by jphilo | Oct 26, 2010 | Current Events
My old stomping grounds, way too close to the McFarthest Spot for comfort, is inching closer to civilization every year. A Facebook friend posted this article from the Billings Gazette about a road project in the southeast corner of Montana. After decades of effort, the last 17 miles of Montana state highway 323 were blacktopped this fall.
The people who live there are ecstatic, as the article makes clear. But my feelings were ambivalent when I first skimmed the article. I realized I didn’t want the quaint corner of the world where Hiram and I lived for seven years, where Allen was born, to change so dramatically. I wanted it to remain exactly the same. No changes. No progress. No easier life for friends who still live in the remotest corner of the south 48 states. How selfish is that?
Pretty selfish.
A more careful reading of the article calmed me down. Highway 323 wasn’t the road I thought had been paved, but a good distance west of Camp Crook, South Dakota where we lived. (Camp Crook was 3 miles east of the Montana border and 20 miles south of the North Dakota border, in case you wondered.) So progress isn’t nipping at its heels with the immediacy I imagined. So I breathed easier. How selfish is that?
Pretty selfish.
Funny how the progress I wished for when we lived there – paved roads, more people, easier access to civilization – saddens me now. But isn’t that human nature? Always wishing for a better future and idealizing the the hardships others wrestle daily, the hardships I left behind several decades ago? How selfish is that?
Pretty selfish.
So instead of wishing for the future, I’ll try to wrap my head around the present: a paved road all the way from Alzada to Ekalaka (don’t you love those names?) before my next trip out west. Can’t wait to see it!
by jphilo | Jun 7, 2010 | Out and About
We’re back, my friend Cindy and me, from our mad dash out west. The days were a blur of activity from the minute we left Thursday afternoon until we arrived back shortly after midnight today. Other than the 22 hours spent sleeping and 20 more spent sleeping, we:
- visited my cousin Mary on the way to and back from Harding County.
- attended the Sky Ranch for Boys 50th Anniversary Celebration, where I saw lots of old friends co-workers, and Cindy became acquainted with them.
- went to a ranch auction where I chatted with former students and their parents and introduced them to Cindy.
- bought unexpected treasures at the auction, which I may or may not describe in a later blog post, depending on how much of my sentimental and/or compulsive streak I’m prepared to reveal.
- conducted 1 book signing, 1 book reading and signing, which resulted in a case of books sold.
- stayed with dear friends, Gerald and Becky, and hiked to the top of the butte on their ranch.
- saw wild turkeys, antelope, turkey vultures, and deer dotting the landscape.
- visited a blue streak with Gerald, Becky and their daughter Natalie, played with Natalie’s two little boys, and cuddled her baby daughter. Cindy also made friends with the two dogs and the cats on the ranch.
- stopped in to visit other old friends and introduced them to Cindy.
- made a new author friend.
- went to church in Camp Crook where Cindy played the piano for the service. The congregants threatened to tie her up and keep her there.
- received an arrowhead from an elderly man who wanted me to take home a piece of Harding County.
This morning, though I’m stupid with sleepiness, I am also keenly aware of two undeserved and gracious blessings. The first is the blessing of a good friend who jumped in the middle of my ocean, teaming with my friends and family and old memories, and gave up her weekend to help with the long drive, the book sales and whatever else needed doing. Good friends are treasured gems and Cindy is a jewel among them.
The second is the blessing of the 7 years Hiram and I spent in Harding County after we graduated from college. That cowboy country was a foreign land to us, a place where God tested us through our work and the birth of our son, a place where He engineered relationships that have endured for 25 years and sustain us still.
After a weekend of hugging former students, friends, and colleagues, after hours of sharing old memories and creating new ones, after hearing about the life journeys of the people in the remote northwest corner of South Dakota, I came home with not one, but two pieces of Harding County. One is the perfect, ancient arrowhead displayed in my Iowa living room. The other is a well of memories and precious memories tucked in the center of my heart.
I am a woman truly blessed.
by jphilo | Sep 24, 2009 | Current Events
A recent entry at Justin Taylor’s blog Between Two Worlds almost blew my socks off. He quoted from a blog entry by Stephen Von Worley. Von Worley was contemplating the McDonaldization of America and decided to locate the farthest point from an Mc Donalds in the contiguous United States. Here’s what he found:
As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid. East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia.
For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer.Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car! Suffer a Big Mac Attack out there, and you’re hurtin’ for certain! For a coupla hours, at least, unless graced by the tender blessings of “manna from heaven” – that is, a fast food air drop from the Medi-Copter.
So what’s the big deal? Those “tiny hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley” were part of our old South Dakota stomping grounds. Our personal hamlet, Camp Crook, was about 75 miles straight west of Meadow, much tinier than the McFarthest spot, and didn’t have nearly as many paved roads.
What were we doing for the first three precarious years of Allen’s life, living so far from civilization? Answer: We didn’t know how bad we had it. Like Stephen Von Worley, we thought the most isolated part of the United States was far, far away in the rugged west, not in our back yard.
If we had known the truth, would we have skedaddled sooner than we did? Maybe, but as Hiram said when he read the report, “There we were on the edge of nowhere and look at the support we received from the people.” Maybe they supported us because they weren’t distracted by civilization – McDonalds and movies and shopping malls and inconsequentials – and had time to prop up two bewildered young parents day after difficult day.
Whatever the reasons, when I think of our seven years near the McFarthest Spot and the way the far flung community rallied round us, the truth is evident. During those years we didn’t leave civilization. We found it.
by jphilo | Sep 21, 2007 | Reflections on the Past
This past May I visited the town where I taught country school from 1980 – 1985. I’d been back there several times since we moved away, but this time was different. Always before the tiny South Dakota town, Camp Crook, looked pretty much the same. And the modular trailers that formed the four room, K – 8 elementary school were unchanged.
But not this time. The tan modular unit that housed my old classroom was gone, replaced by a spiffy gray building. Sure one tan modular unit remained, but my old classroom was gone, and I was slightly disconcerted. The feeling reared its ugly head again this week when I got the countywide newspaper. I subscribe to the paper as part of my research for a future mystery novel set in that remote corner of the world. When I read the “Meet the New Teachers” section, I had quite a shock. One of the students from my first class, a first grader way back when, had been hired to teach the upper grades in the Camp Crook school. And her two little girls would be attending there, too.
I didn’t feel disconcerted any more. I felt old. I guess it was bound to happen someday, and today is a good a day to face the wrinkled truth. I’m getting older. I’ve dealt with that truth concerning my husband, but since he’s five months older than me I’ve had plenty of time. Still, maybe it’s time to open the AARP literature stuffed in our mailbox on a regular basis. Throwing those offending envelopes into the trash won’t make me any younger even if it does keep my kitchen counters clutter-free.
I’ve come up with a better plan. Whenever I start feeling older, I’ll work on the mystery novel set in the area. Whenever I go back there in my memory I feel young again, like the newly married greenhorn I was when we moved there in 1978. And after a few hours writing about driving down the long gravel roads, fighting the grasshoppers and using the outhouse whenever the electricity went off I won’t mind coming back to civilization, even if I’m no spring chicken in this day and age.
Good plan, I think. So if you’ll excuse me, the fountain of youth is calling. I’ve got a scene to write…
