Distant Connections

Fuchsia blooms all over West Cork - in the hedgerows, the ditches, gardens, and in the windows of long-abandoned houses. When I saw one in bloom at the garden centre here three years ago, the only one, I had to have it. Now it winters in a large south-facing window in North Dakota, and this week, it flowered. Holding a blossom in my hand, I could be the teenager I was, standing in the bohereen by my parents’ house on the hill by the Atlantic, the sea wind blasting as hard as it does on the prairie. I thought I might mash a blossom in my palm and taste its sweet nectar, but the blooms I have are too few, and too precious, for that. 

Real connections with Ireland have been few and far between over the past few years, and I’ve no idea when I’ll taste coarse brown bread again, see a pint of Murphy’s poured properly, or when my ears will be filled with the Cork sing-song that I used to hear all day, every day. It’s almost as if that life were a prolonged daydream to me now, it’s so far away and so different from what I’m living today. 

But since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there is a new connection (and an old one) and it’s not just the fuchsia blossom.This connection is with a group of cousins who meet via Zoom every evening to say the Rosary together to pray for the end of the pandemic.  The times that I can join in, the family Rosary is providing its own miracle for me, though it’s not the one we’re praying for. It’s restoring a bit of my sense of still being connected, of belonging to that place that was home for so many years. 

The cousins do not recite the prayers in unison, but each at their own pace after the first portion of each Our Father or Hail Mary is recited by whoever is leading that decade, voices and words criss-crossing over one another. Like the responses at Mass in Ireland, everyone starting at the same place and ending whenever they end, never at the same time as anyone else,  then waiting for the next part to pick up again, and all off at their own pace once more. It reminds me of how we go to communion or board buses in Ireland - in a big rush, all together, somehow orderly but without order. Oh, I miss it.

Then, afterward, a sing-song. I close my eyes now and think of the screen in front of me filled with familiar faces chatting away, laughing, smiling, and singing in my mother’s accent. Someone got out a squeezebox, a tin whistle was fetched, an organ played off-screen, and one cousin even broke out a stage mic with his guitar. After the rest had finished renditions of Raglan Road, The Wild Colonial Boy, The Rare Auld Times, and Spancil Hill, my American dad sang ‘Sioux City Sue’ and kicked off a spate of American tunes. It always made me giggle, being from the Dakotas and never knowing all the lyrics to the Black Hills of Dakota, while everyone I knew in Ireland learnt it word for word at school - it was no surprise when that broke out too, along with Home on the Range and even a Dolly Parton song. So much fun squeezed into a conference call. And then it was over, and I was back in my prairie kitchen, but my heart was full from such a real and close connection to people and a land that I love. 

Having a whole world disappear from in front of your eyes and be replaced with a different one - every emigrant knows that too well, and now everyone knows it, at least a little bit. What a gift it is that we live in an age when we can see those people and hear the voices, prayers, laughter, and songs that remind us of who we are.

A COVID-19 Spring, Featuring Beauty, Hope, and Ticks

Each year, Spring comes tiptoeing in the door, then jumps in fully with both feet, often dragging Summer in close behind. We on the northern plains know better than to trust it. We know that Spring has left the door open wide and might just as easily hop back out, giving Winter enough room to throw around a blizzard or two in a show of strength, or perhaps to blow frosty air over the budding trees, dust the fledgeling grasses and shoots with snow, and leave us all muttering, even though it’s exactly what we know to expect.

However, when warm weather does come back for good, we all rejoice, knowing the door has been firmly shut against the frigid air, and that’s the moment when two things happen: the ticks come out, and the turkey buzzards return.

When I lived in Ireland, the natural world in North America was a topic that inspired awe and trepidation. Whirling wind storms that could lift a house from its foundation, snakes, venomous spiders, tiny insects that feed off blood and leave disease in its wake, blizzards, bears, bison, mountain lions: all horrifying or fascinating, or both, depending on who was interested. Ireland, in contrast, felt as safe as a feather bed wherever nature was concerned. The worst things a person could encounter were a badger or a slick mountain side. Now, I don’t want to encounter a testy badger or get washed out to sea by a freak wave, but the lack of venom and man-eaters made a walk in the country pretty nice.

