the machine ended. Walking closer, he could see two round engine cylinders emerging from the side of the tree, showing light through the bottom. He recognized it as one of the mysterious engines of the ancients. Some said that living populations of such apparatus existed in distant places. He found it hard to believe that any human could make such alchemical things. There had once been powerful magic in these machines. Cars, trucks, tractors, and wheeled machines of all types had once swarmed over the landscape like the buffalo now did. They had filled the land with roads and built all the wondrous creations of the Old Ones. Had the ancients truly made these machines? Or had the devices, as some said, made the ancients?

The people of the plains had stories about Tractor. They said Tractor had once roamed across the prairie, dominating and shaping the landscape in its image. According to the legendary saga The Song of Tractor, Tractor was the mythic iron ancestor of the buffalo that now dominated the plains. As part of a prophetic creation cycle of birth, transformation, destruction, and renewal, buffalo were also understood to be the ancestors of Tractor. The Song related how Tractor, unable to live in an altered world, died. Its life force returned to Earth and was then born again as flesh in the form of buffalo so humans could survive in the new world they created. He remembered the time he had witnessed the prayer and ceremony called the Deus Ex Machina inside a silo fortress temple. The prayer began: “Tractor loved the world so gave itself so that man could have life…” Long ago, people and Tractor had lived in harmony and worked together to build great things. Humanity, unthinking, first extirpated buffalo from the land. Still unthinking, they used Tractor to strip the Earth and fouled the air with Tractor’s copious excrement. Almost before the bones of the buffalo had decomposed in the soil, Tractor found itself returning to its former embodiment, continuing the cycle and fulfilling the prophecy. The prayer continued: “This is my body given to you, forge so that you will live.” In the ceremony that coincided with the recitation, the iron body of Tractor was refashioned into

the arrows, knives, and other tools used to hunt the buffalo. The ceremony ended with everyone in the room reciting the last line of the Deus after each strike of the hammer on hot iron. He could still hear it within the reaches of his memory: “we beat plowshares into swords to live in a new world until Tractor comes again.” The alternation of voice and ringing blow that echoed throughout the temple still sounded in his head all these many years later. He settled down, resting his back against the tree, the hulk of the broken half of the tractor sitting about 6 feet away, created a comfortable hermitage that protected him from the elements. The soft rustling of the tree’s leaves above was soothing to listen to as they played their rhythmic, twisting dance on the light breeze. The smell of cottonwood touching his nose was a soothing elixir that overlaid the heavy, juicy fragrance of early summer grass. A slow parade of thousands of cottony airborne seeds drifted slowly past on the breeze. Twinkling in the sunshine, they floated on the wind, looking for a life-giving purchase upon which to put down roots and replicate the conditions he now enjoyed. A perfect spot to take a nap, sheltered from sight on all sides, he thought. It was an ideal place to rest unseen from any marauders that might be in the area. Long ago, someone had built a small fire circle out of a mix of rocks and tractor parts at the place where the tractor sat opposite the tree. The thermal mass of the tractor would reflect and radiate heat into the area, warming both tree and man long after the fire had died. A great spot to spend a chilly night the man thought. The charred ring and soot-stained iron were a testament to a long list of travelers finding succor in this rare place of shelter. He stared at the old machine, much of which had been stripped away long ago. He had wrested bits from similar contraptions as ore to manufacture tools and hardware. Many still used tools left by the ancients who seemed to have produced limitless quantities of every imaginable useful thing. The vast trade gathering that took place each year near the great river always hosted some new trove of fresh goods from a previously undiscovered hoard of the ancients. Last year, he traded for a comfortable pair of shoes with a sort of wave emblazoned on the side. They felt good on the feet, constructed from one of the mysterious substances of the ancients. He hoped this pair would last the season. In a small, shaded space beneath a twisted, eroded place where the engine had once joined with the transmission, a small patch of plants grew. A small copse of mint to one side and a small plot of nettle to the other. Both plants that thrived in the conditions of that particular terroir. The man gathered some of the young growth 13

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Tractor had brought stability, allowing food and peace to grow in unison.

and put it into a small pot of water. The container was made from the lightweight white metal of the ancients, quite possibly cast from the parts of some tractor. He kindled a small fire with the numerous dried cottonwood branches strewn around the tree. It was light and easy to break and burned quickly. It would be enough to warm a little water for tea. A restorative broth that refreshed in the hot midday tempered by shade. Feeling secure, he lay down with his back against the tree, resting fitfully on the soft, loamy bed formed beneath the tree by decades of accumulated and decomposed leaves. The smell of earthy must touched his nose as he rested. It emitted a soothing coolness, preserved from frostier seasons, slowly releasing into the early summer air. Before he drifted off to sleep, he spied one of the distinctive morel mushrooms protruding from the accumulated bed of leaves. He would pick it along with the other plants and tie them to his pack to dry. They would help to trade for another pair of the ancient’s comfortable shoes when he arrived at the next silo fortress. Even though the spot was remote, centuries of visitors had chipped away at the edges of the machine, removing bits of metal to be refashioned to fit the needs of the age. Tractors were useless, but their bones and sinews fueled the inflorescence of a new iron age on the prairie. The concrete silo forts built by the ancients thrust skyward in phallic domination of the steppe. From within, savanna warlords schemed for control of the plentiful scraps left by the Old Ones. According to legend, long ago, the forts had only been containers for the vast quantities of seeds grown by the fruitful union of Tractor and the Old Ones. The man found it hard to believe that there had ever been a time of such peace when such wealth could be unprotected. According to The Song of Tractor, Tractor had brought stability, allowing food and peace to grow in unison. Since that mythical, archaic time of heroic deeds, the human-shaped landscape had returned to more natural rhythms, almost before the engines of the tractors had cooled. Centuries flowed by on the unceasing river of time, and new passers-by used the shelter of tree and tractor as a comforting harbor that mellowed the harshness of every season. New animals and plants found a safe port, thriving in the unique sanctuary. Travelers cut off pieces of the metal, while weather wore down the remains. In time, only a few small shards and a stain on the ground remained. Grass found it impossible to grow in places now that the full sun blasted the bare ground saturated with microscopic remnants of the tractor and no moisture. The last descendant of the original cottonwood lived for several more years, spreading its fluffy seeds in the space where the tractor had long ago nurtured it’s first ancestor to life. Unlike the moist, fertile sheltered spaces tractor once provided, the seeds found nothing but desiccation on the dry, windswept hardpan which tractor had nurtured for a thousand years. In a place that had once offered shelter, fecundity, and life, now there was just wind and sun. For a thousand years, the tractor had nurtured plant, animal, human, and fungus as a sanctuary in a harsh sea of grass. Now there was nothing but wind, sun, and a bare, iron-stained spot where, for a brief blink of time, life had flourished. l

MARK HOLMAN grew up in eastern North Dakota, lived for twenty years in south-central North Dakota and now lives in the far west in Williston, North Dakota. He has spent much of his life working in and around agriculture and education in the state. The story, with symbolic elements, happens in a distant future time. 14

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Bismarck Event Center Bismarck, North Dakota

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CHARIVARI

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Somehow, in the dark of night, anything seemed possible. by David Fettig

R

egina sat up in bed, fully dressed, just after midnight, and waited for the sound of Lenny’s Model A. She would hear it

long before she saw the headlights climb over the last low hill on the dirt road leading to the farm. You could hear so much on a still, North Dakota summer night. The silence extended forever. When it rained on such a night you could hear the drops approach, tapping lightly across the wheat and alfalfa fields, gaining in volume as the storm neared and then eventually receding across the prairie, like a giant aerial sprinkler. She leaned her head back against her pillow and stared blankly out the window. It was a clear night but moonless, the dark canopy of the sky punctuated by the distant starlight; a perfect night for a charivari. This was supposed to be Regina’s year. She had turned 19 on the previous November 19th, her golden birthday, and 1930 was going to be the magical year when she left the farm for good and started her real life. But her mother’s death that winter put an end to those plans. “You’ll stay with me for a while, won’t you, Regina?” Her father had said after the funeral. It was more like an edict than a question, a magic spell that cast her into enchanted imprisonment on a farm that she was dying to leave ever since she was 16, when she had taken the train to Bismarck

and Fargo with her mother. Anything could happen in places like that. But the only thing that could happen on a farm in western North Dakota is exactly what happened before, and would happen again and again, year after year. She tried to stay awake. She was tired, as she was every day. Domestic chores, including the care and feeding of her father and two older brothers, kept her busy enough, but she was also in charge of the chickens and the large vegetable garden on the south side of the house. No rest for the wicked, her father said, and the rest of us have to work. Regina desperately hoped that one of her brothers would marry soon and bring his wife to the farm to manage things, but neither one seemed in any rush, especially with falling grain prices and money getting tighter. Time enough to get hitched after this rough patch, they told her, as if marriage were nothing more than a business arrangement. Regina got out of bed and walked to the open window, leaning out with her hands on the sill. She breathed in, long and slow, her eyes closed. Somehow, in the dark of night, anything seemed possible. She was glad for that feeling. Maybe something would happen. She still had about five months left in her magic year, that was time enough. She thought about the young couple that was married last week, Nels and Fran Lundgren, and who had taken up residence on the old family farm near Stanley. The couple had just moved everything into the house, so it was

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Quietly, they circled the farmhouse and waited until they heard four sharp raps on an old tin pot...

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time to give them a proper nuptial awakening. Regina liked these traditions and looked forward to participating. She smiled as she imagined how the new bride would suddenly find herself a hostess to a loud bunch of people who were eager to invade her home and put her to work in the kitchen. From what Regina could tell, this charivari was as much an opportunity to snoop as it was to recognize a new marriage. Word in town was that this young couple had recently received a whole new set of bedroom furniture, straight from the showroom at Hedderich’s in Williston. Smart man, Mary Feist had said of Nels, to put his money into the bedroom first thing. Hopeful sign for the bride. Regina heard the car, and soon saw the headlights descend the small hill; it picked up speed as it neared the farm, like a bright-eyed horse eager for home and hay. Regina waited at the window to wave at Marlys, who knew she would be looking out the window, then she hurried downstairs to the car, grabbing the basket on the kitchen table on her way out the back door. She exited quietly, hoping not to disturb her father, who had no desire to attend; her brothers had left the house hours ago and would attend with their friends. Arlen was in the front with Lenny, and Marlys was in the back. Regina exchanged excited hellos and climbed in back of the car, smiling at Marlys and grabbing her hand; she slid close and leaned her head on Marlys’s shoulder. “Look at us,” Lenny said to Arlen, “with two pretty girls in the backseat.” “Yah,” Arlen said. “Looks like a charivari to me already.” Lenny and Arlen laughed. “You two hush up,” Marlys said. “Poor Regina is exhausted. There’ll be time enough for nonsense.” Marlys was only 20 but she acted like she was 50 and mother of all. Marlys and Arlen were an item, and Regina wondered how long it would be before they all gathered outside their house for a late-night party. “I’m fine,” Regina said. “We’re all tired, and crazy for doing this.” “That’s true,” Lenny said. “What’s in the basket, Regina?” “Oh, just some potato salad. Been lucky to get some decent spuds, though not very big. And some of Mom’s last preserves from last fall. Can’t remember what I grabbed out of the cellar.” The mention of Regina’s mother silenced them all for a moment. “If it’s your mom’s, you know it’s good,” Marlys said, putting her arm around Regina’s shoulder. “Say, how about we warm up with a little singing on the way over,” Arlen said, half turning around. “That would be a good idea if anybody in this car could sing except for Regina and me,” Marlys said. “Very funny,” Arlen said, “and for that I will sing. You can join and try to drown me out or enjoy the show.” Arlen started singing “Just a Girl that Men Forget,” and Marlys and Regina groaned from the backseat. They hated that song about a fun girl who is always passed over for marriage until one day when, if she’s lucky, she will land a man. But they joined in on the first chorus and through the rest of the song.

