Rethinking the Home Town

                                                

Happy New Year Everyone.   This is my first post since leaving Lake Minnewaska for Florida. Dianne and I are setting aside items to take to the cabin up in Minnesota.  Hardly a day goes by when we don't discuss our coming trip, in May, to "back home".   I guess every family has those family members who 1) left  home to seek their destiny (Gene, Clare, Gail, Dianne, Bob)  and 2) those who stayed home (Susan, Patricia, Mary, Karen).  Have you ever had those moments when you wondered if you  did the right thing, leave or stay?  In my e-mail today was this article which is titled "Rethinking my Hometown".   From the article, “Nobody had to tell me this was our home,  that our ancestors are here,” she said. “I just knew. I could  feel it.” Enjoy. From: "The Bitterroot Newsletter" of January 12, 2021  Rethinking My Hometown Bald Mountain and Reids Peak in the High Uintas Wilderness, Utah. | Photo by Scott Osborn on Unsplash By Jake Bullinger Mountain View, Wyoming, got its name for an obvious reason. Most of the Uinta Mountains are visible from town, but two 13,000-foot peaks — Gilbert and Kings — are the most prominent. Gilbert looms like a quartzite pyramid due south of the ag-and-mining town of 2,000 people; Kings, tallest in the Uintas, is tucked just behind. I grew up in Mountain View, and saw these peaks almost every day I was there: from the highway leading into town, framed by the goalposts on our high school’s football field, driving to the mountains to camp in the summer. But I never saw them up close until 2009, the year I graduated from high school. That year, I hiked to Painter Basin, at the foot of Kings Peak. It’s one of those remarkable alpine meadows where wildflowers cram their beauty into short summers and the weather reminds you — with quick downpours and thunder so loud it seems to boom from behind rather than above — that it's in charge up here. I haven’t returned to Painter Basin, but I think of it often. I moved away from Wyoming later that year, and since then, I’ve been reexamining my relationship with the place where I grew up. As with all young people, my plans for the future shifted as I went through school, but there was one constant: leave. Getting out wasn’t so much a marker of success as a prerequisite for it. Dynamics unique to myself and my family were at play when I decided to skip town, but I realize now they were shaped on a cultural backdrop that glorifies mobility. We Westerners like to move around, always have. And I’ve come to believe that’s not such a good thing. ••• For thousands of years, Western Americans moved out of necessity. Native Americans migrated to the places where resources were most available during the particular season, and to trade or raid for resources they lacked. The earliest European settlers found themselves covering long distances to prospect, trap, hunt, or get to Oregon ASAP. “Mobility,” Wallace Stegner wrote in a 1987 essay, “was the condition of life beyond the Missouri.” Stegner credits the early mobility to the West’s aridity (that essay is titled “Living Dry”). But Western movement has lately been driven by money and perceived opportunity. First there were the famous rushes — of gold, of timber, of free land. But this trend hasn’t abated at all. Now, Americans flock to and around the West in a rush for tech jobs, oil booms, outdoor amenities, “Zoom towns”— all commodities that today are as alluring as those 1850s gold nuggets. All the shuttling leaves us with cities and towns populated by folks who know little about the place where they live, let alone have a connection with its history.  “Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society,” Stegner wrote. He went on:  “Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. … Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything.” Three decades later, Stegner’s criticism holds up. The condition he described gives our cities a collective amnesia about what is normal in our home regions. The half-million residents Denver added in the last decade can’t compare this year’s wildfire season with the milder conditions of decades past. To the 800,000 new Phoenix residents, heat death is just part of living here, 110-degree temps the norm. The 600,000 folks who moved to the Seattle-Tacoma area in the last decade probably aren’t alarmed that the local sockeye salmon run is nearing extinction; they — myself included — weren’t around in 2006, when there were enough salmon to support a commercial fishing season right near downtown Seattle. And none of us remember a time when we could easily afford to live in any of these places. ••• My own thinking about mobility really began to shift after a conversation I had with Ellie Kinley, the head of a fishing family and a staffer for the Lummi Nation’s Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office. A couple years ago, I drove up to the Lummi reservation in northwest Washington to chat with her about the tribe’s efforts to save our local orcas, which — like the salmon they eat — are at risk of dying out.  