CATCH the Latest

I love rural places. I know many readers will dismiss this affection as sentimental. Maybe it is but I don’t know that I need to justify the things I love to anyone. I only share in the hope you love the same thing.

I love the occasional solitude where you can be by yourself. You are not alone when you are by yourself in rural places. You are with livestock you know by name, or wildlife you have seen before, a familiar hawk, or pheasant, or a deer on a frequently traveled route. No language is needed to communicate with these living things, but the interaction is still meaningful to me. I milked cows by hand, had a horse I rode bareback over harvested fields in the fall. In the winter, my brothers and I, and our dogs, chased jack rabbits across snow covered fields by moonlight.

I realized how much I love rural places when I went to a professional soccer game in St. Paul. I really like soccer, my son is a soccer coach, our kids played in high school, and we have grandsons who play. The stadium in St. Paul is beautiful, the soccer fans fun to be with because of our common affinity for the sport. But the traffic, the shoulder to shoulder crowd density, and the exorbitant price for concessions left a bitter taste. I was glad to drive home to North Dakota, the massive metro area in the rear view mirror.

I served as the director of the Economic Development Commission, I got to travel to many of North Dakota’s rural places. I also served as rural development director for the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives. That position also took me to many rural places. I fell in love with places many readers don’t know exist. The Pembina Gorge, the Sheyenne River Valley, the Turtle Mountains, Bullion Butte and the Badlands, and the stunning productivity and beauty of the Red River Valley.

These beautiful places were discovered centuries ago by the indigenous people who traveled through or built permanent homes. I live near Double Ditch Indian Village. I understand why the first Americans chose to live here. I see the beauty of the Missouri River Valley, the woods and the fertile floodplains that sheltered and nurtured them.

I understand why European immigrants chose these rural places to live, fleeing the oppression of politics and religion. Those folks were the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that Emma Lazarus wrote about. By 1953, North Dakota had been populated by 240,000 naturalized foreign born people. They frequently named their growing communities after the places they had left, just adding the word “new” as a preface.

I want others to know and love rural places like I do. I want them to experience the joy of uncongested living, as close to nature as they want to be and with neighbors who will come to their aid or leave them alone as the situation requires. This summer has been a wonderful time for my wife and I to see North Dakota that you would not see from the interstate highways. We have seen bustling rural communities with help wanted signs all over town. Rural folks understand the need to cooperate with their neighbors to get critical services. Perhaps it is time for rural people to invite those seeking work and a place to live to come to their communities.

The Burning Hill Singers declared North Dakota “by the heavens blessed”. It is time to share that blessing.