But back to the main concern. Yesterday, I found three ticks on me, so it must really be Spring this time. One was crawling up my pant leg, one was navigating the hairline at the nape of my neck, and one was probably shaken from my clothes before it landed in the steep basin of the bathroom sink.

They’re unwelcome little buggers. They show up just when the weather gets nice enough to stretch out on the grass and let the sun warm your poor, winter-worn limbs. They’re like sand in your bathing suit, grit in your picnic sandwich: just there to make a nice time not all that nice after all. If they serve a purpose, I have yet to learn it.

Turkey buzzards are similarly unwelcome, in my mind. Bulky, hunched creatures, hulking in gangs at the tree tops, They float silently over the houses, scouring the ground below for dead rabbits, squirrels, birds; finishing off the evidence of a harsh winter or a skilled house cat. My neighbor, a wildlife biologist, calls buzzards “nature’s vacuum cleaners,” and “super cool.” I’m sure they are, and I know they fit beautifully into their ecological niche, but dang are they creepy. Perching in our neighbor’s tree, they stretch out their huge black wings in the sun and stay like that, looking unsettlingly like vampires about to swoop in for the kill. My children love them. The toddler calls them “birdies.” Hmm. I know they won’t harm people, but I still get an urge to scoot the little ones indoors whenever they start their ghoulish circling (the buzzards, not the children.)

Nevertheless, here they are, the ticks and the buzzards, harbingers of change, whose presence announces joyfully to the world that the deep days of winter are behind us, at long last. They might as well be prancing through meadows, calling out that it’s spring! It’s spring! It’s spring! And if you don’t mind, they’d like to take a few sips of your blood, or chow down on some half mummified bunny leg from your yard while doing a fantastic Dracula impression.

I know there’s a COVID-19 thought about hope in here somewhere. Just give me a minute - I haven’t had my coffee yet.

…a minute…

…coffee…

Ok, here’s what I’ve got. On the northern plains, even in the twenty first century, we are often at the mercy of nature. We are used to waiting, months at a time, for the break that gives us our best days. We are a people who endure with hope, and a people adept at embracing the moment when good things finally come our way. We have to be! The dang climate won’t let us be otherwise. Northern plains people have (generally speaking) an astounding drive to get out and enjoy themselves, to tidy a flower bed like nobody's business, to produce a bounty of canned salsa from a patch of soil, to lounge on a boat and soak in every ounce of warmth that comes their way. Summer is our goal, a land of milk and honey that we have crossed the desert to enjoy. But there are a few speed bumps that nature provides us in the forms of critters mentioned here, and we have to negotiate those, too.

COVID-19 isn’t just a speed bump on the way to summer. This is more like a mountain. We’ve been joking that North Dakota people are great at social distancing and isolation anyhow, but who thought that this year would provide so much of it? The backyard barbecues, pool parties, neighborhood kids knocking on the door - there’s so much about spring and summer that gets us out of ourselves and into community: life-giving, heart-filling community. It seems unjust that we might miss it all this year. It’s starting to feel like we probably will, a winter that will last far too long.

Ticks and buzzards, those bearers of disease and flying momento mori that show up each year have always shown up. This year, if they decided to stay indefinitely, I wouldn’t be shocked; 2020 has been that way. But they won’t. They don’t. 

Eventually we will be able to wander among the hills and grasses without considering Lyme disease. We’ll say, ‘I’m glad they’re gone,” and “Isn’t this nice?” It will feel so good. (Except for the mosquitos, but I don’t want to think about them just yet.)

The COVID-19 curve will, God willing, eventually flatten. A vaccine will be developed. Some day we will be able to gather together again, to embrace our friends and family, kneel side by side in prayer, and to use the same ketchup bottle as everyone else at a party, willy-nilly, as if touching it couldn’t kill someone! What carefree abandon! What ease. What everyday, ordinary joy.

We will make it through this wintery solitude and past the hulking shadows that may remain afterward. Such good things are coming again and, oh, won’t it be wonderful when they do?



