I’ve been trying to learn this land. Driving north, through the quilt of agriculture, through the small towns that anchor people to land. Driving west on the Interstate, designed to move us away, lull us into a sense that this is the way it has always been. Crisscrossing between North Dakota and Minnesota, snaking between them like the Red River that divides the land and became the state boundary.
Was it always this bare? The fields are coal-black after being churned, hungry soil still wet from its slumber. Soon there will be golden stalks, the farmers seeding America’s bread basket. They are prepared.
People who live here know how to find the beauty in fertility, in soil that sat for eons under a shallow lake, settling. The land is still swelling from all that weight, all that water.
Among the parcels, there are postage stamps of preserved nature, and perhaps it was all like this once, a netting of trees holding the banks together. Now the skyline is clear, only segmented by the plow lines and asphalt roads like arrows.
“I get this sense of the temporary,” says Cally Roy, a character in Louise Erdrich’s novel, “The Antelope Wife.” “It could all blow off. And yet the sheer land would be left underneath. Sand, rock, the Indian black seashell-bearing earth.”
Erdrich has given me a map to understanding this land, a way to walk in this place with “The Antelope Wife,” on the Minnesota soil.
“Most of the land is now half dead,” Cally continues. “Plowed up. Still, we had no ill feeling versus any one individual.”
I miss the mountains and backwoods, the way land can be so generous yet unwelcoming at the same time.
I passed a lone pine tree on my explorations, warmed by the sun. It gave off a cedar embrace as I passed, the bright pine scent flowing around me. I stopped instantly, a scent that could transport me somewhere else. Where are all the pine trees?
The tree stood in Fort Ransom State Park on the edge of a fenced parcel of land in North Dakota, the edge of what was allowed to remain wild in the Sheyenne River Valley. Fort Ransom derives its name from a 1860s military fort.
It’s always been this way, the chase, the conquest, the build. My dog caught a rabbit today. We all stood still for what felt like minutes before the eruption. The silk of the rabbit dashing to the edge of the yard, the launch of the dog in slow motion, teeth saliva-slick.
Caught by the chain link fence, the rabbit darted back across the yard to the opposite corner, pressing its face against the chains as the dog bit down.
The rabbit let out a screaming sigh — just one — before I reached the dog and ran my hands between them, pushing the dog’s jaws apart to bring this stunned life to my chest, feeling the pulse, looking into the shimmering eyes of flight.
The fur was wet from teeth, yet without blood, and falling out in clumps. I caressed the rabbit’s forehead, scraped bald from trying to push under the fence.
The rabbit did not struggle, just remained long enough for my hands to hover above, wanting to hold this life a bit longer before it raced away.
Anna, what a well-crafted, beautiful piece. I felt so many emotions. Good job!
Thank you for a moment to remember