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Wallflower girl, now dry all those tears For you won’t be left all alone Someday you’ll find yourself upon a throne Queen of a sweet little home And you gay little flapper You’ll live and you’ll learn When you’ve gone down the pathway That has no return They arrived at the Lundgren farmhouse to find a number of cars parked along the edge of the road. Up ahead, Billy Schmidt got out of his car and stood on his running board, looking up and down the line to see if everyone was there. Satisfied, he waved his hand, and they all quietly got out of their cars and started walking toward the house. They were carrying pots, pans, lids and big metal spoons, and Regina saw a couple men with trumpets. Quietly, they circled the farmhouse and waited until they head four sharp raps on an old tin pot, which was the cue to start banging and blowing and hollering as loud as possible with no regard for what anyone else was doing. The cacophony was so alarming that the horses and the cows in the barn started bellowing and the dogs, which to that time had been mostly quiet since they knew everyone, began barking and hollering and jumping. There was a scream from an upstairs window. Eventually, a steady rhythm started up and Regina could hear some voices straining to “You Are My Sunshine.” Once they all had picked up the song and the rhythm, the group started over in a rousing rendition that suddenly moved Regina and sent tingles down her back. They were all laughing and smiling as they sang. Regina looked up into the moonless prairie night, so black and so eternal, giving her whole body to the singing and feeling so awake and so alive that she felt she could fly into the star-lit sky. A light shone from an upstairs room, then it was gone. Moments later the light appeared in the kitchen, then another and another as Nels and Fran lit lamps. Finally, the door swung open and Nels stood on the stoop smiling and waving, with Fran tight behind him, clutching her shawl around her shoulders. Soon the kitchen was full of laughing people filling their plates with vegetable salads and breads, and plenty of jellies, and even some beef roast. It wasn’t as sumptuous a charivari feast that many had experienced in the past, but it felt good to bring together whatever food they could spare. Combining such humble portions into one shared meal made it that much more a feast. Fran was excitedly trying to manage things and keep up with the demands for coffee, but the women shooed her away and told her to relax and enjoy herself. Regina approached Fran, along with Marlys, who lead the way. “Hello, Fran, it’s good to see you again,” Marlys said, giving her a long hug. Regina

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smiled at Fran and held out her hands. “Oh, none of that hand business,” Marlys said. “Hug properly, like old friends.” So Fran and Regina hugged, and were glad for it. “Seems like a funny way to celebrate someone’s marriage,” Fran said, “by waking them and disturbing them from their sleep.” “Think of it as practice,” Marlys said. “This won’t be the last time marriage and family will wake you in your bed, and it won’t always be this much fun.” “Oh,” Fran said, looking slightly alarmed. “Don’t listen to her,” Regina said, “what does she know about the mysteries of marriage?” She winked at Marlys, and continued: “Rumor has it, Fran, that you have some fancy new bedroom furniture.” “That’s right,” Marlys said, turning to the room. “Ladies! Fran here is about to take us upstairs and show us her new bedroom suite.” There were hoots and laughs and a couple of the men pounded Arlen on the back. Fran scrambled ahead to throw the covers back over the bed and pick up a few items of clothing, but the women were soon behind her and told her not to worry. They had seen plenty messier bedrooms, including their own. Regina moved to a corner of the room and watched as the women laughed and expressed their admiration, opening and closing drawers and running their fingers along the polished grain of the pieces. The room was small and the women had to shuffle past each other in tight formation as they inspected the furniture. Eventually, the excitement and chatter ebbed and they all stood close together around the bed, wistfully smiling, as if before an altar. “Best room in the house,” one of them said. “Rightly so,” came the reply, along with affirmative murmurs and nods. Regina imagined them thinking of their own bedrooms, how full of pleasure, pain, comfort and disappointment. So much depended on one room. The sweet smell of the women on a warm summer night, and the overly perfumed cachets placed throughout the crowded room suddenly made Regina lightheaded. They had only been in the room a few minutes, and yet too much time had passed. Regina felt warm. She needed to leave, to get out of that room and out of the house, back into the night. “Please,” she said, trying to repress the desperation she felt. She moved toward the door, her body pressing against the women. “Excuse me, please, I need to go.” She raised her head, as if gasping for air above roiling water, her arms reaching and pulling against an inexorable current. l DAVID FETTIG lives in Minneapolis where he works as senior editor and writer for the University of Chicago. A former North Dakota journalist, Fettig spent the bulk of his career as vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. He was born and raised in Bismarck. 19

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AN EVANESCENCE by Kimberly Crowley

I

t was one of those salmon and grey sunsets—the kind of hideous color combination seen in the bathrooms of those one-owner small-town homes advertised on the For Sale By Owner website since “The Boom’’ slacked and

the flippers got desperate. Ellen rose from her knees and sighed, picking up the garden hoe. Sunsets were ineffably distressing for her. No matter how blazingly scarlet-orange or how subtly mauve-pink, no matter how they highlighted the buttes behind her house, they tried her patience, reminding her of how much was left undone. They clapped the day shut as finally as a cover seals a jar. As she stood up and stretched her neck to release the muscles she’d pinched working in the garden, she shivered and noted how much she still had to accomplish there. The evening chill was descending, and she could see the fog settling in on the grasslands to the north of the small barn, like smoke in reverse—steadily increasing, more and more visible as it writhed into the air. Ellen wended her way through the zucchini plants and the beets to the weathered chicken-coop-cumtoolshed built by some previous owner of the property generations ago. She leaned the hoe against the wall of the shed and sat on its aged stone threshold. She tossed her work gloves at her feet in a gesture of surrender. Ellen leaned against the jamb, feeling its splinters on her back. She closed her eyes and let the chill sink in. Abruptly she twitched, flicking a boxelder bug off her hand. It tumbled over the cold slab threshold and, as all primeval creatures do, righted itself and continued on. Mesmerized, Ellen watched the tiny black and orange shell as it continued climbing ceaselessly over all the twigs and leaves she put in its way. She closed her eyes for a

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Mesmerized, Ellen watched the tiny black and orange shell as it continued climbing ceaselessly...

second and felt herself sliding back into last week, into her social persona, reflecting on how often she was prone to move mindlessly toward her destination, just like the leggy little being in front of her. The party the previous Saturday had been crowded. Ellen found herself wedged between a man she didn’t recognize and Tammy, a woman from a book group Ellen sometimes took part in, at the buffet. Ellen was pretending to be interested in the fruit salad everyone was oohing over. Having exhausted the banalities she found so difficult to sustain, Ellen welcomed the appearance of Mona, another part of the same group of casual friends, carrying a cake redolent with cinnamon. “Oh, I just love that cake,” Ellen gushed appreciatively, thankful for something to talk about. “What? Have you had this before?” Mona asked, with sudden bird-like attentiveness. Her geometric earrings, an Island Park find from a Fargo girls’ weekend she loved to recount after a couple glasses of wine, swung and glittered as she cocked her head, waiting for Ellen’s reply. “Yes, at your house. It was delicious,” Ellen vowed. “But I’ve only made this once before. Tammy, you were there for dinner. Remember? We had to eat early to get to the movie on time and that stupid oven gave out, so we had salad and cheese.” Tammy laughed. “But we devoured your cake. It really was the saving grace!” “And you were there?” Mona quizzed gently, as if this simple elaboration would convince Ellen she was not present after all. Ellen felt her throat tighten and quite inexplicably her eyes began to brim. “Yes, I sat next to Sarah,” she replied radiantly, a half beat too fast. “There were black olives in the salad, and we missed the previews at the movie,” she babbled, like a criminal confessing in a plea deal, providing details only she and the police would know.

“Oh, sure,” Mona smiled unconvincingly. “It’s been a while. Hey, we’re having another book group meeting this month. Ellen. You’ve got to come!” Tammy quickly chimed in, “Of course you do! It’ll be fun—we’ll have dinner, some wine--it’ll be fun,” she reiterated awkwardly. “Sure. Sounds great,” Ellen replied with as much conviction as she could muster. She smiled and turned to find a getaway, balancing her plate and cursing the fact that her eyes stung with tears. Ellen sighed again, remembering that conversation. Now she could laugh morosely at it. The movie night Mona and Tammy were talking about was the first one Ellen had shown up at without her husband. Funny how quickly the divorcee becomes invisible, she thought wryly. Mona had been with her partner, Sharon, for almost 20 years. Tammy was divorced, but she had the social sense to quickly remarry. They were all part of a group of about eight couples who got together regularly for dinner parties, movies, and the occasional play at the college or concert at the Capitol. When she and her husband split, Ellen was awash in reassurances that she was still welcome even if the rest of the group consisted of couples. Her husband had been the lynchpin. He knew the group because they’d all grown up in neighboring small towns near Grand Forks. Ellen was an immigrant from the lakes country of Minnesota. While no one had ever made her feel actually unwelcome, she often felt like she wasn’t fluent in the lingua franca of the group. Gamely, she continued on, hoping she would somehow catch on. Even before her divorce, Ellen had embarked on a quest of self-examination, which she quickly realized was ill-advised. One facet of that effort had been plumbing the past for insight into her relationships, romantic and otherwise. Her interactions with other people, the purely social ones, still puzzled her. This group of couples, for instance. She didn’t actively dislike any of them, but she also felt no real connection to anyone in the group, even after a decade of participation. Yet she had dutifully attended the monthly get-togethers, bringing an appropriately gourmet dish when required, and taking part in the 21

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No matter how she moved the stick, the bug adjusted, recalibrating its path.