Note: This blog post doesn't feel finished, but here we go anyway 

Shameful Saturday

There's nothing quite like waking up at 5 am, finding oneself still fully clothed in yesterday's work outfit, laying face to face with an infant. Oops, I did it again.

Also, if it's true that the state of your home is a reflection of your inner self, I'm the emotional equivalent of pile of junk mail and unfolded laundry, with baby toys and wet towels scattered around the perimeter.

That reminds me of a guided meditation we had to do in secondary school years ago. All of us gerruls jammed into the refrectory at the convent, a sea of green wool jumpers and knobbly knees. It was meant to be a treat - a break from the stress of exam prep. We were told to close our eyes and imagine ourselves walking in the woods. Along our way, we were told to find some kind of drinking container, and an animal. It was up to us to decide what those items looked like.

The drinking container I imagined was a partly-crushed plastic water bottle with dirt mushed into the creases, and I could see that there was some grit rattling around inside in the small amount of water that was left. I didn't imagine myself drinking from the bottle (would YOU?) The animal I pictured was a deer.  I didn't pet it because I could see that it had ticks crawling on its body. Realistic, right?

At the end, we were asked to share what we'd imagined. The other girls had not grown up in North Dakota. Irish-born, they had spent their childhoods frolicking on blue flag beaches and mixing with organic farmers from Germany, so they had imagined beautiful stone bowls and chalices filled with spring water, noble elk pausing in the distance or remarkably tame horses who came up for a nuzzle.

Heh. Cute. Then the home ec. teacher shared the meaning of our imagined objects. I think you know how this is going to go... The animal represented how one imagined oneself, and the drinking container was how one envisioned love.

Ah. Righteo, then.

With that, it's Saturday. The sun is shining, and the baby is yodeling at his father. Bring on the coffee!

Goodbye, tree.

The box elder is coming down.

After a series of storms that have left its limbs broken, hanging and scraggly, the 50 foot box elder tree that hides between our garage and the neighbor's fence is coming down.

Sure, last year it dropped thousands of seeds all over our yard and clogged the gutters. Ok, the summer before that, it drew thousands of box elder bugs to our yard, and an entire side of the house turned red and black, blanketed with their soft little bodies. And, all right, some of them snuck in the windows. Yeah, and the whole thing is probably a hazard, ready to clunk down on the garage in the next wild windstorm that races through town.

It's just that it's such a pity to cut down a tree, especially on the prairie.

As a friend said the other night: the best times to plant a tree are 40 years ago, and today. It's time to think about planting.

On being Pro-Life, all the way, in an election year.

Halloween has come and gone. Two trick or treaters, the only ones who came to our house, were given generous portions of candy. The rest... is mine. 

Meanwhile, we are counting down the days to the election. Some people are sick to the teeth of political ads, others can't get enough out of a good debate with friends and family, even more moan about the undecided voters, while some 'undecided' voters declare themselves independents who have long since decided, thank you very much.

Ah, polarity. It is usually strong, but right around now the strength that people feel their convictions is staggering, sometimes. It always comes as a surprise when friends open their mouths to chastise one another based on differing political opinion. 

This week the New York Times published an editorial called Why I'm Pro-Life, and it has been on my mind since I read it a few days ago. You may have seen it, it's made the rounds on Facebook, often posted by people who would not normally call themselves pro-life. 

Reading it was like a light turning on inside my head, a sunbeam splitting the clouds, a choir opening up into song. Thomas Friedman put into words what I have felt and thought since reaching the age where I could vote, but have been unable to articulate. He pinpointed the frustrations I feel as a voter, and a citizen. 

I suspect that I'm not alone in this.

In his article, Mr Friedman says:

"The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society."

He also says: 

"You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”"

Here, here, Mr Friedman. 

This is why I have such a hard time in election years - the fact that neither party espouses these values fully - and friends have expressed the same dismay. Many are pro-life in the thorough way that Mr Friedman demands in his editorial. Personally speaking, my trouble comes from my conscience, which has me in turmoil until a week after I step out of the polling booth. 

