Excerpt. Dakota Wind

Dakota Wind
Jones, Gray
ISBN 13: 978-0-9781947-4-1
Paperback; perfect bound; 5.5 x 8.5

Sample Excerpt, © Rain Publishing Inc.



BADLANDS
1

Cruising down the freeway at eighty miles an hour, headed east across the flat prairie, I was thinking of Teddy Roosevelt. The scenery through a windshield out there is not impressive, unless one is particularly fond of endless vistas of tall grass laid sideways by the chronic wind, a few cattle and a tumbleweed-strewn fence now and then. I suppose some are, like those that live out here. The wind seems always to blow in the Dakotas, usually crosswise to your path.
The one natural feature of this landscape that punctuates the seamless flat boredom of the terrain is the national park that bears Teddy’s name. It is comprised of deep chalky textured washes and ravines that cut the prairie away dramatically into a kind of miniature northern Grand Canyon.

The colors are different of course, being shades of alkali white, cream and beige, but the overall effect of the place is in stunning contrast to the surrounding region. I had just passed an exit to the Roosevelt Museum and as I scanned the stark, bright erosions biting into the earth for miles into the distance the image of the bespectacled adventurer came to mind. I imagined him on horseback wearing leather chaps and gloves, field glasses in one hand, reins in the other, a party of several equestrians accompanying him to the rear. Rifle butts protruded from embossed scabbards above well-worn stirrups and saddlebags bulged with gear and supplies. Perhaps they were hunting elk, which still inhabited the flatlands of North America then.


Or perhaps they were merely returning from the nearest town loaded down with flour and salt pork to the Roosevelt Ranch. The Rough Rider and future president was on a sabbatical at this point in his life, ranching and hunting, pursuing outdoor adventure as a therapy to forget the simultaneous death of his wife and mother.

What was once hastily scrawled across the maps of the General Land Office as Badlands and given a wide berth by explorers, homesteaders and sodbusters alike is now a protected national park. In the nineteenth century Midwest the priority was arable land and farming the kingpin of life; beautiful draws and washes weren’t worth the price of their existence.
Now it is a place to recreate.

The image of the Rough Rider evaporated into an approaching green exit sign twisting in the wind, and I realized that, with the exception of the Park, I had driven the last fifty miles or so visually oblivious to the vast windswept plains sedately passing by. A result of constant driving; one develops a sub-visual autopilot that allows the rest of the brain not involved with the operation of the machine free-ranging imagery. In fact sometimes, when I was very tired after a long day out on some remote stretch of line and the sun was setting, I would experience something entirely different. The fatigue would settle over me like a cotton shroud along those late afternoon miles returning to yet another small town—along with the velvety smothering urge to fall sleep at the wheel. But I had stumbled upon a technique to deal with this. As the desire to nod off enveloped me I would drift into a kind of trance-like state, walking the fence between consciousness and sleep, and this state was mildly reminiscent of that induced by psychotropic drugs, without the nasty side effects. I would cruise down the road in a subtly euphoric twilight overcoming the need to doze.

Many times have I returned from the field before dusk in just such condition, enough that I almost actually look forward to it in some demented way—like a seasoned traveler’s old friend when traveling is all there is, or a dog, or a religion.

This afternoon however, sleep was the furthest thing from mind as I slowed for the exit to Dixon, a not-so-small town on a very big prairie. Even out here the diamond-shaped interchange built well north of town was landscaped with the familiar cluster of motels, quick-stops and fast-food American icons. I turned south onto the old concrete U. S. highway that led into Dixon along a gradually sweeping southeasterly curve of about two miles in length. When it crossed the city limits it became the main drag and decried any surviving rumors that the creation of Eisenhower’s continental freeway system and its circuitous bypass of small-town America foreshadowed the doom of micro urban communities.

It was springtime in the Dakotas, late May, and the street was bustling with activity. There were pickup trucks everywhere with wizened ranchers and farmers at the wheel hauling loads of bagged feed and seed. Customers with broad-brimmed hats stood under the hot sun on the asphalt lot of a farm equipment dealership eyeing brand new green tractors and combines polished to fire engine sheen. The curbs were lined from one corner of a block to the other with cars and trucks whose owners were patronizing local shops, cafes and lounges. Horse trailers and cattle trucks rolled slowly along the thoroughfare in directions, calves bawling and ponies snorting.

The short growing season at this latitude was about to begin and the locals were out in force.
The old highway with signs that marked it as the business route of the interstate ran about a mile and a half through the heart of Dixon east to a crossroad with a state route. Turn north onto that highway and you would find yourself traveling through the outskirts of town approximately another mile or so back to the freeway. This boulevard was lined with plenty of businesses however, including an auto dealer, three self-service gas stations, two liquor stores, a large modern super market and a couple of lounges—one of them a prominent brick building with a giant martini glass atop the roof. I had passed through Dixon once before a few years back on my way to one job or another and did not recall any of this; apparently the community had been thriving, even growing you might say—a rare thing in the hinterlands of the prairie.

All this new development along the state highway (which appeared to have been recently widened) was of a distinctly different flavor from that of the old town; all glossy newness and twenty first century—as opposed to the retro fifties/sixties character of Main Street Dixon.
I stopped the truck at the Interstate overpass and made a u-turn back to the south. My taste, as always, ran toward the old, the retro, a time in the past that I thought, or at least fantasized was a better era—probably not true, but an illusion that I prize……….