Much of our conversation, though, gravitated around the concept of home. Kinley is no homebody — fishing has taken her from the Bay Area up to Alaska. But she’s maintained a connection with Lummi and the tribe’s traditional fishing waters that still leaves me envious. The waters around the San Juan Islands are particularly special to Kinley. She told me about fishing there with her father when she was a young girl. “Nobody had to tell me this was our home, that our ancestors are here,” she said. “I just knew. I could feel it.” Toward the end of our conversation, Kinley turned the question on me: “You asked us how we feel when we go out to the islands. Can I ask you — do you ever do anything, or been anywhere, that so completely fills your heart that you know you’re in the right spot, at the right time? That you’re supposed to be where you’re at?” Listening to the recording of our conversation is brutal. My insecurities poured out. “There are absolutely times where I’m out and about, where I say I feel something close to that, where it feels like what’s around me is in a nice harmony, like things kinda make sense with where they are,” I said. “That could be me alone out in the woods, or that could be me sitting in a special place with family members.” What a bunch of bullshit. I finally cut to the chase: “I can’t say that I’ve had that place that’s like, this is home, the way you all describe. There are places that are special to me, but, I mean, I’ve moved around. So I don’t think I can, in honest conscience, say that that feeling of home has manifested itself. Because if it had, I’d be there.” Kinley is a rooted Westerner. I’m Stegner’s migrant. ••• I suppose it’s time to examine where I’ve lived, and why I moved. Mountain View is, I now more keenly realize, a stunning place. The Smith’s Fork of the Green River flows right through town; as a kid, I spent countless hours tromping in and around the river, chasing critters real and imagined through tunnels in the willow thickets on its banks. It wasn’t uncommon to see moose and deer in our backyard. Sunset in the badlands outside of town is about as pretty as any you’ll find in the West. And did I mention the Uintas?  Despite these natural treasures and a mostly carefree and easy youth, I never had the notion of sticking around. My household was definitely what the anthropologist Margaret Mead has called a “launching pad.” I didn’t know where my destination was, but it certainly was somewhere else. Oregon. Colorado. Utah. It didn’t matter. My parents wanted my brother and me to try a new place, and neither of us considered otherwise. With college began a journey in which I have moved damn near as much as a roughneck. First up: Salt Lake City, to study at the University of Utah. Those four years remain my longest stint in a single place as an adult. Salt Lake, honestly, might be the place to which I have the strongest attachment. The Wasatch, the adjacency to Mormonism, the weird politics, the skiing, the blissful shoulder seasons, a city on the rise; I cried the day my now-wife and I left. From Salt Lake, we went to Washington, where my wife attended graduate school. Beginning in 2013, we lived in the Seattle suburbs of Burien and Renton, Whidbey Island (undeniably the most scenic place I’ve lived), then Renton again, before landing in Tacoma. “Being footloose has always exhilarated us,” Stegner wrote. No kidding. The goal, now, is to remain in Tacoma and establish here the roots I’ve never had. But, even if I succeed in that regard (my history suggests that’s no guarantee), I wonder if my son will foster the same connection to Tacoma. Or if I’ll want him to; I don’t mind the idea of him ending up in Denver, Los Angeles, or Boise one bit. My household could become a launching pad, too. When I think about the folks I grew up with who remain in Mountain View, many — if not most — of them had a stronger attachment to our town’s unique characteristics than I did. Mountain View is near some of the best hunting, all-terrain vehicle trails, and snowmobiling anywhere. My family participated in these activities, but my classmates who stuck around were obsessed with them. My family’s annual calendar was dictated by football and basketball, not weeklong elk hunts and spring snowmobiling. After I picked up skiing, I felt a stronger attachment to Utah’s resorts than the open spaces near Mountain View. That hike to Painter Basin? Aside from one other backpacking trip in college, it was my only outing into the high Uintas.  Not to say any of this is bad, or that I should’ve devoted my life to hunting or dirt bikes. The big reason my family is in Tacoma and not Mountain View, after all, is because we believe we’re happier here than we would be there. But there are drawbacks to the get-out logic. Stegner’s migrants feel little need to stick around, to improve the place they call home. If they don’t like something, they just leave — not exactly the hallmark of a good citizen. If one wants to minimize the feeling of geographic aimlessness, it might help to adopt the philosophy of Ellie Kinley and some of my classmates. They are, by all means, footloose — leisure and work takes them around the country. But their connection to the geography of home keeps them rooted — even as they wander, as Westerners always have.

