Dakota Beacon

My phone rang with a sense of urgency one evening last week.

“Hello,” I answered. “Dennis? Is that you?” queried the voice on the other end.

“Yes,” I said. “Who’s speaking, please?” “It’s Joe,” said the voice in the phone. “Joe!”

Mentally I matched the voice with the face. “I’ll be doggone. What a surprise! Where’ve you been? I haven’t heard from you in a month of Sundays.” Joe was an old acquaintance from out east.

Surprisingly, this Christmas I hadn’t heard from Joe. “What brings you my way?” I asked. 

“I was watching all the reports of terrible weather on TV,” he said. “Seems like everyone is getting pounded with something. When I heard ‘blizzard’ and ‘North Dakota’ I figured I’d better see what’s up. It looks as if you are taking a beating from the cold.” He paused to catch his breath. “It must be terrible. Has your governor applied for disaster relief yet? Why did you move to such a godforsaken place?”

“Whoa! Hold on, Joe.  North Dakota is anything but godforsaken. Truth is, this is God’s country. It may be cold, but Hell hasn’t frozen over yet.”

“Yeah,” said Joe, “but how can you stand the cold? I mean twenty below with a wind-chill of forty below doesn’t sound cold. I sounds painful.”

“It’s easy,” I replied. “You do what your mom taught you to do. ‘Don’t forget your hat and gloves.’ Either you don’t go out, or, if you do, you dress warm.”

“I guess so.” He sounded as if the North Dakota wind had been taken out of his sails. I went on. “When you look at conditions around the world, our situation isn’t so bad. “We certainly don’t run the risk of a tsunami unless a meteor falls into Lake Sakakaweja, in which case wave action will be the least of our worries. “Hurricanes? Never heard of ‘em. “Blizzards? Sure we get blizzards. So what? We know when they’re coming and we take cover. It’s like having sense enough to come in out of the rain. Besides, we welcome all that snow. It’s like having ‘frozen assets.’ When spring comes we get the moisture we need. “Avalanches and mud slides, you say? We’re flat, Joe. We don’t have ground high enough for snow and mud to slide down. And if we did, well, we’d still need rain, lots of rain, of which we seldom have enough. We’ll take all the rain we can get as long as it doesn’t come at seed time or harvest.

“Sure, earthquakes happen, but not often around here. Let’s face it. Most of what lies underneath us is horizontal and without major faults. There just isn’t a whole lot of slipping and sliding. “Tornadoes? Yeah, we see some in the summer. But look, we have 70,704 square miles and only 633,837 people. That’s fewer than ten people per square mile.  The chance of even seeing a tornado, much less having a run-in with one, is pretty remote.

“Flooding? Well, okay, I’ll grant we have some flooding. The Red River and Souris River sometimes overflow their banks. But river flooding in the spring is predictable. It’s a known risk, not some unforeseen catastrophe. Like winter, people prepare for it.

“I’ll take North Dakota winters anytime, Joe. Only the strong come north. Our winters do tend to keep the bugs down and the riffraff out.

“And something else for your appreciation, Joe. You’ll really fall in love with North Dakota in the spring. Nothing like a hard winter to make springtime seem like Heaven.

“Thanks for your concern, Joe. But, we have it made here in North Dakota. You should come up and visit us. Coffee’s hot and the conversation’s lively. It’s still true: Seeing is believing. Happy New Year!”

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).