Adventures in LauraLand Research Travel: Prologue

Recently, a post at Beyond Little House (http://www.beyondlittlehouse.com, official website of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Association) came along which reminded me of my first venture into LauraLand a few years back.  Before I knew it, my mind was wandering to the night when I got my first real taste of the Dakota landscape...and, most particularly, discovered that Laura's many tales of unpredictable weather were indeed no exaggeration.  


Case in point: October, 2009.

...The first time I went to Dakota I flew into MSP and rented a car to drive around visiting the northern Laura sites.  I had spent a few days wandering in Lake City, MN and Pepin, Wisconsin before ambling over to Walnut Grove, Minnesota.  After exploring the LIW Museum in town, I trotted over to the dugout site at Plum Creek and tumbled through the fields like a five-year-old on the first warm day of spring. 

This was something I'd waited decades for, and here I was, a thirty-something grown woman throwing herself headlong down the hill so fast it is amazing no bones were broken.  I dropped to the ground as I pictured Laura and Mary and Carrie and Baby Grace, playing all over the land. In my flight of fancy, I imagined some of the stray cereal grains growing in an otherwise grassy field might be distant descendants of one of Pa's crops.  I tasted the barley and wheat and I settled back, lying completely down to stare up at the enormous sky through the prism of tall grasses.  I was enamored of this place!  I contemplated how wonderfully different the landscape was from what I'd expected to find, yet, at the same time, through Laura's stories it was just so completely familiar, too.  The land, the creek, the wildflowers, the day--all were simply too beautiful to put into words.


As I left Walnut Grove, I found the evening would prove to be equally beautiful, but in an entirely opposite way...

Old roadbed near the Ingalls property at Plum Creek, Walnut Grove, MN.

That evening I left Walnut Grove, continuing to follow Highway 14 (also known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway), and had not quite made it out of Minnesota before the snow began. Strong winds were blowing the little rental car all over the dark, narrow, nearly-deserted road; as I fumbled for the wiper switch and squinted through the windshield I was suddenly reminded of October Blizzard, a chapter in Laura's The Long Winter. I recalled the many vivid descriptions Laura gave us of the suddenness and severity with which the weather would change, and the numerous accounts from her and so many other writers of the souls lost in the blinding snow of the Great Plains. I started to get a little nervous. 

"It's just flurries," I told myself. "You've done this hundreds of times." After all, I'm a native New Englander. I've been driving in snow my entire life.                                                    


I tried to reassure myself...but the harder and faster the snow fell the more nervous I became.  I was supposed to get to Zeeland, North Dakota, that night.  It was Friday, and the museum in DeSmet was closed over the weekend, so I had a plan to fill in a couple of days exploring things off the beaten path.  A friend of mine who had gown up in Montana was visiting her parents that week.  The older couple had just sold their business and retired to a tiny town amid sprawling bison ranches and long-abandoned homesteads near the wide Missouri River.  My friends were going to show me the "real" Dakota, so I could get a better insight to Laura's environs and experience some of the natural wonders which remain, it would appear, virtually untouched in that corner of the world.  What an adventure!  I was anxious to get there.  But the snow wasn't slowing down and Zeeland was still almost 300 miles away.  I had to make a decision before I lost cell phone service, which I had been warned--and had already discovered--was rather patchy out here. 

This bison was kind enough to allow a portrait.

I considered my options.  
I could call my sister and ask her to find a hotel for me in the nearest city--Brookings, South Dakota.      
                      
It would help to have her as company through the next 25 miles or so. 


Of course, I could stick it out and keep going. I wonder how long before I lost my cell connection?


My friend in North Dakota had asked me to keep her updated on my progress, and I didn't want to worry her...but SHE had grown up in this territory, and might not understand my hesitancy at trucking through. 


It was just a few flurries, in the dark, after all. Then I saw the temperature. 
27*.  
Yikes.  

The pre-storm sunset at a windfarm in Minnesota. 

And only about 7 o'clock.  What would it be like overnight?




I was just about to cross the line from Minnesota into South Dakota; best I could calculate, Zeeland was five hours away, at least.  The GPS couldn't locate my destination, or really pinpoint my current location within better than a ten-mile radius, so I had to rely on my atlas to determine the ETA...it wasn't looking good. 

"Hole in the Mountain" marker at the MN/SD state line.

