North and South Dakota: The Start and the Finish

 

From sea to shining sea, from the Empire State to the Golden Gate, our country the USA has been around since the magical number, 1776. Fifty-nifty states tell their own story, from their history to their national landmarks. To tell the ridiculously idiosyncratic stories of each state, the Works Progress Administration’s State Guides were written in 1940: how did  Minnesotans conceptualize Arizonans back in the 1940s? How do they now? Why was it so important to know the toothlessness or breastfeeding rates of all 50 states if most people would visit at most fifteen of them? The guides cleared up unfound claims and theories about states, and are now antiques, thick books on each individual state.

Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey wanted to “re-create” the WPA State Guides. Their project was to allow every single American to know their country, state by state, and to achieve that, they hired writers to write personal essays about the state. In addition, Weiland and Wilsey needed to compress the vast amount of information contained in the WPA State Guides. As a matter of fact, they wanted fifty personal essays that could bring together the culture of the country as a whole.

Matt Weiland is a senior editor at the W.W. Norton Company. Weiland has also previously worked as an editor at Ecco, Granta Books, The New Press, and Columbia University Press. Other than co-editing State By State with Wilsey, Weiland edited “The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup, and Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age with Thomas Frank. Weiland’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, the New York Observer, and The New Republic. Weiland is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle. As for Wilsey, he is the author of a memoir, Oh the Glory of it All, and the editor-at-large for McSweeny’s quarterly. He has just published a collection of essays entitled More Curious, and is at work on a book about NASA.

While Weiland wrote the preface, Wilsey wrote the introduction of State By State. Weiland points out that US travel writing can be unspecific and bland: “What ends up on the page so rarely seems to capture its dynamism”. The preface shows the reader that as  Americans, we should get to know each of our states   and landmarks with attention to “finer detail”. This was his conviction. His “hunch” was that many states that make up our country are blurred by in the national consciousness, and he wanted to do something about it. Although it can be assumed that the intended audience is United States’ citizenry, as the subtitle of the book is “Take Pride in your Country”, it can also be noticed that there is a country-like culture in every state. Although all people from the fifty states of our country are called Americans, the way we live can be culturally different as in the relationship between different countries. I may be living in the same country as an Alaskan but my culture is one of a Connecticuter. To unearth the point, Wilsey and Weiland chose different types of writers from their perspectives of each state. “We have loved and learned from – for example – Joan Didion on California, Carl Hiaasen on Florida… we wanted some pieces by writers native to a particular state, of course, but we also wanted some by newcomers, and others by writers we’d send to states they’d never been to.” However, the most important part of this book was the fact that Wilsey and Weiland wanted “the good, the bad, and the ugly”.

Of the two, Sean Wilsey is the pioneer, the lab rat, and the risk taker. He explores the country by taking a road trip from Texas to New York. Chronicling driving a fifty year-old truck that goes no faster than 40 mph, the Introduction is a model piece for the other writers; in approaching a state from an outsider and insider’s point of view, Wilsey invites the reader’s interest. Wilsey’s road trip with his dilapidated truck, his dog Charlie, and his friend Michael, allows him to recall the country’s experiences, from the Great Depression to the Era of Good Feelings. 

I still remember the first atlas I read, aptly named My First Atlas. As a four year old, I read the book again and again. The different pictures and special features in the book captured my eyes. Not only did I get amazing visuals on the Golden Gate Bridge, with its mighty orange art deco towers spanning one of the nation’s most important harbor entrances, but the teeming and nutritious Idaho potatoes, with their many varieties greeted my hungry eyes, so long ago. Years went by until I finally encountered another profile of the Gem State in Anthony Doerr’s Idaho essay in State by State. Until a few weeks ago, I never knew that Idaho had fifteen people per square mile, but most importantly, I didn’t know that Native Americans were slaughtered in Idaho and that our fate could be shared with theirs on any given day if a superior nation invades ours; also, I had not really thought about the choices that the Europeans had in front of them, and after reading this essay, I considered the possibility of choice. What would the US look like today if the Europeans had been peaceful towards the native inhabitants? I didn’t know these murderous stories just like I didn’t learn the crucifixion of Jesus until I was able to handle all the gory details.