That's the News from Lake Minnewaska - Season 1

 

It is time for us to leave Lake Minnewaska where the fish grow larger and the sunsets are all above average.  The leaves are falling, the wind is blowing, the nights are cold, and all of the boats have been pulled from the lake.

Thank you for following us this summer as we retraced our roots back onto the corn belt on the big prairie where small towns formed along a great railroad.

We found the people here don't have to work at "Minnesota Nice" because it comes naturally.

Minnesotans may have the best medical system in the country, capped by the Mayo Clinic.  They should be proud of it, and they are.

When we arrived at the lake in May, the fields were all black with small shafts of corn beginning to emerge.  Then came that massive green look of the corn belt.  Today, the land has turned brown and gold as monsters are prowling the earth.

I drove out on the prairie to take a look.  I found a sign about prairie life near the Estensen ancestral farm.  I have fond memories of hunting pheasants and ducks on this very ground, prairie ground where bison once roamed.  Close your eyes and imagine them roaming this very ground.

It is appropriate that I leave you from this spot on the prairie.  This is where my grandfather trapped furs when he was a youth and where he taught his grandson to hunt.  Grandfather marveled at the great outdoors, the deer, the geese, and the pheasants.  His grandson turned out the same way. Thanks for the gift grandfather. 

Until next year, that is the news from Lake Minnewaska.

Wadsworth Trail

 Wadsworth Trail

I found this sign in the ditch near my Estensen ancestral farms near Cyrus.  I never knew of the sign or the trail it marked.  This humble sign in the ditch solved a couple of mysteries for me.

Mystery #1.  How could the Barsness brothers, pioneers at Lake Minnewaska and Glenwood of the late 1860s, have wandered the prairies from St. Cloud to Glenwood without getting lost from time to time?  What if there was a good trail?

Mystery #2.  How could those strong Norwegians on skis travel between Glenwood and St. Cloud for supplies?  Legends of them carrying 100 pounds of supplies for over 60 miles abound.  How was it they met each other on such trips, way out on the prairie?  What if there was a good trail?

There was a trail.

Note the dates on the sign, 1864-1870.  At that time, the American Civil War was raging back East.  In 1862 the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota took the lives of some 800 settlers and Sioux.  The Sioux were driven west into the Dakotas.  Early settlers out there were demanding protections from the Sioux so a new fort, Fort Wadsworth, was to be built at Sisseton.

Such a fort would require cannons, ammunition, food, etc.  Thus, a supply trail would be required to outfit and resupply the fort.  The Army would bring supplies up the Mississippi River to St. Cloud.  Then the new trail, the Wadsworth Trail, would be built to support the 15-oxen teams required to cross the prairie.  Here is an early picture of oxen on the trail.

The trail would shoot straight west from St. Cloud, along the south shore of Lake Minnewaska at Glenwood, on to Cyrus (and the Estensen family farm), then continue west to Morris where it would pick up the Pomme De Terre River.  There is a marker at Morris too.  Again, the trail pressed west to Browns Valley on the Minnesota and Dakota line.  The oxen needed water the entire distance, so lake and river access were critical.  There is a marker at Browns Valley too.

I found a few historical clips to share with you.

Starbuck:  

The traffic on the Wadsworth Trail encouraged the construction of small waystation settlements to house travelers and provide supplies along the route. One of these waystations was located three miles northeast of present-day Starbuck, and is considered locally as a precursor to the town of Starbuck. The settlement was formed by eight members of the Wollan family, part of a wagon train of Norwegian settlers traveling from Iowa to Otter Tail County in 1867. Somewhat short of their original goal, they stopped along the trail and created the Wollan Settlement, also known as White Bear Center.