I stopped briefly at the state line, where an old bronze-colored marker with a large red spot in the center told the tale of the "Hole in the Mountain" and how this road had been explored in the 1870s.  My mind began to wander as I marveled, as I always do, at the sheer gumption of early explorers. 
As I pondered the trailblazers' bravery, the many survival stories I'd run across in my study of American social history haunted me. The Children's Blizzard. The Donner Party. The Hard Winter. All were tumbling in my mind. How many people were lost on the frozen prairies every year? How many were fooled by mild daytime temperatures and the date on the calendar? How many struggled to follow a fence, a clothesline, a group of haystacks, only to die a few yards from shelter? 

The date. Today was the ninth. Only October. October 9th. And Laura knew all about a blizzard in October. And here it was, October, Dakota, snowing. It had been fifty-five degrees in Walnut Grove today. Now I had a coat on top of my fleece and was already wishing my gloves were thicker. I fished around in the luggage for my wool socks. 

I was wishing I had my own car, a sturdy mid-90s-model European rig, "built from jets" and designed with negotiating tundra in mind.  The manual transmission, wide wheel base with snow tires, automatic weatherband radio, and the trunk with its year-round stockpile of emergency tools, maintenance fluids, and tire patch kit (for "Svea Brigitta") along with extra food, water, hiking gear, warm spare clothes and fleece blankets (for me) would serve to comfort far better than this barren, automatic put-put tin can the rental company had stuck me with.   Good thing I remembered the gloves, hat and scarf, but there was only so much I could pack in an airline carry-on, so the pickings were slim. 

My head was swimming.  You'd think I'd never driven in a little snow before.  Of course I was used to this, but I wasn't used to this in DAKOTA.  "What if it keeps snowing?" "What if I can't find an open gas station later tonight?" "What if that deer jumps out in front of me?"  

Along the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad,
South Dakota,
the afternoon following the storm.

The sky was cloudy, but the temperature had
increased by over 30 degrees.

Silly? Perhaps. After all, I'm a native New Hampshirite who has driven in plenty of Nor'Easters, when the snow seems to fly straight at you from all directions and the wind stops your breath. The light from the highbeams bounces off each flake but you can't see the lines on the road well enough to figure out what lane is yours. The effect is hypnotic and wearying as you lean further forward trying to distinguish anything in the blinding white. It is the worst kind of feeling, where you are on edge for the duration because stopping on a snowy road is more dangerous than continuing on when no other driver can see you in time to avoid crashing into you. Better just get where you're going. 

But this was different.  I had never set eyes on any part of Dakota, north or south.  This highway was RURAL, in new ways: boldfaced, italicized, underlined, and with all caps. The wind was shoving the rental all over the road, and the ditch on either side of me was just deep enough that I could envision the worst. The deer peeks out from a withering cornfield, and I am mesmerized by its magnificent beauty.  After a short pause, it leaps directly in front of me, and in my zeal to avoid it I overcorrect, ultimately losing control of the car and flipping over. I'm trapped upside-down and frozen to death long before anyone even notices. 

That decided it.  With no deer yet in sight, but pardoning myself for erring on the side of caution, I called my sister to have her book the hotel for me.  I dared not tempt fate--and the elements!--but instead resigned myself to postpone arrival in North Dakota for a day.  I kept her on the phone long after walking her through the booking on my favorite travel website--just in case I met up with that wily deer.  I made it to the hotel at the edge of the little city, thanked my patient sister profusely, and checked in.  Exhausted, though only 9:00pm or so, I fell into bed without so much as a glance around the room.


The next morning I marveled at the sight of snow-blanketed streets contrasting with a stunning sapphire Dakota sky as I found my way through town to a cafe which the hotel manager recommended for breakfast.  Having forgotten about dinner during my anxiety-ridden travel the night before, on this morning I ate like a lumberjack--or a hired hand.  My steaming platter of hotcakes, scrambled-egg-with-tabasco, oatmeal, wheat toast, even bacon! arrived. (I almost never eat bacon, but it was local stuff and therefore simply must be sampled) Ravenous, once I dug in it all disappeared in minutes, surprising even myself.  I nearly forgot the orange juice and coffee for a moment, I was so hungry.  It must have been the leftover visions from spending the night dreaming fitfully about frozen eyelashes and frostbitten toes that spurred my appetite.

 

Once I'd sopped up the last of the maple syrup, I asked the waitress where to go for a good pair of thick warm workgloves and more wool socks. She muffled a tiny snicker and pointed me in the direction of the sporting goods store halfway down 6th Street.  After that, I was on my way to the Wide Missouri River, wondering all the while if the ramble around Plum Creek had really happened at all...?






...to be continued...