See,  I have yet to find a candidate who is, like me, pro-life, Friedman style. That is, I'm a strongly anti-abortion, pro-gun control, anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-social justice, pro-insurance reform, environmentalist, pro-gay equality, Catholic feminist voter.

Now I ask, where is my candidate? 

Where is my party?

Who can I vote for that will stand up for everything I hold to be important? For human rights from conception until death,  for quality of life, for respect for our land? Who can I vote for without making an enormous moral compromise?


*crickets* 


But I'll still vote. Always do.

Autumn on the prairie

It’s autumn on the prairie. In the last few weeks, the cottonwoods, elms, maples, have all turned from green to yellow, orange, and red. It’s a short-lived burst of color out here, and the leaves soon drop to the ground, covering every browning lawn in a blanket of gold. Driving through Bismarck takes a little navigational know-how if you want to take full advantage of the season. The old neighborhoods have wide avenues lined with American Elms, their branches arching over the streets and interlacing far above the cars and bicycles, forming a cathedral ceiling for those passing below. Look up and you’ll see blue sky peeking through the gaps, and at the right time, the sun turning each translucent leaf into a tiny pane of stained glass. It’s like Harry Clarke designed it himself. If you take the right route, you can keep going through leafy tunnels much of the way across town.

The ever-present North Dakota wind is doing its part, too, gusting now and then, sending a swirl of leaves skittering over the roads, or prompting a shower of leaves to fall, snowfall-like, over the houses. Children jump into leaf piles, scattering, and parents moan that they’d only just finished raking the whole yard before a new layer fell to the ground.

This has been a dry September, and the leaves, once they've finished rustling in the wind, are satisfyingly crunchy underfoot. A fine dust blows through the air, a product of dry leaves ground into nothingness. The soil is sending up dust, too, and allergies have been predictably rampant.

Fall is the season of the church supper out here. Country churches unfailingly host a community meal, often served on picnic tables in the field outside, with mountains of roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet yellow buns, seventeen different kinds of pie, and coffee that flows unceasingly from huge silver vats manned by elderly women. Bingo and horseshoes serve as entertainment, though be wary of trying to beat any man sporting a cowboy hat – he’ll know his way around a horseshoe throw. There’s almost always a thrift sale with a baked goods counter set up nearby: whatever you do, don’t pass up a slice of eggy, sweet, creamy kuchen, especially if it was made by someone’s grandmother. 

With all the beauty of autumn, there is the knowledge that at the end of these bright, colorful weeks, we will find winter. Winter here is often harsh, frigid, bitter, and by the time we’re in the dark depths of January, seemingly endless. Does anyone look forward to it? Best to enjoy the gorgeous days we have now, with the sun warming the leaves, raising up the smells unknown to any other season.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had the right idea, to approach the chilling of the year with an optimistic note: to remember that if winter comes, spring won’t be far behind. 

610. Ode to the West Wind

I O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,	15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head	20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,	25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers	35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know	40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share	45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed	50
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd	55
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,	60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,	65
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?	70

A big shout out to the publishers of Soundings, as well as Miss Harte and her Leaving Cert English class of 1998. We never covered Yeats in time, so some of us missed out on valuable points, possibly a place in medicine at UCC, but look at us all now - we're fine. Totally fine. 

Into the West

 We left by 9 am and rolled out of town in the orange glow of an autumn morning, heading west. We crossed the Missouri River, passing a flatbed truck piled high with hay bales. The fields on the west side of the river that divides North Dakota in two were the bright gold of early fall. Tall, fat jellyrolls of hay dotted the landscape, topping small hills or set in glacial depressions, like they had become stuck there. The sky above us was blue, blue, blue, except for the little puffs of white cloud here and there. Rolling yellow hills for miles and miles and the hard road in front of us.

We turned off the interstate at Beulah and the road rollercoastered onward. Sunflowers, dry, hanging their black heads in droves along the road, their leaves drooping as though they’d just missed out on something big.