Morris:

Wintermute Lake at Morris may seem like a non-descript Minnesota lake but it's significant historically. It was a backdrop for the Wadsworth Trail.  The name inspiration was from General James E. Wadsworth, Civil War general.

Morris history really begins with Gager's Station, a collection of log buildings amidst the trees near Wintermute Lake. There were several barns and a building to accommodate travelers. The post office there was called "potosi" - a wooden box with pigeon holes.  Other features were a blacksmith shop and grog shop. It was the temporary county seat.  

Up here, European civilization was just starting to stretch its legs.  The Wadsworth Trail cut through Stevens County in an east-west direction. The trail wasn't totally fixed, as adjustments were made depending on the season, weather and road conditions.

The people using the Wadsworth Trial had fresh memories of the Sioux uprising. It has been called the "Minnesota massacre."  There was a fear the Sioux might join hands with tribes further to the west. Soldiers were dispatched out here to try to quell any such resurgence in hostile efforts. European settlers needed basic protection.

The Wadsworth Trail became a stage route. 

In the early days of the fort, supplies and equipment came up to St. Cloud on the Mississippi River. After 1866 the rails took over with the St. Paul and Pacific Railway.

Proceeding from St. Cloud into what must have seemed like a "great unknown," the route followed the already-established Red River Trail. This proceeded to Sauk Centre. There a new path was carved out, destination Glenwood. It snaked around south of Lake Minnewaska and came out here through present-day Hodges Township.

But as stated previously, it wasn't fixed. The travelers eventually preferred skirting Lake Minnewaska on the north side, and they arrived here through the northern part of present-day Framnas Township.

Henry Gager got established here in 1866. The location was Section 12, Darnen Township. This was merely temporary. The next year saw him re-locate to Section 12, Morris Township, adjusting to the more northerly route. Log buildings sprouted. A small trading post was established.  The place was abuzz with the sharing of news. Teamsters, stagecoaches and ox carts would make their way.

Gager's Station was a vital but transitory chapter in our county's history. It was transitory because development was coming in giant steps. Henry Gager left the county in 1870 to be followed later by wife Mary. Word had spread that a new town was to be established.

Morris came officially into existence in 1871. 

Gager's Station faded into history. The railroad surged into the picture with enormous transformative force. The year of Morris' founding, as a "tent town," was when the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company reached here.

In 1880 the railroad reached Browns Valley. Fort Sisseton (or Wadsworth) was closed up in 1889. Civilization, European anyway, took root here by leaps and bounds.

The first documented roads through the area were those reflecting two facets of Minnesota's early European settlement history. One was a thread of the Middle or Plains Trail (actually a web of trails) traversed by oxcarts that carried goods between the Red River Valley and St. Paul. This trail laced its way through the future northeastern corner of Pope County, north of the present town of Glenwood. Intersecting with the oxcart trail was the "pioneer," "settler" or "stagecoach" road known as the Wadsworth Trail, leading from St. Cloud to Fort Wadsworth (later Fort Sisseton), North Dakota. Research suggests that this trail split to follow both the northern and southern shores of Lake Minnewaska, and, as historian Rhoda Oilman notes, the selection of routes through the area, whether stagecoach or oxcart, was likely interchangeable, determined by variables such as water levels in boggy areas. The "fine prairie ridge" at Lake Minnewaska offered a high, dry spot for all travelers. 

Fall has Arrived

 The woods are ablaze with the colors of Fall.

September has always been my favorite month in Minnesota.  This is the DNR Building in Glenwood on the shores of Lake Minnewaska.

Even the flowers take one last stab at life along the Lakeshore Drive.

As we begin to pack our things for the return to Florida, we are reminded of the things we are missing this year:

We miss the sound of high school football on Friday night.

We miss the sound of the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher football team on Saturday afternoons.

That is the latest from Lake Minnewaska where the fish grow bigger and the sunsets are all above average.

September 11

 I remember it well.  It was the morning of September 11, 2001.  My pager went off and I found that I was called to our Emergency Command Center, immediately.

I knew the Emergency Center well.  I had built it with the Chiefs of Police and Fire, also the Utilities Manager and his Water and Electric directors.  I was the technology guy on the project.

