Harsh
Several years ago, I was tasked with ferrying a minor celebrity on the Christian speaking circuit from the Sioux Falls airport to Mitchell. It was a typical winter day in the Dakotas—10* with a blustery wind, snow in piles at the edges of the parking lot, slick patches on the pavement. My guest had lived all over the world, but always in warm-weather climates. Halfway to the car, he stopped in his tracks and turned toward me.
“Eric,” he said earnestly. “When the European settlers travelled westward across the Plains, they had a choice to veer south toward Kansas or north toward here. Why in God’s name would anyone have chosen to come here.”
I didn’t have a good answer, and I don’t think he expected one. We walked the rest of the way in silence, but he had made his point, and it was a good one.
This is a harsh climate, and certainly not for everyone. Surviving it can mean bowing up, hunkering down, hardening yourself against threats, real or imagined. It can foster a deep sense of community, for those born here—a pride in thriving in a land others would reject, a protective spirit toward those they perceive as allies. It can just as easily lead to ostracizing of those who don’t fall in line. In this corner of the world, many people have never quite broken their forebears’ habit of circling the wagons.
The Dakotas possess a unique—and severe—winter beauty.
Sunday morning on the way to church, I drove 80 miles, much of it in near blizzard conditions—snow thrown into drifts by last week’s storm now blowing back northward thanks to an about face in the wind’s direction. White streams danced over the black highway, ghostly crystalline jets that occasionally kicked up to limit visibility to only a few hundred yards. Every so often, however, the way cleared enough that the sunrise was visible, its pink and orange and blue majesty reminding us prairie folks to look up and be amazed.
Lately, I find myself seeing the beauty of the Dakotas through a similar lens to the one I had when we moved here a decade ago. Back then, I knew I was an outsider. I saw with the eyes of a visitor, one who could appreciate the brilliance of a Dakota winter scape without feeling trapped by it. Now that I’m preparing to leave it for more favorable climes, the empty land and endless sky seem less oppressive.
I don’t doubt that there are places in the world that are more suited for visitors than residents. The Dakotas are such a place for me. I would not trade my time here. Neither do I expect to return for more than a few days’ visit, once the moving truck pulls away. When I do come back, it will be as a guest, which in truth I have been all along. I’ll appreciate the spectacle of the Plains for what it is, and not what I wished it would be.
This is a land of harsh beauty, but beauty nonetheless. Perhaps that’s easier to see from a distance.