Louise Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and the author of North Dakota, was initially a published poet. Erdrich’s first poetry book was Jacklight, published in 1984, which was followed by Baptism of Fire. Erdrich was raised in North Dakota, where she continued to reside even after college. In 1982, Erdrich won the Nelson Algren fiction competition with the story “The World’s Greatest Fisherman,” which later became the first chapter of Love Medicine, the first novel in a tetralogy that includes The Beet Queen, Tracks, and Bingo Palace. These novels intertwine self-contained short stories told by different narrators. They chronicle three generations of Native-American and European-immigrant families in a fictionalized region of North Dakota. Even though Erdrich and her husband Dorris are both professional writers,The Crown of Columbus was the first work to be published under both names. Erdrich’s work has appeared in many periodicals such as Ms., The New Yorker, and Harper’s. Her stories have also appeared in many anthologies such as That’s What She Said and Spider Woman’s Granddaughters.

South Dakota by Said Sayrafiezadeh, is written about his vacation there with his wife, taken ostensibly for Weiland and Wilsey’s writing assignment.  Said Sayrafiezadeh born in Brooklyn, NY, has written numerous plays including New York is Bleeding, Autobiography of a Terrorist, The World Might Be Uninhabited, All Fall Away, and Long Dream in Summer. His plays have been read and produced at the Sundance Institute and a number of other theatres. Other than writing plays, Sayrafiezadh has produced a memoir about his childhood called When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood. He has also written about observations of life in New York and personal essays that have been contributed to the online literary site Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

In Said’s essay about his vacation to South Dakota, the overarching idea is his experience of the contrasts between New York City and South Dakota. Said and his wife Karen become very critical about the state as they encounter many ungrateful yet uncomfortable moments. An example of this is the most famous national monument in South Dakota: Mount Rushmore.

From Said’s perspective, the reader is able to easily pick out the details of the state. His feeling of being unfamiliar with raw but pure nature exposes his personality and reactions to the reader because he has been immersed to the daily life in New York City since birth. Overall, Sayrafiezadeh’s tone in his essay is one of sustained disappointment. For example, Said met a yoga teacher at one of the only two health food stores in South Dakota.  They chatted for a while and Said learned that the teacher moved from “Ft. Lauderdale to Rapid City ten years ago”, because she didn’t feel safe. When Said told her that he and Karen were visiting from NYC, the teacher said that she had enjoyed NYC very much but she would never feel safe there. Her words made Said uncomfortable and he thought of her remark as an insult to his home. He pondered, “I also started to suspect that the word ‘safe’ was really a euphemism for ‘no blacks or Hispanics’, and that the two of us had been speaking code.”  He sees that perhaps many people in South Dakota feel that they’ll be mugged in New York City. However, after thinking this, Said thought that he was having an “outlandish child-like view of the inherent racism of middle-American life.” With this realization, Said brings the reader onto his side. The woman is making generalizations, easily construed as offensive, yet Sayrafiezadeh second-guesses himself.

Said encountered another pivotal moment when arriving at Mount Rushmore. He described it as “regimented and mundane. It involved first parking in the underground garage for eight dollars, and then walking with a crowd of sightseers with gift bags through a gauntlet of flags, billed as the Avenue of Flags – a flag for every state and territory – as if this construction in itself were some sort of major achievement, and then in front of me – maybe a thousand feet – were those familiar heads.” The trip to Mount Rushmore is underwhelming. “The heads looked exactly the same as any photo I’d ever seen of them and considering we could barely get any closer I wondered if the fifteen-minute drive was ill spent. I watched with irritation as a young couple took a grinning picture of themselves with the heads as backdrop.”