To the left of the road was an old red barn, with white letters that announced ‘The Ideal Farm.’ It certainly looked ideal, tucked into a hillside. A white, broad front porch and a window nested in the eaves – maybe from the 1920s? Trees shaded the yard, their leaves turning from summer green to yellow, and a pond curled around the property, tapering towards a cottonwood. A black bull lay warming itself in the morning sun, lines of muscle visible beneath its skin. Up and then down a sharp hill, we went into Beulah – coal mining country, power plant country, cowboy country.

Main Street Beulah is full of shops, bustling with cars and pedestrians, a sure sign of a town untouched by big box stores or shopping malls. Two cars in a row had dogs that stuck their heads out of windows to woof at passers-by. A sign of the nearby oil boom, once empty lots now hold RVs, an occasional Airstream trailer, sometimes a real honest-to-goodness trailer.

At the Country Kettle restaurant downtown, a help wanted sign sat in the window. Concrete grain silos ten stories high loomed over the road. The train tracks sit behind it, and the trains rumbling through town send vibrations that move right up through your legs and shake the bones in your chest.  Inside the café, the tables were nearly full. A grey-haired man sat in the sunshine with two white-haired people. His t-shirt boasted ‘oil field scum.’ His narrow face was deeply lined and he let out a curse word or two at considerable volume. At the next table, a young woman cradled a sleeping newborn. The waitress left a carafe on my table – the coffee was good and strong. I drank it black and eavesdropped as people leaned across tables to talk.

“How many grandchildren do you have now? Is it fifteen?”

“Well, I sure hurt my hand bowling last week. Look at that finger! It didn't always bend that way.”

“The special today is fleischkeuchle. It’s a steak wrapped in pastry and fried. People around here like it. It’s different.”

“What do you hear from your mom these days?”

“Well, my Vernon, he’s a picky one. He eats toast, French fries, chips… oh, and steak, of course, and ribs…”

After three cups of coffee, a walk around town brought me to flat fronted shops. I wandered around a bit in a dollar store that stocked tomatoes, zucchini and squash, piled on the floor beneath the 99c greeting cards. 

An old car dealership sits crumbling at the end of Main Street, just before the houses start lining the road. A Chevrolet sign is still out front, and concrete parapets on the roof spell out Oldsmobile. Inside, it looks as though dripping water has ruined the roof and ceiling, caused the tiles to drop down onto the showroom floor, where they sit, crumpled from the fall, next to an old maroon sofa and chair. In front of the plate glass window, a dead bird lays on its back, drying in the sun.

The husband’s interview, the reason we came to town, lasted for two hours, and I spent the time walking around Beulah’s dusty streets, over the train tracks, past the new gas station and houses with neatly trimmed lawns. One house looked the way my neighborhood in Bismarck used to – an old bungalow with a huge elm tree arching its branches over the yard, a layer of dust covering the steps, and an old wire fence tracing its way around the property line. Old Dakota style, maybe a hundred years old, and it made me miss the houses that stood where the hospital parking lots are now.

Once we got on the road (after stopping for knoephla soup in a tiny café near the highway), I kept noticing the dust. It went from yellowish brown to scoria red pretty quickly. We rolled past Dickinson and the natural gas flares burning next to the highway. We saw oil rigs nodding on farmland, trucks and semis barreling past, a huge metal sculpture of geese over a sunset. As we aimed westward, the landscape changed from rolling farmland to the cut lines of buttes striped with black lignite coal, bluish gray bentonite, yellow and red scoria.

Why the romance of heading west? Don’t you feel it when you hit the road, heading west from anywhere? Maybe it’s all tied up in old western movies, in the line ‘go west, young man,’ in the idea that the frontier is still out there, dusty and wild and free. I even felt that way whenever heading west in Ireland –to Kerry, Galway, Connemara or Donegal – a surge of excitement in the chest: a feeling that, as the landscape becomes more rugged, so do I.

Badlands, and Medora – dusty. Dust on the car, dust on your legs, dust in your nose. Oh, and there are the cowboys, strolling down the street. Oh, and there’s a rattlesnake, crushed dead on the road by a passing car. We’re in the west.