post-movie (or book or play or game) discussions over aperitifs. When she got home, she inevitably felt as if there had been an inside joke she had not been in on; simultaneously she realized she was being overly sensitive and that her suspicion was probably unfounded. Not that the group had perpetrated any sort of fraud—Ellen realized it was more about her own reticence to engage. When faced with more than two or three people, her instinct was to become an observer rather than participant. She would dutifully follow along with the conversation going on around her and attempt a witticism or pithy observation, but even to her they came out a pulse too fast or too slow or, worse yet, she would blurt out an obscure reference and talk would halt while everyone waited politely for her to explain what she meant. Despite the self-imposed obstacles, she forged on, attending when asked and feigning a feeling of belonging. At least attending them with her husband had given her a familiar foil; going alone felt like the surviving member of a musical duo trying to sing both parts. Ellen dolefully came back to the present. By now her boxelder bug had marched nearly out of reach. She grabbed the hoe, deflecting the dark little bug’s path with the blade. It climbed onto the stick she extended, walking round and round as she turned it like a treadmill. Ellen, bemused at this little creature’s stupidity, laughed out loud at herself, thinking of her own stupidity. She 22

should give up on the Mona and Tammy style social events; Ellen was not a social creature, and her discomfiture at those sorts of things was like a chronic illness. Since the separation and divorce, she usually left them convinced people felt sorry for her, which was endlessly irritating. Worse yet, that irritation usually arose from the fact that she couldn’t quite decide who was right—them for feeling sorry for her or her for thinking they shouldn’t. Still, just like the boxelder bug, she kept on. The night fog was thickening, by turns wafting pockets of clammy dampness and breathy warmth around her as it settled over the purple tall grass. Ellen wondered about this captive boxelder bug—did it know of daybreak and nightfall, warmth and cold, want and need? Of course, she concluded, but only by nature—a tiny, barely sentient prisoner of instinct. Ellen gazed into the hazy strata and stretched her right arm absently as another flashback rose like the fog. She had been hosting the semi-regular meeting of the Book Club. The women were well into their third drinks, and the obligatory mention of the book had been dispensed of, which meant the conversation had turned personal. Of the five women attending that night, Mona was in a longterm relationship, Sarah and Tammy were married, Melanie was dating and hoping for an engagement ring, and Ellen was divorced. The married women were hungry for opportunities of vicarious escapades; Melanie was happy to provide the semi-salacious

stories that gave them those opportunities, but Ellen was circumspect about sharing. “Ellen, have you set up an account on match.com yet?” Melanie asked scoldingly. Ellen exhaled carefully. “Mel, I told you,” she looked a warning shot at the other women, “I’m not going to do online dating.” “But El, you’re never going to find a man out here in the middle of nowhere,” Sarah reminded her. Ellen decided not to get angry; her friends only wanted the best for her, and to them that meant being part of a couple. Encountering a single person with no desire to be part of the mainstream of coupledom was an anomaly for her married and dating friends. Their unease made Ellen uncomfortable. She tried to reassure them; “I’m just not ready yet. When I’m ready, I’ll tell you and you can trot me out to all your single friends, okay? Just give me some time.” Sarah chimed in, “I already have three guys in mind, and Neil has been asking me if I think you’d be interested in this guy he works with, so don’t you worry—we’ll get you set up!” This seemed to mollify the other women, who were also ready with their offerings of male pulchritude. They toasted to Ellen’s eventual re-entry into the fold and asked her if it was time to eat. It was always a relief for Ellen to host the evening, since that meant she was able to remove herself from the discussions in the living room to fulfill some duty in another room. At the last meeting, as she sought shelter in the kitchen while staging a noisy search for a serving spoon, Ellen carefully measured one shot of Pendleton and poured it into her glass, then poured in the caffeine-free Diet Coke, stirring it with one of the big silver spoons from her great-grandmother’s silver service. Frowning, she poured another healthy, and unmeasured, dose of bourbon into the glass and stirred it

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again. In the living room, she could hear part of Sarah’s story about her tenth anniversary trip to the Turks and Caicos. Her reverie was interrupted by another shiver. Summer was giving way to fall, and the fog coming up around her yard moved with purpose. In warmer times of year, it drifted lazily, weighted down with the humidity of the season. Ellen looked down from the fog to the boxelder bug. It was still making its way up the stick she held in her hand. No matter how she maneuvered the stick the bug adjusted, recalibrating its path. Ellen smiled mirthlessly as she moved the stick at awkward angles, watching the creature change its path, even as it headed for the same inevitable destination. She watched disinterestedly as it suddenly fell off the stick, stunned for a moment by the impact of hitting the hard earth. Idly, Ellen wondered if it realized what a sea change it had just experienced. Ellen noted again the similarities between her and the boxelder bug, despite her dismissal of the tiny creature. She pondered her own sea change and how it had stunned her. After leaving her husband and their house, she had the great fortune to run across an old farmstead outside of town that was being sold for $38,000. Pouncing on it, she enlisted her father to help her renovate it. It was a fraction of the size of the house she and her husband had built, but she loved it largely for that very reason. She thought absently about how much work she had put into the marital house, both in its construction and its upkeep. Most of the upkeep came in the form of making everything look perfect— including the relationship that was crumbling inside the composite clapboard and synthetic fieldstone structure. The boxelder bug had righted itself and once again found its way to Ellen’s lowered hand, crawling across it toward the

fine brown hair on her forearm. She let it continue its course, across the left, onto the right. Bored with the insect’s relentlessness, she intervened once more, had it crawl over her left hand then over her right, repeating the maneuver over and over. Watching this miserable speck, Ellen felt a hardening in her as if something as yet unformed had turned to stone, and from it emanated a chill as penetrating as any the evening could muster. Ellen answered it. Cupping her hand, she picked up the bug and held it between her thumb and forefinger, neatly severing the head with her thumbnail. She watched the body move in slow motion, as one responding to a yawn. Then it lay still. Ellen gathered her gloves and hat, whistled for her Golden Retriever Clyde, and walked solemnly toward the house, the soft light from the kitchen diffused by the blurring fog. When she and Clyde got into the house, Ellen padded over to the stove to warm up the morning’s leftover coffee for spiking. As she poured the creamy liqueur into the dark coffee in the stout ceramic cup, she thought about how her Austrian grandmother used to add heavy cream to her coffee, her gnarled hands holding the china creamer daintily as Ellen watched the whorls of white come to the surface of the blackness. Grandma Alice had taught her how to make good coffee, “Not that silly Mr. Coffee piss water your mother makes,” and she taught Ellen how to garden. Ellen looked at her own hands and thought of how foolish Grandma Alice would consider this evening’s mooning about. The kind of work Alice had to do around the farm, with five kids and no running water, crowded out any options for self-pity. Under her tutelage, Ellen learned how to make just about anything grow, as well as how to can and pickle her harvest. She felt more at home in the garden than anywhere else; working in it usually reenergized her, but tonight she felt oddly bereft. She sat down heavily in her favorite chair while Clyde stretched out on the couch. She took a sip of her coffee, swirling it absently in the mug, watching the liquid approach the top of the mug and recede. Ellen thought about the bug, feeling a surprising pang of remorse for her role in

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its demise. Taking another sip of coffee, she looked out the picture window at the fog that continued to form in the backyard. Ellen levered herself up from the chair, stretching to address the stiffness that lingered from her work in the garden, and asked Clyde if he wanted to go outside. She threw open the French door, letting the cold air startle her one more time. She watched Clyde make his usual rounds, wondering what made him stand stock-still, head cocked, for a full minute before breaking hold and marking her hastas one last time for this day. After scanning the tree line that surrounded his back yard, he looked toward the door, saw Ellen watching him, and started his elderly gambol back to her and the house. Ellen thought absently about her own inexplicable actions, not so different than those of the ceaselessly toiling boxelder bug or Clyde’s homing instincts as he brushed past her and posted himself by the pantry door to wait for his treat. Following Clyde up the staircase to the bedroom, Ellen pulled her sweater over her head and tossed it laconically at the hamper in the bathroom. It didn’t land squarely; one arm hung insolently over the side. She looked at it and fought her instinct to walk over and place the sweater neatly inside the wicker basket. Ellen crawled into her bed, wondering how many of the friends who so desperately wanted her to share it with someone secretly craved to sleep singly themselves. The aging blond retriever raised his head from her pillow and gave her a sympathetic look before exhaling noisily, repositioning himself, and settling into sleep. l

KIM CROWLEY is an Associate Professor of English at Bismarck State College. Her favorite ways to experience all that is North Dakota are from inside a pair of hiking boots, atop a trail bike, and on the back of a motorcycle. She credits her father, a city kid who moved to small-town North Dakota and never went back, with instilling in her a true understanding of the importance of place. 23

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I quickly learned that a life dedicated to truth is not romantic or heroic, but fatiguing.

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FATIGUE:

OBSTACLE OR NECESSARY COUNTERPART TO MORAL ATTENTION? by A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone

A

s a trained philosopher and someone who was always suspicious of facile narratives and quick answers to nagging questions, one of my earliest lessons was that seeking truth compels me to go into

uncomfortable mental and emotional, if not literal, spaces. Much as I would desire it, logical consistency, facts, and truth do not often conform to my preferences or to what is convenient for me. Genuine interest in truth necessitates a kind of vigilance to others and to the world in its full complexity, and it requires that we attend to evidence, irregularities, nuance, and of course, the often brutal and terrifying events, injustices, and sufferings that comprise reality as we attempt to draw sound conclusions. As Plato once wrote, philosophy, the love of wisdom, is a practicing at dying. He understood that the quest for truth requires disciplining and reorienting our desires— reconfiguring how and where we place our energies and attention. For Plato, philosophy’s search for truth represented a training for death because it necessitated detachment from material concerns and bodily pleasures. What is real and true is often the opposite of what is pleasant, and I quickly learned that a life dedicated to truth is not romantic or heroic, but fatiguing. I wrote my dissertation and have subsequently spent most of my academic career examining the ideas of 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil—a social activist whose short life was centered on bracketing the pleasant for the sake of attending to truth. This is a thinker who declared, “A test of what is real is that it is difficult and rough…. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.” Apparently, even when she was five years old, she refused to eat sugar because the French soldiers on the front during World War I had none. Decades later, in a letter to her parents about a month before she died at age 34 from complications resulting from tuberculosis, and, once again, refusing food in solidarity with her French countrymen and women who were living off rations during World War II, Weil wrote about the fatiguing nature of thinking. In particular, she noted the inattentiveness that people gave to the substance of her ideas, and to ideas in general. She described how people are frequently hasty and reactionary, giving little more than a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” response to even the most complicated of theories. Most people do not appear to want to process complexity, nor do they have patience for nuance: “[T]hey listen to me or read me with the same hurried attention which they give to everything, making up their minds definitely about each separate little hint of an idea as soon as it appears: ‘I agree with this’, ‘I don’t agree with that’, ‘this is marvelous’, ‘that is completely idiotic’… In the end they say: ‘Very interesting’, and pass on to something else. They have avoided fatigue,” she wrote. I began to understand, with Weil, that fatigue is the inevitable underside to patient attentiveness 25