Then he muttered, “I’m disappointed.”

It seems ludicrous for Said to complain about one of the greatest tourist attractions in South Dakota, even more, scold a national symbol of the US to be not worth his time. However, with nothing else to do, he and his wife rented an audio tour wand. At that moment, Said and his wife Karen were drawn in by the “firm, gentle and wholly optimistic [voice].” The couple followed a concrete path around the base of the mountain and what was a three minute disappointing gaze became three hours of relishing history from “the sculpture, the mountain, the Indians from whom the mountain had been stolen [to] the artist-Gutzon Borglum-whose idea it had been to carve the mountain in the first place.”  At the end, “… We lay down on a bench and listened numbly as recordings of everyday people described what Mount Rushmore meant to them [:]

“Symbolism.”

“Awesome.”

“Provocation.”

“Understanding.”

Said tends to make his points without emphasis, so that the reader must draw their own conclusions. When he and his wife take the audio tour because they basically have nothing else to do, they are hit with emotion instantly. New York City is full of fabulous museums, great infrastructure and dazzling skyscrapers, and the audio tour provides a museum lover’s perspective that allows Said to understand something that isn’t his type of masterpiece.

This environment was yet undiscovered territory for Said. Not only does he have a mental struggle, but he also has a physical struggle with the cabin, rented in the Badlands. When the couple first arrived at the cabin, they were disgusted by the rundown structure that didn’t look like a cabin. The dismay was mostly a physical revulsion, as the place was “worn and shabby, including the stack of towels that had been left for us. Had the towels been washed? A dozen flies buzzed and swirled around giving the impression that something was rotting beneath the floor. Another dozen flies could be found here and there smashed against the walls, murdered by a previous tenant who had been so demoralized they and not bothered to wipe away the carcasses.” Said complains about how dirty the cabin is and the surroundings of the cabin, but he fails to recall that the purpose of being fully acclimated to the state’s environment is to live in it. Said later acknowledges beauty while walking the innumerable miles of trails in the Badlands; however, he complains that this cabin is in the middle of nowhere –  the environment that he was previously describing as “theatrical and mystical”. This moment shows the reader that Said is essentially uncomfortable and unable to adjust to an unfamiliar environment.

At the end of the day, Said is still the guy from NYC. The way he talks, acts, and lives life will always contradict the South Dakotan culture. NYC is the nation’s largest city while South Dakota has kept the natural surroundings, like the Badlands. Without  appropriate preparation, Said’s vacation to South Dakota may have been one of his worst. He was unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with what the state had to offer. But by the time he reaches the end of his adventure, he learns to enjoy the surroundings a little more: “We had not come to the Badlands for the cabin, though: We had come to the Badlands for the Badlands. Nearly 250,000 acres of moody wilderness, mythic and theatrical, with weather ranging from blizzards to violent thunderstorms, and where deer, coyote, and bison could be found roaming free.”

This moment reminds me of Guy Montag’s reaction from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  This books is about a dystopian society that bans books for fear of power in knowledge in them. Almost everyone in the society has the opinion that knowledge is evil. When one of the civilians in society hears a poem for the first time, she sobs uncontrollably. She is hit emotionally with something different from her whole life.. Said whines constantly until he finally is blown away with the wildness of the Badlands. At the end of his trip, Said hasn’t yet adapted to the way a South Dakotan person acts or thinks, but he finally gets an idea about how the natural power of the state affects its denizens.

Karen and Said attempted to go trout fishing on the last day of their trip, they prove to be unlucky and unskillful.

“’Maybe it’s good we didn’t catch anything,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Karen said.

And with the poles slung over our shoulders, the two of us turned and walked hand in hand back the way we had come.”

