Oct 12, 2008 - 04:05:22 CDT
After a so-so summer, we have been given the gift of an absolutely magical autumn. It has been a variable autumn - now drizzly and gray, now windswept, now perfectly still and sun-drenched like an immortal tableau of the savannah, now hot and dusty like August, now tiptoeing on the lip of the first serious freeze.We even had that remarkable autumn thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago. It was somehow distinct from the typical transient, masculine, blowhard summer storm. It was gentler without being less spectacular, and there was clearly a kind of summer curtain call in it. I stood out in it until I was drenched.
A friend of mine, who lives north of town overlooking the Missouri River, said he has never seen the five elements - grain stubble, the late lingering green of the prairie grasses, the fall sky, the Missouri River and the irradiating gold of the cottonwoods - look more beautiful than in the last 10 days.
"Wish we could just freeze frame it for a few months," he said and then immediately sighed, because he knew that the glory of a perfect autumn day is the awareness, never far back of the joy, that it cannot last, that sharp winter is hovering on the northwestern horizon, and that the months of what Theodore Roosevelt called "iron desolation" are queuing up to pound us into submission.
There have been a number of days in September and early October that for some reason we call "Indian summer" - these are the days we live for. These are the days when the light is gentler than summer light, and the plains stand out in bas relief, when the warmth of the afternoon air is somehow borrowed heat, and when there is change in the air, however subtle. There also have been mornings that are clearly the advance agents of grim winter on the northern plains. When I wake up to leaden sky and stiff, scuttering wind, I think: Brace yourself.
It's the variety that makes this time of year so attractive. I love North Dakota in all of its moods.
After a series of meetings in Dickinson the other day, I had pressing business back in Bismarck. I drove my car up to the Interstate interchange fully intending to hurtle home and eke out a life of duty. But when I got to the interchange, and gazed out onto the buff butte country to the west, I just gave up and turned the car west toward the Little Missouri River. I felt like Lot's wife (Genesis 19:17).
For me, there is only one irresistible place in North Dakota. It is more or less anywhere between Marmarth and the Long X Bridge on U.S. 85 north of Watford City. The oftener I stick my foot in the lonely Little Missouri River, the saner and happier I am. For me, it is really that simple.
One of my close friends lives out there and is willing to go hiking on short notice. So we thermos'd up and drove into Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
From the Wind Canyon overlook, the valley of the Little Missouri River was as beautiful as I have ever seen it. If you close your eyes and imagine it, you can see it far better than I will be able to describe it. The air was perfectly clear and lucid. It felt as if we had been glaucomic all of our lives, and suddenly we'd had Lasik surgery. The sky was vast and embracing and endless in every direction, the best blue you ever saw, about 15 percent of it dashed with scattered thin autumn clouds.
We stood on the ridge of broken country and we looked off at broken country in every direction, but it did not feel at all hostile or forbidding. It felt miniature in scale and welcoming and timeless. (Ah, but time is catching up with the Badlands. We all know that.)
There was more than a breeze and less than a wind. For the most part the breeze was precisely the same temperature as the day, but every 40 seconds or so it carried a momentary column of chill air. We almost shivered, but then didn't, because it was not disagreeable after all and it passed on almost as soon as we felt it.
And in the middle of that circle of land and sky before us was the magical improbable Little Missouri River ambling along in lazy S-curves, blue as God, sheathed in the most perfect trim of golden cottonwoods you have ever seen.
The leaves of those bordering trees were the color yellow squared or cubed, and in places a tawny golden so sensuous that it made our knees buckle a little to gaze upon it. The river cut cliffs where it made its turns, ribbed with dull coal and red-pink scoria heaps, and bentonite caps of shattered, marble-sized, dry gray mud, like a thick berber carpet.
And then, as we sat there in speechless wonder, a herd of 18 pronghorn antelope sprang up in perfect unison just below us, and charged off toward the river as if this were the pronghorn Olympic trials. They kicked up a low thin cloud of dust as they belted across the sage flat, driven apparently by the sheer exuberance of their quadruped lives.
It was as superlative a moment as I can ever remember.
We walked down along the ridge to the river. We did not need to bushwhack because the buffalo had already trampled out a rutted path about the width of a suburban sidewalk right down to the river. The game trail followed the contours of the Badlands with perfect equipoise. It was as if a buffalo with a Ph.D. in engineering had designed the road after months of careful triangulation, studying geographical information systems' maps and taking core samples along the ridge. It was not the ancient Romans who invented road building, but the game herds of the Earth.
When we got to the river, which was clear and less than a foot deep on a chip-rock bed, we didn't even discuss it. We just walked into the river fully clothed, shoes and all, and tramped around for more than an hour. We had expected the water to be cold but it wasn't. Here and there we sank into little pools up to our knees, but for the most part we were walking on water in a perfect place at a perfect moment.
We found two large flat sandstone rocks in the middle of the river, each a foot above the surface, about 20 feet apart. We lay down on them, on our backs, and gazed up at the perfect sky. In the course of half an hour each of us dozed a little. We were silent mostly, but from time to time we spoke with a simplicity and authenticity you'll never see in a committee meeting.
Have I mentioned that we live in paradise?
(Clay Jenkinson is the director of the Dakota Institute. He is also the Theodore Roosevelt Scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Clay at Jeffysage@aol.com.)
Frankie the author wrote on Oct 16, 2008 7:50 AM:
hhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm wrote on Oct 14, 2008 12:30 PM:
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