Satruday, July 14th, 2012
The past two nights, I've awoken and started driving in the dark. This has been fantastic, since each night brought distant thunderstorms to the southern horizon. I watched with glee as the lightning arced from cloud to cloud, in a series of fragmented bolts. On occasion, the bolts would strike the ground, perhaps igniting a fire some place beyond my concern. Both episodes were dry for the most part, with a few bands of rain. Every so seldom, a bolt would blast down in the field of my direct vision, temporarily blinding me in the darkness. Even after the bolt evaporated, there were negative images in a greenish black, burned into my vision. Happily I eat a lot of carrots, so that passed quickly. I like to think to myself that this is some kind of omen or something. Maybe it isn't, but maybe it is. I do not recall having any specific question in mind at either time. The best I can do is take it as a sign that I chose the right route instead of driving through driving rains.
Having passed the storms, The rest of the night brought me into North Dakota. It is a lovely place, which I now understand had no trees at all until settlers came across. I figured that there would always be trees where there was enough water, but I was wrong. Trying to picture the plains without sparse shelter-belters seems like an alien concept to me, but "normals" change all of the time.
The highlights of the day thus far has been the large number of small wetlands along the roadside. Humans call them "Prairie Pot-holes," while all other creatures just live there. Cattails line the banks of these small bodies of water, still and reflective in the early morning light. On one of the larger ones, what some would call a large pond back East, a Canada goose was leading her troop of quite large and maturely feathered gosling across the otherwise calm surface. In all there were six not so little ones in tow. I saw no sign of a partner goose bringing up the rear, which seems quite odd to me. I hope all is well with them.
Contrary to popular belief, the Great Plains are not entirely flat. Sure there are some places that are, but up here, as well as in South Dakota and Nebraska, I've traveled some slightly rugged terrain. I even had to down-shift a couple of times to maintain my RPM's. Nothing you'd want to bike up, but nothing so high as to afford you a hang gliding location. There was, however a scenic overlook just outside of Dickinson, ND, that sat atop the plateau, over looking a series of valleys cut out by the river below.
Sunrise was once again amazing, still with the same dark grey clouds, but layered, evoking the effect to the sun rising out of an envelope. A few hours previously, I saw the waning crescent moon rise, a deep red and larger than any crescent I've ever seen before. I kind of did a double take, unsure as to what I was seeing at first. I was also privileged enough to watch Jupiter and Venus rise this morning. Venus was much less luminous lower in the atmosphere than we more often see it bright and higher in the sky. It almost looked like Mars from that angle.
Not many people out here to comment on, but I did notice that in the restaurant that you can kinda tell which women are native to this part of the country. It seems that the predominant hair style is straight and long. Sensible, yet traditional. Eyeglasses were quite common amongst the women, all shaped in a sensible and intelligent rounded rectangle form. It was as if there was a colony of stereo-typed librarians here at one point that ended up spreading across the northern plains. The people highlight is that I saw a brown person at the truck wash! Like some rare trading card or token ethnic dude on a television show.
For entertainment, I think I'll walk over to the Home Depot across the way and ask if they have wood chippers for sale. Particularly, ones strong enough to chip, say, a dismembered human body. I wonder if they get that a lot here in Fargo?
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