Louise Erdrich was born in North Dakota. Her dad taught at the Turtle Mountain reservation where he later met her mom. She is Chippewa, among the first wave of North Dakotan displaced indigenous people. Erdrich tells her story of North Dakota from her many childhood memories. But first, she recaps her memories by describing the setting as “legendary”. However, she emphasizes that her experiences in North Dakota are not legendary yet, as she is still living. Erdrich reveals her childhood to the reader, which conveys much.

One of her childhood pleasures was ditch skiing, invented by her father. The sport involved “a child on a pair of giant wooden skis [holding] the end of the rope, giv[ing] her father the thumbs up, and brac[ing] herself as he started the car. Towed along at blinding speeds of six to twelve miles an hour while gulping ‘snirt’ – half snow, half dirt – was a matchless winter experience.” The form of ditch skiing has not only stayed but has evolved in North Dakota. Such a simple homemade “form of fun” is a symbol of the surroundings and lifestyle of the state. In addition, catching bullheads in the Red River, tree-diving, and nightly kick-the-can games were only a few of the activities the children enjoyed. The culture provides a vivid memory for Erdrich, but to the reader, Erdrich presents some of the activities that are unavailable to regular tourists. It wouldn’t be possible for anyone to enjoy these “forms of fun”, other than being a North Dakotan.

In the beginning of Erdrich’s essay, she quotes  Brent Lloyd Wills: “Our winters are quite cold in North Dakota. But do we ask anyone to feel sorry for us?” Immersed in the North Dakotan lifestyle, Erdrich points out that although North Dakota is the “emptiest, loneliest, and most abandoned state in the union”, the people are the “most content, decentest (sic), the funniest, or the easiest place to get a job”. Erdrich doesn’t evoke pity for the state’s emptiness and barrenness, rather she reveals the cultural impact it had on her childhood. She wants you to picture a “pure sky [that] pulls you right out of yourself and yet bears down so close it seems crushing”. It is the wonderful features of North Dakota that makes her go back to her home every year. Just like she said earlier, her memories have not ended so aren’t yet legendary. “You can hike the Badlands or stay at the Nature Conservancy’s Cross Ranch. And if all of these things aren’t enough for you, just stay home. Don’t bother.”

As an everyday swimmer, I absolutely hate morning swim practices. My body is not awake yet and there is nothing more relaxing to do at 7:00 than to sleep. During Erdrich’s childhood years, she had some conflicts. She faces the challenge of swim team. She has a huge crush on her swim coach, she sticks crumpled business letters in her ears for earplugs, and her swim suit that is two sizes too big. Erdrich struggled, losing every single swim meet she swam at, but she stresses her persistence. She said, “only in North Dakota could a girl find salvation and start a new life…” While New York has the bustling streets with people rushing to work and Oklahoma has the people who live on the ranches and live by the sun, North Dakota is different. The state is not embarrassed for what its traditions are, because they are not sorry or pitiful or humiliated if an outsider scolds as at their ways. North Dakota is not abandoned, instead, there is life and flair to the state. When I read Erdrich’s part about her swimming childhood, I knew there was excitement in the state sports that could add to an adolescent’s appreciation of the  vast countryside.

The path of Said and Erdrich are found to be so different yet similar at the same time. Erdrich has explored and knows everything about North Dakota but still explores the state. On the other hand, Said is still exploring. The states North and South Dakota seem so similar with their nature and surroundings, and treated here by a newcomer and an old friend. Said is uncomfortable with South Dakota and struggles to transition to a stage where he can appreciate. Very differently, Erdrich has lived with the surroundings and is accustomed. She’s loved the state so much that she continues to go back constantly to relive those moments. Said starts his journey with South Dakota and Erdrich comes right through and finishes the Dakotas off without knowing what Said has written. South Dakota starts with someone who was adjusting to the state and North Dakota finishes with another person loving the state and going back to enjoy those vivid memories once again. Although Said is extremely uncomfortable outside of NYC as we can tell from his experience, we can tell that he learns to accept the differences outside of what he is used to. But Erdrich writes: if you don’t want to come explore North Dakota, stay home.