Travel on the Gravel

A long lapse in writing here, and so much I could write about, but I'll begin with a few notes about recent reading. Here are a couple of works picked up in a McNally Robinson store in Winnipeg.

Palsson, Gisli. Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005. Originally published in the Icelandic language by a firm in Reykjavik; translated into English by Keneva Kunz.

Raffan, James. Emperor of the North: Sir George Simpson and the Remarkable Story of the Hudson's Bay Company. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007.

The Palsson biography of Stefansson caught my interest especially because of the North Dakota connection. The future Arctic explorer and anthropologist spent years of his boyhood near Mountain, North Dakota, where the family resided in a log cabin. The cabin may still stand; I can't tell for sure from the caption in the book. Stefansson attended the University of North Dakota--not for long, but long enough to establish a legendary reputation as a prankster. His landmark explorations and studies in the Canadian Arctic took place in the early 1900s; subsequently he took up residence in New York and enjoyed the lively intellectual and social scene of Grenwich Village, until marrying and settling into a teaching job.

The Raffan biography of Simpson, with its magnificent canot de maitre on the jacket, drew my attention because of Simpson's importance in the development of the Canadian West under the Hudson's Bay Company.

The two books have much in common. Both treat larger-than-life figures famous for their travels in the Canadian wilds. Both Stefansson and Simpson were hardy, ambitious, and self-promoting. The greatest commonality between the two biographies, though, is that both dwell upon the personal lives of their subjects, specifically their relationships with women.

In the case of Stefansson, Palsson draws heavily on a recently discovered trove of personal letters between Stefansson and his fiance-but-never-bride, Orpha Cecil Smith, and also other correspondents. The biographer details Stefansson's relationships with several women, but most particularly his liaison with the Inupiat woman, Pannigbluk, with whom he had a son. The tone of the book is neither scandalous nor condemnatory, but the situation offers the opportunity for searching considerations about colonial relationships.

In the case of Simpson, Raffan delves into the multiple liasons of the indomitable Scot with native and mixed-blood women, in addition to his eventual marriage to his 18-year-old cousin. Simpson is known to have fathered children with at least eight women.

These are both strong biographies with lots of human interest; I'll put them into the bib for my Canadian history course. Poring through them this summer, though, reminds me of the pleasure of deliberate reading for no good reason. It seems that so much of my reading is on command, with a task at hand; on my desk right now are a book to be reviewed for a historical journal, two book manuscripts to be reviewed for university presses, and a lengthy proposal to be reviewed for a Canadian granting agency. And still, my thoughts keep drifting to the new Richard Gwynn biography of John A. Macdonald that I'm reading for no particular or pressing reason. . . .

Old Elroy has been kind enough again this year to send me a schedule of his barn dances. The first one was last week, and there will be six more this summer. Here's the calendar for the Lindaas Barn Dance 2008.

Not a new home for me, just a new server for the weblog, and the whole Plains Folk website. Had to move - the old provider went defunct. Anyway, as I work on the new arrangements, I realize how long it has been since I wrote regularly to this blog! Time to get back into the groove.

Woke up this morning, it was 12 below. And despite the way that first sentence scans, this is not a blues stanza. Quite the opposite. I believe I have acquired the rhythm of the country. This year in Fargo achieved the longest growing season (largest number of consecutive frost-free days) of record. We had a beautiful, protracted autumn, but somehow it just didn't feel right. Horizontal snow blew in yesterday evening, followed by quiet and clearing and free-falling temperatures. Fargo registered 6 below this morning, bit it was colder out here in the country. And today felt just great. I grinned every time I went outside, in fact I made up excuses to go outside. The air is better now. It's like grace. Hard water fishing by weekend, I'll bet. Lots of reading and writing. I've been thinking about seasons lately, about how the conventional four just don't apply well here. I'm pretty sure a new year began sometime during last night. I am filled with resolution.

A few weeks ago we had business in Ellendale and, with motels there filled by construction crews, we made a good choice as to a nearby place to stay. We booked a room at the Carroll House, in the little town of Fullerton. This old hotel is beautifully restored by a local group, the Fullerton Community Betterment Association. And besides that, just up the street is the Ranch House, which is a great destination steakhouse. Quiet, comfortable, prairie town hospitality at its best.


From Fullerton we drove over to Ellendale to do some survey work, attend the St. Helena's Fall Dinner, and also see a community theater production at the opera house. For the fall dinner follow the links for fall suppers at the Center for Heritage Renewal. Video of the Carroll House and the Ranch house is posted on YouTube at Plains Folk Video. Material about the production at the Ellendale Opera House is soon to be posted at the Center for Heritage Renewal. Our stay in Fullerton is the subject, too, of a forthcoming Plains Folk column.