I entered the room to find all of TV sets in the room centered on burning buildings.  Radios crackled.

The President was in Florida and leaving immediately.  Nearby Dobbins Air Force Base was one potential landing spot for "the Eagle".  

Questions were flying everywhere.  Was the CNN Center in danger?  What about the Center for Disease Control?  What about our nuclear plants which were located not far from the Atlanta International Airport?

The years fly by and Dianne and I are driving into Alexandria this morning.  There is a commotion ahead of us with cars pulling off the road in front of us, next to the 3M plant.  This is what we found. 

 Never forget.

"Come September, the middle of September when the first frost comes, that's hunting season. Fishing poles are hung up and the hunting season starts. You've got to be careful, if you're a hunter, that it doesn't become an obsession."  Bud Grant.

We had our first frost last night.

Of Indian Schools and Small Farms

We drove into Dianne’s hometown of Clontarf, Minnesota for a look around.  

I noticed the old, vacant, Indian School next to the railroad tracks had been torn down.  Some things need to be gone and this is one of them.

As the Great Northern Railroad was built across the prairies of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana it brought the small towns to support the settlers from France and Germany (Dianne’s family at Clontarf) and Norway and Sweden (Gene’s family at Hancock).  But out on the plains the railroad disrupted the Native American nations.  The “iron horse” brought the buffalo hunters west and the buffalo hides east.  The bison, source of food and clothing for the Indian tribes became scarce.  Promises were made to the Native Americans, and promises were broken, as they were relocated to reservations.  The process of taming the Great Plains was called Manifest Destiny.

Someone decided that the Native American children should be made more “American”.  So Indian Schools were built at towns like Clontarf.  I remember the school well, although it was vacant when we were kids.  Only as an adult did I come to realize the horror of the Indian Schools.  Close your eyes and visualize the Indian children torn away from their families, placed on trains heading east, to the Indian Schools like at Clontarf.  Their hair was cut, their names changed, and they were forbidden to speak their native tongue.  What became of these children?  Who made the decision to embrace the Indian School concept? 

“The boarding school, whether on or off a reservation, carried out the government’s mission to restructure Indians’ minds and personalities by severing children’s physical, cultural, and spiritual connections to their tribes.”

“Methods of discipline at Minnesota boarding schools were harsh. Some schools had cells or dungeons where students were confined for days and given only bread and water. One forced a young boy to dress like a girl for a month as a punishment; another cut a rebellious girl’s hair as short as a boy’s. Minnesota boarding schools recorded epidemics of measles, influenza, blood poisoning, diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, trachoma, and mumps, which swept through overcrowded dormitories. Students also died from accidents such as drowning and falls.”

Yes, some things need to be torn down, to be gone.  All that is left is this plaque:

Some things do not need to be torn down, to be gone, but they are.  The small farms that dotted the prairie have been replaced in huge numbers by corn fields.  

We drove out to Dianne’s home place, about five miles outside Clontarf.  Six children, five girls and one boy, called this spot home.  Dianne’s brother from Colorado, Bob, drove out to the farm earlier this summer, alone.  I can “see” him standing there deep in thought, remembering.  

As for Dianne, this is her reaction, as she stood at the old driveway:

A grove of trees lined the driveway.  Apple trees were there for fruit and for climbing.  Dianne, the oldest of the children, raised rabbits and chickens, as well as doing chores.  They had a horse, cows, and pigs.  It is all gone now, torn down and replaced with corn.  But the memories remain.  Some things do not need to be torn down, to be gone.

Memories:

We met here, at a teen hop in Clontarf, many years ago.  We have been together every since.

The drive along the country road from Clontarf to the Chamberlain family farm brought back memories.  You cross the old "iron bridge" over the Chippewa River.

I hunted deer and pheasants all through here with my dad and grandfather.

At Dianne's old farm place, a look to the left brings cornfields.  A look to the right is the same.

Dianne rode the school bus to Benson on these gravel roads.

Yes, we are Minnesotans through and through.  We are products of the Great Plains and the railroad that carved its way ever west as a nation evolved.  We are products of immigrants whose dream was to own their own land under a fair government.

Thank you for riding along with us as we explore our homes and our heritage.