Your Route Home IS Someone's Home
I-94, the highway I take through North Dakota. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)
This week, I’m preparing to leave Minnesota and drive west to Montana.
“I’m going back home,” I tell people. Curiously, it’s the same thing I say when I’m traveling east to Minnesota from Montana.
I was hoping I’d be leaving Brainerd with everything concerning my father buttoned up neatly, which is absurd. I’ve been around long enough to know that life rarely draws tidy conclusions, so it was a fool's errand to have expected resolve in a situation involving a parent in the throes of dementia. Maybe this has something to do with my confusion as to the direction home. But either way you slice it, what lies between my childhood home and the home I’ve created in adulthood is North Dakota.
Though I’ve been known to lament the interminable stretches of agricultural land, I prefer to drive through North Dakota than fly over it. The three-hour flight between Minneapolis and Missoula leaves no time to sift, sort, and process. When you get on a plane in one place, and arrive in a totally different place in the time it takes to enjoy Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story from the inflight movie selections, there can be trouble. You run the risk of arriving at your destination in an addled state, carrying a bulky bundle of thoughts and emotions that would have been better left behind to be absorbed back into their place of origin.
Driving across North Dakota leaves you with no choice but to feel your feelings, and affords plenty of space to leave them on the side of the road. I’ve always used the drive through North Dakota as a personal therapy session, party of one. Visiting the inside of my head: That’s what North Dakota is for.
On my trip back to Montana this past October after responding to the original S.O.S. call regarding my father, I stopped at a rest area at the eastern edge of North Dakota. I’d been struggling to fill my water bottles at a sputtering drinking fountain when I noticed the rest area attendant, a white-haired man wearing a bright yellow vest, holding a trash picker in one hand and a garbage can lid in the other, and watching me with concern. Phil (according to his name badge) said I’d be there all day doing it that way, and offered up the sink in the employee headquarters. “Make it easy on yourself for gosh sake,” he muttered, shuffling through a door next to the candy machine, holding it open for me. Inside the tiny room, the air smelled of industrial-strength disinfectant and burned coffee. There were two inches of black sludge simmering away to an acrid char in the glass pot of the Mr. Coffee machine, above which hung several bright yellow vests like Phil’s and name badges on black lanyards. Phil gestured dramatically at a large utility sink next to a small card table with two folding chairs: “Ta-da!”
After he filled the water bottles for me, Phil leaned against the sink, chattering about the weather, current road conditions, and the pair of senior Pomeranians he’d recently adopted. “Characters,” he chuckled, shaking his head, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Their owner up and died,” he shrugged, “poor little guys needed a home.”
Phil offered up suggestions on how I could spend the rest of my time in North Dakota. According to my full gas tank and empty bladder, I wouldn’t have to stop again for about four hours, by which time I would be in Montana. I smiled and nodded anyhow, feigning consideration for each of his recommendations. “World’s largest buffalo sculpture? You don’t say!”
Phil led me back into the visitor area, and over to the wall of maps, tourist guides, and advertisements for roadside attractions. “Let’s see here…” He mused, plucking material from the racks. “This oughta be a good start,” he grinned, proudly fanning out an array of glossy brochures like a winning poker hand. “And they’re all right off of the Interstate,” he flicked the pamphlets with his pointer finger and thumb.
Hoping to sideline further discussion of tourist attractions, I told Phil that I was actually on my way home. “I live in Montana,” I said as if that alone would explain my lack of interest in North Dakota’s tourist attractions. “I’m just driving through,” I added with a hint of apology.
Phil looked perplexed, as though it had never occurred to him that anyone would use North Dakota as a simple throughway.
“What’s the rush?” He asked, visibly disappointed that I wasn’t planning a stop to see the world’s largest buffalo statue in Jamestown. Phil persisted, undeterred, rattling on enthusiastically about more favorite roadside attractions, scenic overlooks, and restaurants. At the end of his speech, he reached for a North Dakota highway map. “Take this too,” he grinned. “It’s free.”
I took the stack of tourist information from him, even the map, though I certainly didn’t need a map. I almost laughed out loud, picturing the stretch of I-94 that crosses North Dakota. The east-west traverse runs such a straight line, I’d feel safe with a twelve year old at the wheel, or relinquishing that 353-mile stretch of road to one of those dubious self-driving cars.
Despite Phil’s charming sales pitch for his beloved state, I got back in my car on that sunny, autumn afternoon, fixated on the Montana border. I set the cruise control to 80 and sped on past Medicine Wheel Park, the beloved buffalo statue, Kroll’s Diner, the Painted Canyon Nature Trail, and even Salem Sue, the giant fiberglass Holstein cow sculpture.
While packing my car yesterday in sub-zero temperatures, I found the stack of printed tourist guides that Phil had carefully curated for me back in October, tucked into the pocket of my car’s driver’s side door. I intended to toss everything in the recycle bin, but my efforts were thwarted by Phil’s voice in my head. “What’s the rush?”
What is the rush?
What would happen if I carved out thirty minutes, even an hour, for a giant buffalo sculpture? The world’s largest, no less. I tried to imagine standing beneath the concrete creature, looking it in the eye, offering up my bundle of worries to its immensity. Who knows? Maybe it would do the trick. If not, it would be a good place to stretch my legs. Besides, Jamestown has a river running through it, and there is always an apt metaphor to be found in a river.
At the very least, I thought, it would give me something good to report to Phil next time I saw him.
After writing this column, I did end up going to see Jamestown—and I saw the buffalo! Sadly no Phil at the rest area, though. He was at home with his Pomeranians.
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Sara Joy Proppe is the founder and director of Proximity Project, a consultancy that helps churches discover how they can use placemaking to connect with the local community.