Traveling to the Cemetery of My People, Part One

Mister is barking in a steady rhythm. His metronome bark. Consider it a warning siren. He knows.

There is a look Mister gets when I grab Jolene’s leash and give him a chewy. And there is a look he gets when I head out the back door with an armful of clothes. Mister knows a road trip when he sees one. He will bark now, or lie on top of me, until we pull out. The Rollin’ Rancho is his IMAX kennel, his idea of a perfect life. He and I bonded over our Undomesticated year on the road. Besides, the house doesn’t have air conditioning.

We pulled out on Sunday at noon. I like an early start, but there was a class to teach first. Then, I pulled our rig into a strip mall parking lot to drop off a return. Not a graceful depart maybe, but the plan is to make a run for the border and spend the first night in Kansas. I love the first few minutes of a road trip when you’re driving down roads you know, feeling counterfeit, already not belonging. The tank is full and you’re sneaking away to the unknown. Meaning trusting your GPS to get you somewhere else.

In the last few years, I’ve been thinking about the places I wanna see while I can. I have no plans to retire from travel, but I also have no plans to end up whiny with regret. So, yes, there’s a list. I’ve never been to the Hannah Cemetery in Hannah, North Dakota, the land of our people. My parents are buried there. I’ve planned a Midwest loop to visit some client-friends, then go on to the farm on Leaf River where I spent my early years, and finally to the cemetery before circling back home. Wanna come along?

Our first camp is in Goodland, Kansas. Mister got out of the truck and scanned the campsite for trouble. He’s an optimist that way. Jolene is playing tug with his leash because she doesn’t believe in trouble. A man watched me unfold my A-frame and asked if I was traveling alone. I swear, what a question. The dogs were looking right at him.

In the morning, we set off on back roads, zigzagging across Kansas to Nebraska. I drive short days, stopping for a couple of dog walks. No hurry. I like the slow way the land changes. Farmland is my favorite, with crops being planted and the landmark stand of trees that circle the farmhouse like bright kitchen curtains. We pull into a tiny town and see a line of fire trucks, ambulances, and any other government vehicle they can muster parked with flashing lights. I slow to a crawl, worried about what I might see… but it’s a crowd-lined street and the parade is about to begin. Of course, Memorial Day, when we remember we are all neighbors.

All the restaurants brag about home cooking in their window signs, and I wonder who would go out to eat their own cooking? But that’s me. The cemetery tour has already begun. Each small town has a field with tombstones. They like to keep their dead close. It’s probably a real estate problem in bigger cities.

We land outside Omaha, sleep in a dogpile, and launch early to cross Iowa and enter Minnesota, where the farms are extra clean and well-tended. The people are friendly and remarkably kind. Even gas station attendants are smiling.

We make it to our friend’s farm where we’ll set up for a couple of days of donkey driving, great meals, and dog play. We’ve worked together in online classes, but nothing beats meeting everyone in real life. Just my favorite way to spend the day. If the quality of a visit is measured by how hard it is to move on, well, we were all a little weepy driving away.

We head north to our next stop, the farm on Leaf River. We moved there when I was one and stayed for nine years. It’s between two small towns. The larger one, Wadena (population 4380) has RV spots in its city park. Mister would like you to know that park had a delightful frosting of goose poop. Who would have thought someone could find such fine delicacies in such abundance? Meanwhile, I’m getting nostalgic. I rode the bus to school in this town, got to spend my dime in the Woolworths here.

But the main street was being rebuilt, and the detour circled wide to the far edge of town. Summer construction zones made it impossible to wander. I remember this humidity, though. Mister hogs the air conditioner, which is under the bed, just his height. Jolene and I are hot, but we give him his due. As I settled into bed, I heard a train passing. Just like every night growing up, the singing of the rails rocked us.

Just five miles to the farm now, but the sleepy county road was now a four-lane highway. Just past the auction barn, I pulled over and got out. Was this our farm? The tar-paper house was gone; a small ranch in its place, too close to the road. Then I understood that the garden, that fed us all year, was sacrificed for the extra two lanes. There was no livestock visible. But the barn still stands. I remember when the second silo was raised. There is a brown dog in the yard.

When I was little, I walked down the long driveway and crossed that two-lane highway to explore the railroad tracks and pick up agates and stray hobos. There’s no crossing the highway on foot these days. Our closest neighbor was a bachelor who took care of his elderly mother. No sign of their house. I stood there for a long time. So much had changed. Then I pulled a few hundred feet forward and got out again.

From this angle, my heart melted. There was the creek, smaller now and overgrown without a herd of holsteins and my horses grazing there. But the hours I spent wading and daydreaming on its banks. Listening to the breeze in the birch trees. This was my root start in life. It wasn’t my family that called me back. It was this land.

But we were renters. My horses are not buried here. They were sold off along with my dog, my toys, and everything else when we lost the farm and moved to the West Coast. Kennedy had just been assassinated. It was when the world became less kind, or maybe I just grew up.

Back in the truck, we drove on to Bluffton, population 212. But the creamery where we sold milk was gone. The Catholic Church where I went to catechism had been torn down and replaced with a new church in the 80s. I’m sure it wasn’t a direct result of the questions I tormented the nuns with, outraged about fish on Fridays. The old cemetery out back was tidy, but the church looked too quiet. The sign in front said that mass is at 4 PM on Saturdays. Only a part-time church.

We drove on through my thoughts. Instead of livestock on these farms, I saw long, low buildings with chickens crowded inside. My bittersweet mood suits Mister just fine, but Jolene is restless with boredom.

Just outside of Karlstad, Minnesota, an enormous bear galloped out of the trees. He crossed the road in three long strides and disappeared into the woods on the other side. It happened so quickly I thought he might be a mirage. I did not get a photo of the bear, or the pelicans in the slew, or the cormorants roosting in a dead tree. Or the snow geese on the wing, or the pheasants rising from the brush.

I did get a photo of a turkey who stood still long enough for me. Like him, I’ve got a jerky stride. I’m not lost and not home. We are thirty miles from Canada. In a few minutes, we will turn west. The same direction the bear was heading.

To be continued.

…

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