North Dakota Back Roads
Yesterday, I went to a wedding reception with a friend from work. The reception was about two hours away from our town, and her GPS took us down these curvy gravel roads that didn't seem to be labeled with any sort of real rhyme or reason; normally, when it comes to gravel roads in North Dakota, you can gauge where you are by the numbers, but once those roads start curving around lakes and abandoned farmsteads, you start getting completely fucked.
So we were about an hour late, because we got totally lost.
If there's one thing I truly love in North Dakota, it's the landscape. I might want to get out of here as fast as I can, but I do love the physical state itself. I love being able to see for miles. I love shitty back dirt roads. I love all of the abandoned farmsteads and one-room schoolhouses and barns. I love the skyline, especially when it's a setting sun (or a rising one, for that matter). Getting lost on the way to this wedding reception was not the worst thing that could have happened.
There is a part of me that sometimes wants to just waste gas and go exploring down these back roads. There's a part of me that has done that a few times, in the interest of 'finding a different way to town' (mostly to avoid roadwork; I ended up adding an extra thirty miles to my trip, but it was #worthit). I grew up on these gravel roads, ad they're the roads I first learned to drive on. Even the ones that sit in a patchwork around my house haven't been explored properly.
There's freedom in the flat North Dakota landscape. I remember when we went on vacation to Maine the summer before my freshman year of college. I loved Maine. Maine was great. But I just remember, driving back, the minute we turned back into the Dakotas, because I could see again. No mountains, no trees. Just flat, rolling plains. And while I hate country music and rodeos and horses and drinking beer around a bonfire, I'm not mad at the land.
The land's all right.
So we were about an hour late, because we got totally lost.
If there's one thing I truly love in North Dakota, it's the landscape. I might want to get out of here as fast as I can, but I do love the physical state itself. I love being able to see for miles. I love shitty back dirt roads. I love all of the abandoned farmsteads and one-room schoolhouses and barns. I love the skyline, especially when it's a setting sun (or a rising one, for that matter). Getting lost on the way to this wedding reception was not the worst thing that could have happened.
There is a part of me that sometimes wants to just waste gas and go exploring down these back roads. There's a part of me that has done that a few times, in the interest of 'finding a different way to town' (mostly to avoid roadwork; I ended up adding an extra thirty miles to my trip, but it was #worthit). I grew up on these gravel roads, ad they're the roads I first learned to drive on. Even the ones that sit in a patchwork around my house haven't been explored properly.
There's freedom in the flat North Dakota landscape. I remember when we went on vacation to Maine the summer before my freshman year of college. I loved Maine. Maine was great. But I just remember, driving back, the minute we turned back into the Dakotas, because I could see again. No mountains, no trees. Just flat, rolling plains. And while I hate country music and rodeos and horses and drinking beer around a bonfire, I'm not mad at the land.
The land's all right.
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