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and the desire for truth, which for her are the foundations of morality and goodness in the world. If we refuse to see the world as it is (or other persons as they are), then we cannot respond appropriately, honestly, or with true compassion. For her, the central ethically attentive question we can ask another is: What are you going through? That is, when we are inattentive or distracted, or when we project pleasant (but distorted) illusions in place of real beings or situations, then our energies are really in service to our own desires—our egos. If, as Weil thought, honest, impartial attention to the world is the cornerstone of goodness, then catering to selfish desires is the root of evil. But if fatigue goes hand in hand with moral attention, then how do we sustain the energy required for such attention? And if we diminish the fatigue associated with attention, does this mean that we are taking breaks from truth-seeking, i.e., distracting ourselves by escaping into pleasant dreams or other selfcentered recreations? Does managing our moral fatigue also restrict our commitment to care? It may be helpful here to define fatigue, especially as it is understood in the context of moral fatigue. Generally speaking, fatigue is a way of being that is sensed as an impossibility of following through, a diminished ability to go on, or an unavoidable slackening of one’s grip on a commitment. It is felt as an “I can’t, not even one more”: I cannot grade one more paper; I cannot endure one more meeting; I cannot contemplate one more abuse of power. It is part and parcel of our being, the being at which we labor: that is, there is fatigue only in effort and labor. As a result, there can be an ethical problem in our aversion to fatigue, because avoiding fatigue may mean that we give up on the effort of a certain kind of openness to the world. When, for instance, Weil bemoans people’s avoidance of fatigue in the letter to her parents, this complaint follows her proclamation that to receive truth calls for an effort of attention. But attention, according to her, is not how we tend to think of it—i.e., strained concentration that must be highly selective. Instead, true attention involves a relaxation of our perspective, wherein we open up to what we do not expect to find. This openness to and contemplation of reality is not easy, however, for it means being vulnerable to what is possibly strange, difficult, and painful, without turning away. In other words, in being attentive, we are rooted in the present and forego an imaginary escape into the future or past. In this sense, it is easy to understand how fatigue coincides with attention but also seems to threaten it. Consider an illustration: A veterinarian named Sarah is asked to assess a 10-year old dog with a history of renal disease and other complications. The guardian of the dog is an elderly woman whom Sarah knows well; the woman has explained on several occasions that she cannot live without her dog, who is like a child to her. But the woman’s son, her primary caretaker, is present during the appointment, and he expresses his concern about his mother’s own health as well as her fixed income, and the dog’s ongoing serious 26

medical issues. He insists that no unnecessary tests or treatments be performed on the dog. An MRI is ultimately taken, which reveals lesions in the dog’s cervical spinal cord. The woman asks Sarah to do everything possible to keep her dog alive, even if it means he will not be able to walk and will have a diminished quality of life. Sarah presents euthanasia as a humane alternative, but the woman cannot bear to think of this option. The son pulls Sarah aside outside the exam room and asks her to tell his mother that the dog has no chance of recovery. He is concerned for both the dog’s quality of life as well as the financial hardships he and his mother would face with further medical intervention. Let us assume that Sarah is a caring and competent veterinarian. In this one situation, she is attentive to multiple relationships, lines of obligation, and channels of care: her own care for the dog’s wellbeing; her concern for the elderly woman (a longtime client and friend); her concern for the son, who is a caretaker of her client and indirectly, a caretaker of the dog; the woman’s care for her dog; the son’s care for his mother; and so on. Regardless of what Sarah ultimately decides to say or do, the effort of being fully present and compassionate to the three beings who are before her—the woman, her son, and the dog—is extremely weighty, even if it is characterized by multiple vectors of care. Of course, Sarah has many more appointments that day, and many more days like this one, for years. Oftentimes, the interactions in her day are not quite so benevolent: she encounters clients she suspects of animal cruelty and abuse, animals that are difficult or violent, guardians who have the means to fund simple treatments for their pets but prefer the “convenience” of euthanasia, and even disagreements and tensions amongst the clinic’s veterinary staff. We can begin to see how fatigue, in Sarah’s and similar contexts, is actually a sign of connection and relation to the world. Compassion fatigue, one variant of moral fatigue, is a well-known effect on those who regularly engage in care work. Such work that summons a person’s responsiveness and sensitivity on a continual basis to beings who are suffering yields the kind of “burnout” that renders continued work—where it is not merely mechanical— nearly impossible in many cases. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) found in 2012 that 85% of AVMA convention attendees indicated that compassion fatigue was the most important wellness issue affecting them. Professionals in medical and other caring fields often feel that their emotional stores have become depleted, and their investment in attending to traumatized and suffering others comes at a great cost to self. Not surprisingly, there have been systematic, widespread, and concerted efforts to mitigate such fatigue, for instance, through resiliency trainings, debriefing sessions, and self-care seminars offered in workplaces. Although moral fatigue is understandably seen within the care industries as something to be fought or managed, it is also understood to be the necessary sign and wound of a receptive

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caretaker. In fact, such fatigue, by being a kind of “pathic knowledge,” might make compassion (or further attention) possible in a way that cultivated and determined resiliency, and tactics of self-preservation cannot. Katherine Dobbs, RVT, CVPM, notes: “Only compassionate, empathic, loving and caring people suffer from compassion fatigue—the very people who are so vital to the animal-care field.” Similarly, Weil would say that attention does not protect the soul against coldness but in fact exposes it. But it is not just particular forms of work that are at stake here; there is also the quotidian experience of moral fatigue. Think of our experience of reading the daily news. As I write this essay, it appears that the U.S. might be on the brink of war with Iran; bushfires are tearing across Australia; and microplastics rain down from the sky across most of the world and fill our oceans. These are merely a few of the many terrible headlines in a single day in 2020, but even a slight consideration of one of these events can have a stupefying, paralyzing effect, not to mention the cumulative effect over the course of many months and years. How can we sustain attention to these realities? And why should we, when we often feel (or are) so impotent in the face of these disasters? These are questions that continue to disturb me, and I am not sure that I have found answers that are completely satisfying, on an intellectual or practical level. However, I would propose one modest suggestion. Instead of regarding fatigue as an enemy of attention, what if we radically reconsider it as an assistant in our receptivity to the world? That is, in being attentive, we become aware of our own involvement with and relationships to the events and beings we contemplate. Part of this self-awareness must include a recognition of our limitations, our partial knowledge, our inherent lacking, our vulnerability, and our particular embodiments. Contrary to Plato’s vision, truth-seeking attention does not emanate from a pure, invincible, unencumbered, disembodied mind, and it does not shine down with perpetual and unwavering energy upon the world. Rather, attention is a human faculty, originating in contingent bodies that move, develop, suffer, collide, care, struggle, engage, and yes, grow weary. Moral attention, in any meaningful sense, speaks as much of the body which is offering it as to the other body it addresses: it is a fragile invitation to beautiful and sometimes crushing realities, and therefore attention is a real sacrifice and gift. Being bodily, attention is indeed coupled with fatigue and requires rest and recreation, just as being fully awake must be preceded by hours of sleep. Moral fatigue, in particular, reminds us of the vulnerability to suffering we share with others and of the need to extend grace, leniency, and time and space for recuperation in caring gestures. In short, our own fatigue can inform, improve, and humble the compassionate attention we offer to others. “Compassion,” after all, means “to suffer with.” Collective exhaustion, then, can be a form of compassion or shared attention. In weary but joyful recreation with others, we are capable of better addressing the harms, disasters, and social injustices on a wide scale that are frequently caused by those who detest their own vulnerability and who, as Weil said, “have avoided fatigue.” l

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Compassion fatigue, one variant of moral fatigue, is a wellknown effect on those who regularly engage in care work.

A. REBECCA ROZELLE-STONE is Director of the University Honors Program and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota. She was the Vice President (2012-2014) and then President (2014-2016) of the American Weil Society, and has co-edited The Relevance of the Radical: Simone Weil 100 Years Later, co-authored Simone Weil and Theology, and edited Simone Weil and Continental Philosophy. Aside from Simone Weil, her research interests include phenomenology, feminism, the ethics of attention, and the growing field of fatigue studies. 27

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POPLAR GROVE DRAKE LIGNITE GLADSTONE OAKES BUTTE WILD ROSE PORTLAND MOUNTAIN NEW ENGLAND SCRANTON PERTH YORK PAGE PENN CALEDONIA WIMBLEDON HAVANA AYRVERONA NOONAN ANAMOOSE BUFFALO

ROSEGLEN B ERLI N

STARKWEATHER S A I N T A N T H O N Y

N E W T O W N HEBRON

BRIARWOOD

G O L D E N V A L L E Y BEACH WESTHOP E

D E E R I N G ANTLER HAGUE AGATE NEW SALEM C A T H A Y

ANTELOPE OXBOW

R U G B Y CUBA

NIAGRA

MICHIGAN NEW ROCKFORD

GRACE CITY

ALAMO

MO N T P E L I E R

CLEVELAND MEDINA N E W L E I P Z I G WA L E S

LISBON V E N T U R I A

PALERMO FAITH GOODRICH

MUNICH E D I N B U R G

FORTUNA

SAINT MICHAEL

OBERON KINDRED WALHALLA CANDO

WINDSOR

MERRICOURT

SAINT THOMAS

VOLTAIRE

FLASHER H O P E

OVERLY

CHAFFEE PORTAL

SAINT JOHN

NOME

W H E AT L A N D

EVERYWHERE, NORTH DAKOTA by Margaret M. Barnhart

N

orth Dakota is not the end of the world, but you can see it from there . . . The state has nothing but coal, cattle, and cold . . . The future of North Dakota is a human-free buffalo preserve . . . North Dakota is a gusher of oil wealth . . . It is a desolate and flat plain . . . North Dakota doesn’t

even exist. North Dakotans are quite familiar with the drollery, dire predictions, and misrepresentations of their state. They have endured others’ unlearned questions (Does North Dakota have electricity?) and have borne up under media scrutiny or derision (You seriously want to drop the word “North” from North Dakota?). They have shrugged off national disdain, international disinterest, and the tongue-in-cheek claim that the state is a figment of someone’s imagination (Does North Dakota actually exist?). Even Rand-McNally, the mapping company known for its road atlas, contributed to the imagination theory when it omitted the state (and two other plains states) from its publication in 1989. North Dakotans have maintained a stubborn pride in their stoicism and endurance of extremes, whether economic or climatic. They curse the cold of unrelenting winters, but bless it too for keeping out the so-called riff-raff. State departments labor creatively to convince the nation

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and world that North Dakota truly is a fine place to visit in any season, to establish businesses, even to reside in permanently. In spite of such efforts, outsiders and even some insiders continue to label North Dakota as an empty flatland, lacking in diversity, natural wonders, aesthetics, and—of course—warmth. Folks who consider North Dakota to be the middle of a cold nowhere should take a quick look at a state map. A mere glance at town names shows a great deal of natural wonders, worldliness, even other-worldliness, within the borders. Wildlife and other resources abound in North Dakota, where one can find a Drake, a Buffalo, Anamoose. Sadly, Antelope is gone, but an en-Deering Antler remains. Among geological resources, there is Lignite and an Agate, the Gladstone of North Dakota. For natural splendors, the state has Oakes, a Briarwood and Poplar Grove, as well as a Roseglen, appropriate home to the Wildrose and Praire Rose. One can find a Beach at the western edge of the state and a Mountain in the northeast, with a Butte somewhere in between. Niagara exists here, though it does not fall, and newcomers are welcome to a Golden Valley, affirming almost every immigrant’s dreams about a golden life in America. Much of America can be found within North Dakota. Remember the Alamo? It’s here. One can harbor in Portland without traveling to either coast, or shovel snow in Nome. Imagine the possibilities in discovering Montpelier, Scranton, and Cleveland, and, in fact, all of Michigan within a relatively short distance of each other. Anyone tired of old towns and cities, whether American or European, may try a few new ones: New Leipzig, New Salem, New Rockford, and the ageless New Town. In North Dakota, it is possible to stroll all of New England in one very short afternoon. For world travelers, the borders of North Dakota hold an enormous variety of exotic locations, and all can be reached without circumnavigating the planet. It is easy to find both the age-old Islamic Medina and the ancient Biblical city of Hebron (with altered pronunciation) along the Interstate. Elsewhere lay Caledonia and Cathay. How convenient it is to find Palermo and Perth within two hundred miles of each other. Visitors can enjoy a cigar in Havana (though Cuba has all but disappeared), and jelly donuts in Berlin; they may dance the polka in Munich, keep a stiff upper lip in York, test the courts in Wimbledon, swing a golf club in Edinburg, or wander through Wales. North Dakota also contains Lisbon, and while it isn’t home of The Hague, at least it is home to a Hague. Some sports fans might be glad to know that Rugby exists close to the very heart of the entire North American continent. For the adventurous of mind and body there is Venturia; fortune-hunters may thrive in Fortuna, and the lighter-hearted will sparkle or— depending upon personal penchant—flash in Flasher. Those of a literary bent might put Penn to Page, write about

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For world travelers, the borders of North Dakota hold an enormous variety of exotic locations, and all can be reached without circumnavigating the planet.