Buen Camino

Right, we were going to talk about the Camino de Santiago, since we already talked about the cake. It's a gorgeous autumn morning, the sun is shining, and now is our chance, so let's take it.

The Camino, as people who've walked it call it, is an ancient hiking trail that runs about 720 miles or 900 kilometers across Spain, if you go all the way to Finnesterre, or the End of the Earth. Yes, that's what the Romans called it, the End of the Earth.

 If you don't do the extra bit at the end, it works out to be around 560 miles. Now, whichever you choose, that's a pretty long way if you've never walked further than the safe, paved distance between your car and the front door of work. The long version, of 720 miles, is in North Dakota terms, like going from Bismarck to Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is, as our friends and neighbors would say, a ways. And you're walking, unless of course you're one of the minority group who choose to ride horseback or bicycle. Let's be honest, though: unless you're willing to wear an all-spandex outfit in 90 degree weather (oh dear, oh dear, the chafing), or to get Mr Ed his own plane ticket, you're most likely going to walk it.

Imagine that for a moment: stepping out of your front door in B-town, NoDak, with a light pack on your back, shoes on your feet (preferably ones that won't ever cause blisters) and walking out across the prairie, past the bustling, booming oil country, turning left somewhere south of Billings, and making your way, all day every day, to Cheyenne. Walking for ten hours a day, napping in parks after lunch, eating six or seven meals to keep the energy going, and falling into bed every night. When you think of it that way, the distance becomes clear. Mind-boggling, almost. Or maybe you'd rather not think about it at all.

But thousands upon thousands of people think about it, and then do it every year. It's a pilgrimage trail that has existed since Roman times, which means that millions of people have done it. You may well ask: in God's name, why?

Well, that's exactly the point. Most have done it in God's name. The city of Santiago de Compostela is named after St James, aka Sant Iago, one of the twelve apostles of Christ.  As the story goes, St James the apostle was martyred in the middle east. His followers placed his body in a stone boat and set it off to sea. The stone boat eventually washed up on the shores of Galicia, where it was found by shepherds, and brought to the site where the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela now stands. It is widely assumed to be his burial place, and so, starting in medieval times (and indeed, in Roman times) people often times made the journey as a pilgrimage in penance for crimes or sins. Actually, if you're doing the hike with blisters on your feet, you very well may think that you're doing penance for some past wrong yourself. But don't let that idea dissuade you just yet.

Now, why the name Compostela? Pilgrims often escaped the brutal Spanish heat by walking at night, and according to camino lore, they made their way to Santiago by following the milky way, or the field of stars. In fact, while walking the camino at night, if you look up, the milky way seems to stretch straight out from where you've been, to where you're going. Santiago de Compostela = St James of the Field of Stars. Beautiful.

Spain is dry, hot and dusty in the summertime, remarkably so, when you compare it to the lush, humid French side of the Pyrenees; but it is made of spectacular stuff. From the start of the Camino, way up in the Pyrenees mountains, which divide France and Spain, peregrinos (as the pilgrims are called) cross through the vineyards of Rioja, the wooded mountains of Cantabrica, winding through thousand-year-old cities like Leon and Burgos, through tiny towns with names like Villaviciosa and Carrion de los Condes, crossing mile after mile of trail before finally ending in Galicia, on the northern Atlantic edge of the Iberian peninsula.

It takes roughly a month to traverse the whole of Spain on the most popular route, the Camino Frances. Modern pilgrims have their own reasons for checking out of their day-to-day life and following the trail: some for sport, some for religious or spiritual reasons, some to get over a heartbreak or to grieve. And some, of course, just because they've always wanted to.  For many, it is a life-changing month: a time of daily reflection, of meditation, and of the purest simplicity.

Some of the more memorable points include a wine fountain, where pilgrims can drink wine for free (!) from a tap coming out of a vineyard's wine cellar wall. People often carry a small stone in their pack to leave at the Cruz de Ferro, covered in mementos, ribbons, photographs, and yes, stones. Worth an overnight stop is the pilgrim hostel at Manjarin, run by Tomas and the modern Knights Templar (or so they claim to be), who will feed you, put you up in a barn, and perform a blessing ceremony after dinner in tunics... with swords! You won't forget that anytime soon, nor will you forget picking up a scallop shell on the beach at Finesterre, proof that you made the journey in its entirety.