Just back from a splendid concert at the Fargo Theater featuring Chuck Suchy, backed up Peter Ostrousko, Joe Savage, and Joel Sayles. It featured songs from the Prairie Public documentary, The Old Red Trail. Great songs, great musicianship. I tell you, someone needs to make this guy Savage an offer to keep him in North Dakota. It's amazing what pedal steel adds to music like this. The audience was large and appreciative. This was the place to be in Fargo tonight.

Old John set this up, on account of his avid interest in railroading, and I was happy to be included, on account of my interest in anything having to do with the patterns of life on the northern plains. And short line railroads are important threads in those patterns. So, yesterday morning, John and I were on board an engine of the Red River Valley & Western Railroad for a short run from Breckenridge to Colfax. I'll be doing some writing about this in Plains Folk, but for now, let me express thanks not only to John for setting this up but also to the people at the RRVW who hosted us so graciously: in the Breckenridge offices, Cynthia Olson and Dan Keogh, who shared their knowledge and experiences in short-line railroad management; Dan Zink, who kindly joined us for lunch to sketch in some of the larger managerial considerations of the operation; the train crew, comprising Jared Thiele, Alex Hunger, and Dan Erickson, who tolerated our fool questions; and electrician Jeff "Spark" Kriz, who readily got us rolling again when a cable had to be replaced on the way out of town. Also, I've posted a short video, "Riding the RRVW," at Plains Folk Video.

Last week we spent several days with custom harvesters from Saskatchewan who were working in North Dakota. I needed to gather some update information for a book chapter I was working on, which deals with the history of the international harvest exchange between the U.S. and Canada, and so I just started ringing up harvesters from the Association of Canadian Custom Harvesters and learned that several outfits were at work in central North Dakota. In the field near Pingree we visited with the Loren and Florence Brownridge crew; in camp at Sterling and in the field near McKenzie we saw the Jerry and Lynn Prevost crew; and in camp at Menoken and later in the field at Tuttle we talked with Al and Marilyn Kuntz. Everyone was wonderfully hospitable and tolerant of a lot of fool questions. I'll be doing some writing about our conversations in Plains Folk. In the meantime I've posted video of the Brownridge, Prevost, and Kuntz outfits at Plains Folk Video. Also photos below.

We're awash in garden produce, which is a burden but more a joy. Last night at midnight we finished canning 13 pints of pickled beets. Tonight, I think, it will be applesauce, made from the fruit of our Centennial crab. Over the weekend we tried ways of using up the berries and vegetables, including: sourdough juneberry pancakes, Ukrainian stir-fry (sausage, garlic, cabbage, perogies, and a few other garden things), borscht (we have lots of beets), minestrone (heavy on summer squash, with some kohlrabi, a few peppers, some corn), cucumber and tomato salads, and last night, ratatouille. Already I'm looking ahead to next year. I've ordered sets for garlic and shallots, also some asparagus roots, all of which I'll put in this fall. We've hauled in some railroad ties to build raised beds for asparagus, strawberries, and horseradish, hoping to lift them up out of the wet in the back of the garden. And last night I hauled home a load of sheep manure from the experiment station; that went into the compost heap, to be spread a year from now. Now, I'm thinking back on last week, when we were chasing Canadian custom harvesters across central North Dakota. Knowing that one of them, Al Kuntz, was of German-Russian ancestry, we stopped in at the Tuttle Community Store to pick up some Kuchen. Sure enough, Charlotte the baker was there, turning out a fresh batch. She is pictured here at right. For fresh video from the bakery, visit Plains Folk Video.

There are a lot of fish being taken in North Dakota this late summer; some are trophies, whereas others are less exalted. Last Saturday the 4th the Barnes County Wildlife Federation pulled off its 16th Annual Bullhead Derby at Kelly's Crossing of Lake Ashtabula. Records were set for number of participants (173, in 53 teams) and for total pounds taken (1822). The photo at right depicts the weigh-in. Most everyone was fishing with nightcrawlers and bobbers. That includes the derby champion, Gregory Dick, of Valley City, who fished all day with two poles from a dock about thirty feet from the weigh station. For video of the champ in action, as well as other scenes from the Bullhead Derby, visit Plains Folk Video, the new video annex for Plains Folk enterprises. Meanwhile, in the lower reaches of the Sheyenne, the channel cats are biting. I suspect the high water of early summer brought a lot of big ones up into the tributaries of the Red. The cat pictured below (30 inches, 13.5 pounds) was taken from (and returned to) the Sheyenne this afternoon.