Oxbow and the next incident at high Noonan. They may converse with two—or possibly more—gentlemen in fair Verona. Ever wonder what became of the fairy king after Midsummer Night? It’s no dream; Oberon, along with his Merricourt, lives in North Dakota. Wives are surely merry in Windsor, and in Voltaire, the citizens believe in God, and if they didn’t, surely someone there would feel the need to invent him. Why? Because North Dakota is a spiritual place with Grace City and Hope; for those who need a larger dose of optimism, there’s the somewhat larger Westhope. (To find Faith, however, people must visit our sister state to the south). It is in North Dakota where the second coming is most likely to occur. Where else would the wheat be separated from the chaff but at the Interstate Interchange between Wheatland and Chaffee? There the Overly, Goodrich Kindred may pass through the Portal into their eternal reward in Walhalla, joining others who have gone before: Saint Anthony perhaps, or Saints John, Michael, and Thomas. This prairie state is more than a commons for buffalo or a subterranean oil reserve. Known for its Starkweather, North Dakota’s Ayr is still fairly clear and as pure as it may be in the twenty-first century. It is a Cando state, one of the safest and healthiest in the country. Its beauty is subtle rather than ostentatious, and its pace of living is still un-frenzied. Filled with communities whose names evoke images of exotic places and times, and with people known for friendliness, generosity, and indomitable spirit, North Dakota is not the middle of nowhere. It is at the heart of an entire continent and holds pieces of everywhere. l

MARGARET BARNHART is the author of the novel Under the Twisted Cross and a memoir Home for Supper. Teacher of composition and literature at Dickinson State University for nearly 30 years, Margaret is deeply rooted in western North Dakota. She and her husband Pat are long-time participants in community theatre and writing groups. 29

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CIRCLE OF CONCERT by Raylene Nickel

I

stand before a winter gathering of beginning farmers in the hamlet of Tuttle, North Dakota, and begin to tell the story of

the soil of our farm. I have been invited to join two other presenters in discussing soil and its health for this event hosted by FARRMS—the Foundation for Rural Resource Management and Sustainability. The farmers are interspersed amid listeners from other walks of life. A woman sitting at the front, of middle years and glistening black, waist-length tresses, listens as if she must catch every strain of wisdom there might be in my story. Behind her, a young man averts his gaze when I glance his way. While across the room, another young man looks at me with steady eyes, weighing my words, as does the dark-haired woman beside him. Always I shift my eyes back to the captivating woman at the front straining to catch even the smallest kernels of truth. I pray there are a few such kernels. For I empathize with beginning farmers; I feel their hopes, their dreams, and their challenges as if these were my own. It seems only yesterday that my husband, John, and I came to our farm thirty years ago, near the village of Kief, some seventy-five miles north of Tuttle. The PowerPoint image to my left portrays John as he appeared in his fifties, broad-brimmed cowboy hat shading

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intense blue eyes and graying, close-cropped beard. We came to the farm where I had grown up, where I had learned to handle cattle and horses. I met John, a herd manager, while working on a large cattle ranch in Manitoba, where I had migrated after graduating from Minot State University with degrees in English and psychology. Despite the degrees, working outdoors with cattle had seemed the most comfortable fit for my life. Two years after our marriage, John and I came to North Dakota to take over my family’s farm. Dreams filled us to near-bursting. Dreams of working with our hands, feeling the sun and wind on our faces; dreams of raising cattle, maybe some crops, and lots of hay. Hope was a shining star that lit the horizon with a vision. Almost daily, I carried that hope to a broad-crowned hill east of our farmstead. From that big hill, I gazed all about, imagining the farm as it would one day become. John very often came with me. And it is from the vantage of this hill that I begin the story of our soil for the beginning farmers. When John and I came to the farm, the top of the Big Hill was windswept, with bare soil glaring out from wide spaces between scraggly plants, mostly thin-stemmed grasses. A broad bank of drift soil bordering the hill’s southern boundary told the story of the Hill’s hard-scrabble life. Decades of plowing and cultivating had pulverized the already fragile soil of the Hill, shattering it into fine dust. Over time, winds swept the surface of the Hill, lifting the soil and carrying most of it away to the south while dropping some in the entrapping wires and posts of an old fence line. The fence was half-buried in drift soil when John and I came to the farm. John’s response to the soil erosion on the Hill was intuitive. He refused to till across the top of it. He left the surface undisturbed, freeing it to grow whatever it chose, giving it time to heal as soil organisms slowly rebuilt the earth from the roots and residues of plants.

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It dawned upon us, all those years ago, that there was a shared dependency among levels of life on our farm.

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Over the years, the Big Hill became our Prayer Hill, and I share with the beginning farmers in Tuttle little but a glimpse of the dreams and prayers unfurled from the Hill, dreams and prayers that so often seemed as stymied as shriveled plants. At the summit of the Hill, fields spilling down around us, John and I held each other in the wake of drought, crop failures, paralyzed finances, and a shriveled cow herd. Other times we sat side by side on the ground, hugging knees, watching the sun settle into the horizon, its red and gold hues melding sky and earth. The question was a burning coal: Would we fail at this dream? Would we also go the way of so many other beginning and small farmers? Would we be forced to leave the land like our neighbors to the east? Like our neighbors to the north? Lifeways and farmland now all swallowed up by larger farmers. But in time the question gave way to new thoughts fueled by the insights of ecologist Allan Savory. And these thoughts are what I hope to plant in young farmers. It dawned upon us, all those years ago, that there was a shared dependency among levels of life on our farm. We were present on the land to the same degree that the birds and the diverse plants of the fields and sloughs were present. We were present to the same degree that its myriad of insects and soil organisms were present. Whatever we could do to enhance this biological diversity, this shared 32

dependency among levels of life, would help us all to be more present on the land. We stopped tilling the soil. Instead, we converted the fields to alfalfa, a perennial legume that enriches the earth. Grasses grew naturally along with the alfalfa. We planted more trees and let volunteer trees spring up at the rims of sloughs and marshes. We expanded our cow herd and grazed them in ways that repaired soil. By cross fencing our farm into many paddocks, we were able to let grasses rest for long periods after short periods of grazing. The grasses grew tall during the rests, and the subsequent grazing of the cows trampled much of the forage into the earth. There, the plant residue built a thatch, covering the surface of the earth and protecting previously bare patches of soil from heat and from erosion by wind and water. The plant residue, along with manure and urine from the cattle, made more food for soil organisms. John sidestepped fuel-burning machinery as much as possible and began using teams of draft horses to feed hay to cattle in winter. We dispersed the feeding areas across the fields, freeing manure, urine, and hay residues to further fertilize the soil. Passersby might have presumed that our main enterprise was that of raising cattle, producing grass-fed beef. But in essence, we were building soil. The cattle were simply the byproduct. The natural processes—kindled by hope and love—knit from

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The natural process—kindled by hope and love—knit from our farm a tapestry that John called “a circle of concert.”

our farm a tapestry that John called “a circle of concert.” It was a simple yet elegant fruition of our vision: The soil grew the plants, and the plants fed the cattle, horses, and goats—and us, through our garden, beef, and the dairy products from the goats. The food empowered us to shoulder the physical work needed to tend the plants and livestock, all of which in turn fed the soil. Even our finances, too, came into line, as if woven mysteriously into the tapestry. Yet there came the day when I held John not in a warm embrace but as cold ashes in my hand, his earthen being reduced to clay-like crumbles. At the summit of our Prayer Hill, I spread him all about, ashes on the breeze. Settling here and there, the gray crumbles nestled among the grasses now carpeting the Hill, healing its worn surface. In the nearly seven years since, I have stopped asking “Why?” My prayer now is “How?” And so I continue, working for our soil, imagining ways to do things alone once done by two. Still caring for cattle, still caring for plants, and still carrying my hope to the Prayer Hill. As the years marched onward, I grew curious to know the extent to which John and I might have changed the soil of our farm for the better, and so I tested samples of the soil at a laboratory. It is this, too, that I share with the beginning farmers. Because John and I never got a baseline measurement of soil health when we started farming, I also sampled soil from a neighbor’s field that has been tilled since the early 1900s. That sample gives an idea of what the soil on our farm might have been like before we began making changes 20 years ago. For comparison, I sampled the soil from one of our paddocks right across from the neighbor’s field. The test results showed that the organic matter of the soil in our paddock is nearly twice that of the tilled field. Organic matter is the rich reservoir of nutrients in the soil and the component that gives soil the structure needed to retain and infiltrate moisture. The test suggesting life-giving microbial activity in the soil had a rating of 162 for our paddock, versus 38 in the tilled field.

The Soil Health Calculation for our paddock was 15.49, compared to 6.08 for the tilled field. While needful, informative, and even uplifting, the scientific renderings of soil health are impersonal, even cold, telling nothing of the dreams and prayers giving shape to the very soil itself— decades of human hands working toward a vision. And so I bring a tender heart to this meeting of beginning farmers, the men and women who must by necessity populate our farms and ranches in order for agriculture to survive. After my presentation, I sip hot coffee while one woman tells me of her newly planted rows of lavender on native prairie. The woman with the long, black tresses tells of her one-on-one fight against wormwood in her pastures, and I am inspired. My determination to fight that invasive weed on our farm re-ignited. But it is while listening to another woman’s story about the feeding of her cattle that my compassion is most deeply stirred. She describes a shortage of hay, the obstinance of a tractor in winter, snow and ice causing winter hazards for her work. All threats that must be overcome if soil life, humans, birds, livestock, and plants are to co-exist in a shared dependency of relationships. Back at home, I remember her in prayer each day. And in spring, after warm breezes melt the snow and while hawks soar overhead, I will carry my hope to the Prayer Hill. There, I will pour out my prayers and dreams for her from the summit, watching them wash across the strengthened grasses. I will plant my hope for her in the enriched earth cradling John’s vision—a circle of concert. l

RAYLENE NICKEL raises cattle and goats on her farm near Kief, North Dakota. A member of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, she contributes regularly to Successful Farming magazine. She has authored two memoirs: A Prayer for the Prairie and Forever Hopeful (www.raylenenickel.com). 33

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HITCHED TO EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE: ON WALKING, TREES, AND GRACE

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by ShaunAnne Tangney

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pretty cool thing has been happening in Melbourne, Australia, for the past six years.