Of course, the most memorable things are the feeling of comradarie amongst pilgrims: of sleeping in giant rooms stacked with bunkbeds; of shared meals along the side of the road; of greeting familiar faces at different points along your journey; of making new and sometimes lifelong friends from the other side of the world. It's like a big, migrating United Nations summer camp for grown-ups and the occasional donkey.

Does this even begin to encapsulate the camino? It doesn't. As LaVar Burton would say, you don't have to take my word for it. Sure, have a look yourself. You should probably give it a shot sometime.

Buen Camino.

Bob Dylan in Fargo

Last night, Bob Dylan played in the Fargo Civic Center. The place was jammers, filled with people of every age, and the general excitement was showing on the faces gathered before the stage. A common question throughout the crowd was 'have you seen him before?' Most said yes. One particularly enthusiastic fellow claims an amazing twenty three Dylan shows, and had just come back from three shows, in a row, in different states. Now, that's a fan.

The lights dimmed and out came the band, and the man himself. All dressed in black, hair slicked back, facial hair carved into dark shapes, crowd roaring in front of them, they looked like magicians from vaudeville, a cross between bluesmen and gypsies. The stage lights up front threw their shadows onto the back wall, a hovering, jolting crowd of menacing figures in broad-rimmed hats. Pure, old-fashioned stagecraft.

Dylan himself, bare-headed, opened his throat to let out a voice so gravelly, you'd swear he was gargling stones. Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat, Girl From the North Country, Things Have Changed, Tangled Up In Blue. The band worked tightly, musicians giving one another the nod when moving into solos, always keeping an eye on Bob. Dylan himself moved back and forth across the stage, from guitar to piano to harmonica, seeming to decide at the moment what instrument he'd play next. His vocal delivery smoothed out over the course of the concert, and he smiled into the microphone as the lyrics came.

A couple, easily in their 70s, danced the night away, and danced their way out of the auditorium at the end of the concert. A couple of teenagers nearby did the same.

After the show, standing on the lawn, you could watch everyone come streaming out of the doors, and look over the faces of people who'd seen a living legend up close. Some singing,, some drunk, some tired... all smiling.

In praise of the farmer's market

On a Saturday, one of the best places to be in any town is at the farmer's market.

Fresh corn spilling out from a truck bed; bags and bags of cucumbers ready to be brought home and drowned in vinegar and spice; tender zucchini, yellow and green; shallots folded in their papery skins.

Today in Bismarck, vendors were bundled up against the wind and momentary cloudbursts. Market umbrellas were gripped tightly, threatening to turn their holders into a prairie version of Mary Poppins, and some came very close to blowing right across the tables. Coffee and talk were flowing as locals hunted down the summer's garden treasures.

There is such a short window of time on the northern plains when people can grow vegetables, little more than three months, sometimes less, so everyone knows to make the most of it. A truck bed mounded full corn is emptied in two hours; tomatoes (if they're ready) disappear into shopping bags as the buyer gasps their delight with finding them at all so early in the season. People talk of canning, and the taste of homegrown fruits in the middle of a January deep-freeze.

The question, 'what do you do with that?' passes between everyone's lips: kitchen conspirators, all.

Summer scene - July 21

The scene on Saturday evening as Bismarck people meandered north and south on 3rd street, just up the hill from the town center. The sun was low in the sky, streaking it pink and yellow. Humidity floated in windows and clung to t-shirts, hair, skin. The elm trees cast long shadows across the high school's soccer field, where, in the shaggy summer grass, a group of teenagers were playing soccer. Flashing in and out between them were two white figures: nuns, their ankle-length habits billowing behind. Rope belts swinging with every jogging step, veils streaking out, smiles wide on their faces. Nuns sprinting after a soccer ball, tackling gangly kids and causing sudden joy to stir in every person who had the fortune to look their way.