In 2013, as part of its Urban Forest Strategy, the city issued ID numbers and email addresses to all of its 77,000 trees. The original intent was to allow citizens to report on health issues or dangerous broken branches or vandalism to the trees. In general, it was a way for the city foresters to get a hand in doing a very big job—maintaining the trees of Australia’s second-largest city—and also an attempt to foster civic engagement, to encourage the people of Melbourne to become citizen foresters. What happened instead was nothing short of amazing. People did report on the health of the trees, or problems they noticed. But they also used those ID numbers and email addresses to write letters directly to the trees—tree-mail, if you will. People wrote thousands and thousands of letters to trees—letters like this: To: Golden Elm, Tree ID 1028612 29 January 2015 I used to think you were the Magic Faraway tree when I was a child. Now that I’m an adult, I still look forward to seeing you as I come around the bend after a tedious crawl down Hoddle Street. A loyal friend always there waiting to say hello. Your friends who are there for you are the most important ones. The City of Melbourne’s website says that “the Citizen Forester Program [was] established to facilitate [an] ongoing and meaningful partnership with the community to grow and enhance one of Melbourne’s most important assets: our urban forest.” I think it’s

great that Melbourne considers its trees one of its most important assets and is working hard to protect them. But the tree-mail project facilitated ongoing and meaningful partnerships on a level that probably no one involved in the Urban Forest Strategy saw coming. It seems the people of Melbourne don’t just value their trees; they love them—and they seem to be delighted to finally have a way to express their love. This does not surprise me. Even though I suffer from pretty awful tree pollen allergies, feeling all spring like someone has embedded tiny ninja throwing stars in my nose, like someone has driven 16-penny nails into my sinuses, it is a joy and a relief to see our trees come back into leaf after another long and bitter North Dakota winter. It’s like we share something, these trees and I—a knowledge of something hard, something sad, something that clutches the soul…like surviving a war together, or a flood, or a terrible and untimely death. When the trees in my neighborhood begin to leaf and bud, I feel a lot like that tree-mail writer from Melbourne: glad to find old friends, loyal and true. I’m especially fond of the massive cottonwood trees in my neighborhood. These cottonwoods strike me as kind trees, generous trees. But more than that, I’ve come to respect these cottonwoods as elders, beings who have lived here for a century or longer, and who know more about this neighborhood than I ever will. Perhaps this feeling comes from a flood memory—seeing a young couple sitting stunned on their front steps, taking a break from frantic packing up and moving out, the giant cottonwood in their yard reaching its arms around them, giving them shade and a moment of rest, and assuring them it would be here when they returned. As it was, as it is, giant and majestic to this day. Cottonwoods are resilient. One doesn’t become an elder if one is not resilient. I am aware that I am guilty of anthropomorphizing—attributing non-human 35

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creatures with human characteristics or qualities. But I know as well that everything I said about that cottonwood tree is true. That tree did provide a moment of respite for that flood-defeated couple. And that tree is a wise and sentient neighborhood elder. It knows, in ways I could never know, what air smells like and what dirt feels like and what rain tastes like. It knows what it feels like to be under eight feet of water for forty days. It knows what it was like to grow up in a wide-open expanse, and what it is like to grow old, trapped in asphalt and concrete. It knows the deep history of the neighborhood. Before the flood, it watched four generations of children walk to school. Since the flood, it watches no children walk to school. Other trees in the neighborhood are dear to me as well. My late husband’s ashes are buried under several trees in our neighborhood. Russ was born in this neighborhood, in a house two blocks from the one he died in. He, too, was a neighborhood elder, and walking these streets with him was a history lesson and a cultural archive, a revelation and a gift. Russ and I loved walking, and we walked almost every day that the weather allowed. Sometimes it was just a casual stroll after work, after dinner; sometimes—especially on Sundays—we’d go for two hours or more. There was something about a Sunday walk for us. It was a time to be together, but not alone, for we always paid careful attention to the world around us (one of my all-time favorite Russ stories: walking one spring day we heard a woodpecker hammering away; Russ stopped, looked until he found the bird high up on a half-dead ash tree, then shook his head and said, “Man, that’s a hell of a way to make a living…”). We said to one another on many a Sunday walk, the sun warm on our backs or the wind nipping our ears and noses, this is our church, and walking together, being together in the natural world, is our worship. It can be hard to be certain about things, but putting Russ to rest under those trees—I can think of no better headstone, no better burial ground. When Russ and I walked together, we would talk and talk— about the quotidian: bitching about work, or bandmates, or politics—what needed to be done around the house—grocery lists and who needed a haircut. And about the big stuff, too—plans for travel, career decisions, family matters—all the things that crowded our hearts—joys like birdsong, sorrows like stones. We made perhaps the biggest decision we ever made together on a Sunday walk—and another ancient cottonwood was there to witness it. Russ and I lived together for almost ten years before we got married. We had both been married before, had gone through painful divorces, had done the hard work of mending ourselves. Neither one of us was sure we wanted to marry again. We went back and forth for months, weighing the pros and cons, doing our best to be specific as to what married meant to each of us, what we wanted, and what we didn’t. And then there we were, out on a Sunday walk, passing under a towering cottonwood, and I just 36

I’ve come to respect these cottonwoods as elders, beings who have lived here for a century or longer, and who know more about this neighborhood than I ever will. stopped and said, “Yes. OK, let’s do it. Let’s get married.” Russ beamed and took my hand. “Yeah,” he said “me, too. Let’s do it.” And so we did. It may not have been a “romantic,” down-on-one-knee proposal, but it was a deeply profound moment, and decision. What Russ and I figured out, during all that walking and talking, and what we did in saying yes to one another underneath that cottonwood tree on that Sunday walk, was promise to take care of one another. This wasn’t an easy decision to make. Russ had said that he wasn’t sure if he was ready to be responsible for me. I got kind of pissed at that: I was a modern, independent woman with her own successful career, money in the bank, health insurance, life insurance, a stock portfolio; I didn’t need any man to be responsible for me. But that’s not what Russ meant. He was talking about responsibility of a much higher order: responsibility as the antithesis of selfishness. To say, if we get married, my life is not entirely my own anymore. Your happiness, sorrow, struggles, success, well-being, wealth, dreams and plans are going to matter to me as much as my own. It was something I didn’t grasp at first, but as he did so often in our time together, Russ helped me understand it, and then he helped me live it. A tree as witness notwithstanding, you may wonder what our deciding to get married has to do with the Melbourne tree-mail project. Perhaps more than you think. That afternoon, Russ and I chose to take care of one another, to be responsible for one another. We didn’t choose to get married because we loved one another, even though we loved one another very much. We chose to get married because we believed we could provide for one another. In a way, getting married—coming together and promising to stay together— was kind of an outward move for us because it was a decision based not solely on our own individual needs and desires, but on the needs and desires of another person. The outward move is an old idea, as old as Plato who argued that we must move from eros, in which we are captured by a passionate desire for one person, to agape, or caritas, in which our compassion, kindness, and care is extended to all people. I would push that outward turn even further, saying we must extend our care to all living things. In that vein, the tree-mail project in Melbourne was an invitation to caritas. And a kind of a genius invitation because the natural world itself is a model for caritas. We are wont to believe that only human beings can take on this kind of responsibility, can exhibit the kind of selfless love in which we are passionately committed to the well-being of others, but that is

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not really true. While it may appear “red in tooth and claw,” nature, the non-human, is actually quite communal and cooperative. Ants and bees come immediately to mind as examples of cooperation in the non-human world, but fish also cooperate (wrasse fish that clean parasites from the skins of other fish), birds cooperate (flycatchers that heed the calls of other flycatchers to mob a predator bird), plants and bacteria cooperate, too (exchanging chemical signals to distinguish friend from foe). In one way or another, most living things take care of one another, take responsibility for one another, whether it is the more common inter-species care, or the more unusual intra-species care. And that is the really cool thing about the tree-mail project in Melbourne: it gave human beings the easy opportunity for intraspecies caritas. Like Russ and I deciding to get married, lots of human beings are willing to take care of and be responsible for one another. Similarly, towns and cities, schools and churches, clubs and organizations all demonstrate that human beings are willing to commit to the well-being of other human beings. But to take care of and be responsible for species other than our own? We are often not so willing. We tend to think of “nature” as some big monolithic thing that is always somewhere else—like a national park or a South American jungle or an African savannah or a far-off ocean. Perhaps we do this because we also tend to think of “nature” as “not-me,” when really, we are all a part of it. We all belong to one another—all of us, all living things. There is a kind of basic, underlying principle about the universe: everything is connected to everything else. We are all connected—in the words of Robinson Jeffers: “earth, stone and water, / Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars”—and all of our actions have distinct consequences for and on one another. I think most of us can grasp this interconnectedness intellectually, but because we mostly think of “nature” as both “not me,” and far away from me, we are not very likely to act on that intellectual conception. The Melbourne tree-mail project, which focuses on the “nature” that is right outside people’s doors, right where they live and work and play, helped people understand that we—all living things—really are all connected, and therefore really are responsible for one another. I visit the trees beneath which Russ’s ashes are buried often. I like that he’s still here, in the neighborhood, that he is still a part of everything that goes on here. But the other day, I made a sojourn to the cottonwood where we decided to marry. It was a bittersweet afternoon, not just in missing Russ, gone more than two years now, but because I fear that tree will come down in the name of flood protection. If that happens, it will be another terrible loss for me, but it will be a loss for the neighborhood, too; indeed, a loss for the entire community. The loss of an elder is always a blow to the community. The loss of an elder is not just a loss of knowledge and history,

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but is also a loss of caritas. Elders are elders not just because they are old and wise but also because they take their responsibility to their community seriously. Everything they know and have and are, they make freely available to everyone in their community. And they refuse no request. This cottonwood is no less an elder than any human being. And it will refuse no request we make of it, even if we ask it for its life. There is a hard truth to living on this planet. Wendell Berry puts it this way: “to use or not to use nature is not a choice that is available to us; we can live only at the expense of other lives.” The best I know to do in the face of that hard truth is to say grace. To be humble and grateful in the face of such generosity and responsibility and care. I could stand at the base of that cottonwood and offer it my words (not unlike sending a tree-mail): Thank you for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide that allows me to live on this planet. Thank you for the beauty you share so freely—deep shady greens in summer, golden glowing yellows in autumn. Thank you for witnessing the best decision I ever made. Thank you for your care, for taking responsibility for me, even past your death, your removal so that I may stay, here in the neighborhood. And while that one-time act of grace may well be necessary, I think what is truly required are ongoing acts of grace, saying grace every day we walk on this planet. And the grace we can offer is so simple: pay attention. At root, that’s what the city foresters of Melbourne asked of their fellow citizens: pay attention. You live in a magnificent urban forest that you could lose. You live amongst an amazing multitude of living things who care for you and provide for you. They deserve your attention. And when we pay attention—when we extend our awareness and care outward to other living things—we become less selfish, become more generous, more responsible. When we pay attention, we become brave—brave enough to love, to give our hearts, which means being brave enough for joy, brave enough for despair. Which is, in the end, all we ever want. Go. Take a walk. Pay attention. Say grace. You’ll see. l

SHAUNANNE TANGNEY has lived in North Dakota for nearly twenty-five years. She was an English professor at Minot State University for twenty years where her scholarly work and teaching focused on literature of the US west, sense of place, and critical theory. She is an essayist and poet whose work has been published in the US, Great Britain, and Australia; her most recent work features spoken-word essays for the Good Talk Network and late-night comedy for Good Night Minot. 37

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FINDING MY PLACE BY FINDING WENDELL BERRY by Jane M. Schreck

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t the end of the first decade of the twentyfirst century, I found

myself teaching English at a community college and enrolled in a doctoral program on teaching and learning in higher education. In a time of giddy promise from technological innovation, with some of my cohort classmates choosing dissertation topics about online learning or computer-aided instruction, I found myself captured by the writings of Kentucky writer-thinker-farmer Wendell Berry and the idea of applying his philosophy of agrarianism and place to higher education. My choice of Berry as a dissertation topic came as a profound surprise to me. After all, I was raised on Velveeta cheese. Velveeta is not even cheese, really. Officially, it is identified on the box as a “pasteurized prepared cheese product.” And my Velveeta was typically served on supermarket bread. For years, only with my paternal grandmother did I encounter real cheese. During Memorial Day weekend, for example, the family ritual was to pile into the station wagon and drive with Grandma the sixty miles to a large but nearly vacant cemetery on the edge of tiny Mercer, North Dakota. Our mission was to clean up the gravesites of my grandfather, his first wife, and their firstborn daughter, born and dead in just two days, something we kids seemed to discover anew each year when we studied the granite dates. And here too was the plot where my grandmother would be buried in her ninety-sixth year. It was all very matter-of-fact, even lighthearted. Grandma would bring bedding plants, a spade, and hand tools, and I would have to witness the unusual spectacle of my father awkwardly wielding a spade in his wingtip shoes. Afterward, with the lunch Grandma packed, we would have a picnic, sometimes at the town park, but often at the

cemetery. The staple of the lunch was cheese sandwiches, made with bread she had baked herself and cut in thick, irregular slices, holding pieces of her exotically real cheddar cheese. Sometimes too we would have applesauce that she had made with apples from her own tree. Perhaps I make too much of Velveeta. I recognize that the cheese my grandmother served had been purchased at a grocery store, too, but somehow the difference between the cheese in her sandwiches and Velveeta seems to me now emblematic of the difference in a way of viewing the world. Velveeta is a food much removed from its source, placeless and somehow to me vaguely modern and urban. And I was raised as a modern, urban kid, even in North Dakota. Though I rambled about outdoors in a big backyard or in nearby vacant lots and prairie parks, I grew up more indoors than out. My family is generations removed from making a living directly from the land. My people had city jobs even in small towns. One grandfather was a shopkeeper with aspirations of being a businessman, as his sons became, and in the early part of the century, he sold some of the first automobiles in the state. He arrived in Mercer on a bicycle, but he would leave in the mid-1920s in a car. My other grandfather was a postmaster and newspaper editor. He even had a job for a time in North Dakota's tallest building, the state Capitol. One grandmother was educated to be a schoolteacher and, in her widowhood, worked as a librarian. When I knew her, she walked or took the bus to get around town and lived in an apartment that begged to be in a big city. Though I am aware that I did not come from a big city, still the farmland and ranchland that I saw as a child blurring past the side window of our station wagon seemed not hostile but certainly alien to my people and our history. Only my paternal grandmother—she of the strange, hard cheese—seemed to identify with the land. She too had been educated to be a teacher, but for a brief time,

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It is possible that I will be the only member of my family in many generations to be born and to die in the same place. I was raised and educated to be rootless...

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she had a farm and tried without success to make over her shopkeeper husband into a farmer. When they moved to the capital city for greater business opportunities, she tried without success to turn her children into gardeners. She maintained a big garden almost to the end of her life, with the motto “Eat what you can and can what you can’t.” My people are also mobile. Since falling onto this continent from Ireland and Norway in the mid-1800s, my people drifted into North Dakota like the east wind that stirs up rain for the dry prairie. We have no ancestral home place or piece of land. I hold in my imagination the names and stories of little towns like Ada, Minnesota, and Starkweather, North Dakota—small places of the world, grown even smaller by the time I ever saw them. I have ancestors scattered in tiny cemeteries from Scott and Stearns and Norman Counties in Minnesota to Ramsey and McLean and Burleigh Counties in North Dakota—mute graves that will not be awakened by bedding plants or memories brought in the spring. It is possible that I will be the only member of my family in many generations to be born and to die in the same place. I was raised and educated to be rootless and to think of rootlessness as normal, schooled not only by my family tradition but also by a culture and institutions that urge their young people to go out into the world and succeed, with success unlikely to happen at home or in any small place. It was never my intention to come home. That I wound up at home has been an ongoing surprise and blessing both, but in my family tradition it is also an anomaly. Finally, growing up on a prairie with no connection to the soil, the most striking and notable feature of the view is the sky, that overarching, horizon-to-horizon, so-blue-it-will-hurt-your-eyes, infinite sky. It is a perspective that makes it hard 40

to keep in sight the constraints of sensible or appropriate scale. Combine that view with the necessary optimism of the stock of “the next place will be better” immigrants from which I spring, and I was a willing target for the modern world’s easy talk of limitless opportunities, limitless options, limitless potential, all detached from the consequences and accountability of the care of a particular place. My point is that little in my background suggests that I should have any connection to Wendell Berry’s agrarian philosophy of community and place, with his suspicion of technology and insistence on limits and appropriate scale. He seems a surprising— even an unlikely—focus for a dissertation that I would research and write. Common sense might expect that the scholarly journey of my doctoral studies on higher education in the twenty-first century would have led me in the opposite direction. And yet Berry’s writings grab hold of something fundamental in me and do not let go. This is surely not because of my experience on a farm because I have none, nor my experience of rural life because, however misguidedly, I think of myself as more urban than rural. Instead, I believe what makes Berry’s writing resonate with me is my experience as a college teacher in the twenty-first century. As we in education have been urged to ceaselessly “innovate”—something that seems to involve technology more often than creativity—I was unable to articulate my resistance. As we have been told to accept that education is better when it is faster, more efficient, more standardized, more compartmentalized, I did not understand my doubts. As tools of technology are touted that would allow scalability and global reach, I felt more and more that education is really about human relationships. While legislators and education reformers act as

though the survival of humanity depends only on science, technology, engineering, and math, I have learned that our survival depends first on sympathy, mercy, and love—qualities often more easily developed by the humanities than by STEM. Finding words for my unease—finding Wendell Berry—there was joy in this journey. Reading Berry helped me answer some of my own misgivings about current trends in education and suggests a better way. When I read his poems about farming, I think about education. When I read his essay about the order of Elmer Lapp’s milking barn and its integration into the whole workings of the Lapp farm, I think of how education could be improved with better integrity among its parts—improved if we could do a better job of teaching the whole student. When I read about the complex, formal intelligence required to run a farm holistically, I think of interdisciplinary lesson plans and curricula development. When I read Berry’s essays or fiction, I understand that there are dignity and satisfaction in work done well and not in work done quickly or on a massive scale. When I read in Berry’s work about the disintegration of rural communities, I think about how in the past I may have contributed to pulling my students from their connections to home, how I have dutifully supported the cultural expectation that success is about competition and ambition and addled clichés about stars and overreach and limitlessness. Or I think of my own children, who grew into—for their father and me—the two most fascinating people in the world and who are now thousands of miles away from me and from each other. I know I contributed to that in ways subtle and not. So there was grief in my journey too. But there has also been great affection in this journey—for Berry, his characters, and

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his writing; for my students and my work as a teacher; for the effort of researching and writing; and for my life in this place as a wife and mother, daughter and sister, friend and neighbor. I loved doing this work, every step of the way, and that emotional investment made completing the dissertation life-changing in ways I am still discovering. What is clear to me now in a way that was not before I found Wendell Berry is that the placelessness of modern industrial thinking has failed us—culturally and ecologically. And it has failed us educationally. When I began the doctoral program, I thought data analytics and greater efficiency would save higher education. By the time I completed my dissertation, I could see that what my students need is not big data. What they need are small gestures—gestures of kindness and encouragement, gestures of interest and individual care. Placeless, generic education does not serve. Like any human endeavor, education should be something more aligned with agrarianism and less with industrialism. Moreover, in a time when our political rhetoric has become both divisive and derisive, when our differences are too easily defined and dismissed as a split between urban and rural—a divide of our very places—Berry’s thinking finds the connections through our shared humanity. In his analysis and portrayal of his place, he enables us to understand our own places in a fresh way. Just as each school or each classroom is made up of uniquely individual students, Berry’s writings remind us that even the large places of the world are made up of small places that need to be loved and defended. In this, we can find what connects us. All of this brings us back to the lessons of the Mercer cemetery, lessons that I learned dimly from my grandmother but understand more deeply from my study of Wendell Berry. First, we all need to eat, and second, we all are going to die. It really does all come down to that—life and death. We need the earth in order to live, so we had better treat it well, and whether we live two days or ninety-six years, we are frail, flawed creatures, neither as smart nor as strong as we like to believe, so we had better try to get along. We have to come to know that if we make the earth unlivable through neglect or abuse or violence or greed, it is not the end of the world. It is the end of us. So I should not be surprised that our lives—that is, the lives of all humankind—depend on our ability to listen to this Kentucky farmer and learn to practice loving care for our places and for each other. And I should not be surprised that my joyful, grief-touched, beloved doctoral journey turned out to be a journey to my place at home l

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Whether we live two days or ninety-six years, we are frail, flawed creatures, neither as smart nor as strong as we like to believe, so we had better try to get along.

JANE M. SCHRECK was born and raised in Bismarck and now teaches at Bismarck State College. After college at the University of North Dakota, happenstance brought her home where every day she discovers a deeper appreciation of her place in the world. She and her husband Dan garden some, bicycle some, write some, and cross-country ski some. 41

THE DIVINE PERVADES ALL CREATION

by Dakota Wind Goodhouse Painting by Dakota Goodhouse, “Haŋyétu Háŋska Wí él Makȟáska Pahá (The Long Night Moon at White Earth Butte).” 2019

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They looked out for each other and protected their people with intelligence of the country.

M

akȟáska Pahá (White Earth Butte), or White Butte, is the highest natural point of North Dakota

located in the least populated county of

Slope. The only sounds for miles are the whisper or roar of the wind, the shushing of grass, birdsong, the tread of one’s own footfall, or one’s own breath if you’re hiking to this special summit. The feature is named for the sandstone and white clay that make it up. It rises from the vast open plain like a step to heaven. Shaped by wind and rain, human beings have attached story and meaning to this place since they first saw its bold white profile calling to them. The first hunters ascended this rise in their search for the ancient bison. Men looking for their divine purpose waited days without water or sustenance for spiritual insight. It’s a beautiful walk to the top that naturally invites self-reflection. The summit is 3,506 give or take a couple of feet depending on which information you use. On the four-mile, round-trip hike the bright orange lichen practically yells for your immediate attention to the cracked sandstone which lay about the hillside. The Lakȟóta think of lichen as a kind of decoration. They call it Ziŋtkála Ipátȟapi, which means “Bird Embroidery” or “Bird Quillwork.” It does beautify stone. Sometimes lichen is

collected and burned as an incense. A growing number of people have ascended North Dakota’s highest point. Some of them are highpointers, which are people who usually have a list of highest summits of which they ascend and cross them off. Highpointing might include ascending the highest points of counties, states, countries, or the world. Generally, it is an enjoyable experience. For the indigenous, going to the hill meant going to the top for a look around the land for game as well as for sign of foe. When scouts went out to look, they went out in twos. One might see what the other missed, they looked out for each other, and protected their people with intelligence of the country. Going to the hill also meant going to pray. Sometimes this way of prayer was for personal guidance, sometimes to secure divine assistance or “medicine” for the survival of the people, even to secure a victory for the people against an enemy. Sometimes people who were called to the hill to pray were inspired or provoked to create stone circles or stone cairns. White Butte has a deep ancient myth-history that connects the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the Seven Council Fires (or “Great Sioux Nation”) to the landscape in long occupation. In the time long predating living memory, a baby fell from the heavens and landed in the heart of Ȟesápa, the Black Hills. He swiftly matured into a young man and set off on a 43

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That what happens in the heavens happens in the world about them. As above, so below.

series of missions to help the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, but those are stories and places outside of what is today North Dakota. They called him Wičháȟpi Hiŋȟpáye, Fallen Star. Fallen Star had a lifetime of adventure akin to the labors of Hercules or the decade-long journey of Odysseus, every quest he fulfilled was to the benefit of the people. He had family and made friends, a wife too, when one day he heard his father calling for him to return and take his place among the stars. After becoming a father, Fallen Star bid his people farewell. But there is no “goodbye” in the Lakȟóta language. He would have said, “Tokšá akhé,” meaning, “Until next time.” This story may come to an end, but the narrative within makes it clear that the story only continues. With his kȟóla, which is a male friend or cousin who is as close to one as a brother, Fallen Star ascended a hill in the dark of night. He told his kȟóla that it was his time to return to the sky, his time to go home. Then he lay down upon the summit and died. They saw the spirit of Fallen Star as a light that ascended into the heavens. Even after returning to the sky, his work did not come to an end. From his place in the sky, he labors to send rays of hope to his people. Sometime during the longest night of the year, from about a mile or so south of White Butte looking north, the Lakȟóta observed a star which appeared to rise from the butte. The badlands formation of White Butte and the summits in the immediate area about the butte bear some similarity in layout to the constellation Auriga, of which the brightest star in that constellation is Capella, the very same star the Lakȟóta call Fallen Star. As a constellation, Auriga appears to look like the figure of a man reaching up, or perhaps pointing to, the North Star. That White Butte appears to bear some resemblance to Auriga, some would argue coincidence, just as people look to the sky and perceive patterns and images, the Očhéthi 44

Šakówiŋ look and see connection and reflection. That what happens in the heavens happens in the world about them. As above, so below. This divine reflection of features that is shared between the stars and geography is called Kapémni, which means “To Twirl About,” in reference to the movement of a spinning warclub or a bullroar, but in this instance refers to the movement of the stars across the night sky. Unlike astrological interpretation, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ did not try to divine the future of individuals. Rather, the stars in the sky inform them that things were as they should be; the stars had their place in the heavens, so should men and women have their place in society. South and west of White Butte is Waz’ožúwakȟaŋ Pahá (Sacred Pine Grove Thicket Hills), or the Medicine Pole Hills. A little of the green is collected and burned later in prayer, or perhaps when they saw the Northern Lights. Within the hills, on private land, is Čhaŋgléška Wakáŋ, a sacred stone Medicine Wheel, which is aligned to the solstices. The timing of each solstice indicates an intensity of prayer, a reminder to the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ to be giving. White Butte, the highest point in North Dakota, where hikers go to experience our natural concert of vast open sky, rushing wind, shushing plains grasses, poetic bird song, and maybe the warning of rattlesnakes. It’s a beautiful unbroken view once you’re atop. Its intrinsic value to people and nature is immeasurable. When you’re there, breathe deep. Look long and far. The moment will stay with you long after. It was special a thousand years ago. What is amazing is that it is still a place of natural majesty. This is White Earth Butte. l DAKOTA WIND GOODHOUSE is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. His traditional name is Ozúye Núŋpa (Two Wars). He holds a B.A. in Theology and an M.A. in History. Goodhouse maintains the history blog The First Scout.

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| SENSE OF PLACE |

A DAKOTA VETERAN'S COMMENDATION by Wollom A. Jensen

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Dakota sun shines yellow.

Amber barley ripens in neatly sewn ranks dressed and covered beneath it. His battle truck rattles to a halt, dust settling around him. Ramrod straight he inspects the bearded grass. His field is clean, no mustard or wild oats. Like his truck he straddles two worlds; one of grass, the other of stone. All is quiet on the front except his raspy breathing and the breeze cutting through the barley beards. Drums are muffled, swords held low, slow march tempo, as he moves from traveled road to field. The barley cedes its moisture, a silent offering to the summer sun. A final pass in review and silently he makes his own oblation of sweat and breath. Experienced in the ways of war and farming he understands that soon the ripened barley will be harvested and so must he. The fallen barley will be consumed as bread with wine, and thanksgiving. He to rest alone in silence beneath the soil he worked and the flag he loved.

WOLLOM A. JENSEN, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants, was born and raised on a farm near Park River where he graduated from the Walsh County Agricultural School in 1966 and from the University of North Dakota with a B.A. in English in 1972.

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| SENSE OF PLACE |

ALL YOU NEED IS A GOOD LINE FOR SEAN SEXTON

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by Shadd Piehl

All you need to do is find a good line To start a poem, tack another one plumb Below the first. It is a bit like art, A bit like carpentry, bit like life, Or a lot like, but often not enough. So much of nature is beauty lost in The wilderness of time and space. Behind the house, on the sly, the beavers Ceaselessly toil to change the course and flow Of Crown Butte Creek, the watershed of our Place. With that beaver-work the horses Could not cross to winter feed and shelter. Yesterday, I rode them bareback in a storm Around the swollen creek, substance and form.

A fifth-generation North Dakotan, SHADD PIEHL’s poetry has appeared in the anthologies, Between Earth and Sky: Contemporary Cowboy Poets, Maverick Western Verse, Brushstrokes and Balladeers, and the magazines Aluminum Canoe, Pemmican, Red Weather, and Dry Crik Review, among others. An academic Dean for Rasmussen College, Shadd lives along Crown Butte Creek in the Heart River valley west of Mandan with his family, Marnie, Owen, Wyatt, Ryder, and horse Blue.

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| SENSE OF PLACE |

IN THE WIND by Nita K. Ritzke

The lilies have bloomed. Their scent breezes into the kitchen from the backyard like kids out of school. Their red-orange C-petals reach down toward where they came from— the fountain of leaves spraying up and arching over the blooms the way my mother leaned over the beds of her five children when we were ill to whisper the strongest medicine. The lilies were transplanted from my mother’s flood-dead gray flower bed and dug up in haste to evacuate memory before her house, our house was sold for salvage. Now, the bouquets overflow the edging of the garden embracing our home.

NITA K. RITZKE grew up in Minot then lived in Fargo, Grand Forks and currently resides in Bismarck. She writes and teaches many types of communication at the University of Mary. She finds inspiration by daydreaming with her dog Mojo and interacting with those who find poetry in everyday life.

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HUMANITIES NORTH DAKOTA WELCOMES DENNIS COOLEY AND BARBARA SOLBERG TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

DENNIS COOLEY, FARGO Professor Dennis Cooley received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1995. His teaching and research interests include theoretical and applied ethics with a focus on pragmatism, bioethics, business ethics, personhood, and death and dying. He is the author of Technology, Transgenics, and a Practical Moral Code (Springer, 2009), Death’s Values and Obligations: A Pragmatic Framework (Springer, 2015), and coedited Passing/Out: Identity Veiled and Revealed (Ashgate, 2012). He is Secretary General of the International Academy of Medical Ethics and Public Health; Editor of Springer’s International Library of Bioethics; Associate Editor of Elsevier’s Ethics, Medicine and Public Health; and Director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute, which focuses on applied ethical and social issues affecting the Northern Plains and beyond. “Public Humanities makes an essential contribution to North Dakota and everywhere else it is encountered. It teaches critical reasoning skills, which everyone recognizes as a public good, but also incorporates our wrongly neglected creative thinking and value engagement that are part of who we are as people interacting with others in our private and public lives. Humanities North Dakota has a unique ability to provide events across the state that make us better people in better communities.”

BARBARA SOLBERG, MINOT Born and raised in Minot, Barb Solberg graduated with a B. S. Ed and MA degrees from the University of North Dakota. She taught humanities both in public schools and at Minot State University including literature, writing, and communication. She left the classroom in the mid-1990s to be a pioneer in web-based learning as the instructional designer and faculty developer for online learning at Minot State University. She subsequently became an online learning consultant with one of the two foremost online learning software companies. In 1997, she authored both the first and second editions of Harcourt College Publishers textbook: The Student’s Guide to the World Wide Web and WebCT. She has written for numerous state-wide and national publications as well as presented internationally on web-based learning. Solberg and her husband, Richard—a metal sculptor—have two adult children and five grandchildren all of whom reside in North Dakota. She enjoys traveling, reading, theater, concerts, and sharing time with friends. She is the unofficial archivist and historian at her church and often presents on local history. “I am honored to serve on the North Dakota Humanities Council and to share my passion for the humanities with those on the council and others in our communities. I believe the humanities enrich our lives as well as our view of the world. My hope is to share that enthusiasm with those who aren’t as deeply steeped in the humanities.”

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Brave Conversations HND Board of Directors CHAIR Elizabeth Sund, Minot  VICE CHAIR Ann Crews Melton, Bismarck  Dennis Cooley, Fargo Patty Corwin, Fargo Marilyn Foss, Bismarck Eric L. Johnson, Grand Forks Joan Locken, Oakes Leslie W. Peltier, Belcourt Carol Kapaun Ratchenski, Fargo Ken Schmierer, Ellendale Barbara Solberg, Minot Linda Steve, Dickinson Iris Swedlund, Velva Sarah Vogel, Bismarck

Staff Brenna Daugherty Gerhardt, Executive Director Kenneth Glass, Associate Director Sue Skalicky, Program Coordinator George Welder, Communications and Membership Officer Humanities North Dakota is a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The humanities inspire our vision of a thoughtful, respectful, actively engaged society that will be able to meet the challenge of sustaining our democracy across the many divisions of modern society and deal responsibly with the shared challenges we currently face as members of an interdependent world.

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