Cameos

(Wish You Were Here)

By Guest Blogger Rand Rasmussen

It is perfectly okay to not love the prairie. But anyone who thinks there is nothing to see there, simply does not know how (or where) to look. This is a minute-by-minute recounting of an evening’s ride I took in 2015 on my 250,000-mile, 1983 R-65.

I ride west on I-94 into a blinding late-summer evening sun. Even with my sun visor down the sun bores mercilessly into my eyes--dimming the road ahead. I ride along, shading my eyes with my left hand as my right hand manages the throttle. It is cool for August in North Dakota–perhaps 65 or so degrees. But then, there are always one or two of these early, cool days each August as though autumn feels compelled to remind me that its time is soon coming. I have on my electric jacket liner and my gloves. Neither are heating at this point, but both will be before I get home.

Only minutes ago, I was in the Fargo/Moorhead/Dilworth/West Fargo 'metroplex'. With a population of 250,000, it is the biggest metro area in or near North Dakota, but the FM area, as it is commonly known, is too small to have the seemingly endless suburbs which ring larger cities. Thus, getting out of town–in any direction–takes minutes alone. I hop off the freeway at the first rural exit which is fewer than 10 miles out from downtown Fargo then take the bridge back over the freeway and turn right onto the paved frontage road which parallels the south side of eastbound I-94, poking along at 55 to 60. Frontage roads are made for slower speeds, not for blazing along like fighter jet.

Just an hour ago I was in a psychologist's office taking a psychological exam required by a position to which I was applying. Now, out here, the toughest decision I have to make is whether or not to turn on my heated jacket-liner and gloves. I come to an intersection and turn south toward Durbin; now a literal ghost town, but years ago it was the hometown of my next-door neighbor Lee. South is a welcome direction to be riding at 7:30 on a sunny evening. This is an old, rough, county road with patched pavement and deep grooves worn into the lanes–and I love it for exactly those things. My shadow is projected on the front rows of a very healthy-looking cornfield. Except for some severe weather, this has been an ideal growing season in North Dakota with virtually every crop projected to bump. I can see Durbin, or what's left of it anyway, from more than five miles out. Distance on the prairie is a different commodity than it is elsewhere.

(I remember once driving a visitor, who was from Upstate New York, from Fargo to Crookston, Minnesota. On one stretch I pointed out a small white church in the distance ahead. I asked how far away he thought it was.

"Oh, man," he said, studying the distance. "That's gotta be two or three miles." "Six," I told him.

He just shook his head and chuckled. "I can't get used to these distances.")

I turn left and swing through Durbin and do not see another person nor anything to suggest that a single soul remains here, save for a homemade sign in a yard that reads, "No Trespassing: If you can read this you are in range!" I briefly contemplate whether they would ever find my body out here. Of the four directions out of Durbin, three are gravel. The only exception is north–the direction from which I came. I am not inclined to retrace my steps just to avoid a little gravel, so I head west on an unidentified gravel road. In dry weather, most gravel roads in North Dakota are a rider's dream, even on a road bike. There are almost always two hard-packed tracks which allow a rider to travel at pretty much whatever speed he or she chooses. Good thing, too, because riding into the blinding sun again would be a risky thing indeed in deep gravel or sand. Right at a nice, neat farmstead with a traditional white farmhouse and a barn with a new red metal roof, and the road eases to the south then back to the west again. On a small wood-plank bridge, I cross over an unmarked creek about eight feet wide and maybe two feet deep. Along its banks are thick stands of cattails and rushes. In a wet year, like this one, the prairie is veined with little creeks just like this one. I approach State Highway 18 with mixed emotions. The pavement will be easier on which to ride, certainly, and I will again be riding perpendicular to the sun which is a relief of sorts. Unfortunately, the likelihood of making a new discovery, of seeing something I have never seen before drops significantly on more traveled roads.

I turn south on 18 and wind my way back up through the gears. I raise the internal sun visor in my helmet and relish the optical sensation of looking through one less layer of plastic. The fields alternate between cropland and pastureland covered with herds of healthy-looking cattle of all colors and breeds, grazing contentedly. Lots of corn and lots of alfalfa. Many of the farms still have traditional windmills, some still working and some not. I love the way they look against the evening sky. Out here, the world has a scent of its own. It smells of earth and newly mown green things and of nothing human-made. It looks different too. The sky dominates the entire view. In his classic work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig compares the prairie sky to a giant, inverted bowl; it is a commonly used simile. I understand the comparison, but personally it has never worked for me. Something about the bowl analogy suggests limits to me, while the deep blue sky out here is beyond limitation. Put any kind of a frame around it, metaphoric or actual, and it disappears completely. The sun has begun its slow, diagonal fall toward the western horizon. Riding south, it is hitting me from the right rear. The deep, deep blue color of the day is changing to the blue-green sky of the coming dusk. Wispy clouds are lighted orange to complete the sky. When I ride on North Dakota prairie evenings I know why the Miami Dolphins chose the colors they did for their uniforms. My motor hums quietly between my feet. The ever-cooling breeze seeps into my helmet. The dashed yellow centerline flickers rhythmically beneath my left elbow. All of my senses seem to be heightened and relaxation is complete. I feel as though I want this ride to go on forever.

At Highway 46, 18 jags east for five miles before returning to its southern trajectory. A small, white country church sits at this corner. Ahead, I can see hills and lots of green breaking-up the vanishing-point horizon. On the prairie that means water. I slow down to read a road sign indicating that the Barrie Congregational Church lies just a half-mile down a gravel road to my left. A 100-year-old church is plenty reason for a detour, so I turn left toward a thick copse of trees. The gravel is in good shape–dry and hard-packed. The road hooks sharply right past a little secluded farmstead replete with horses grazing peaceably on a small, tree-enclosed pasture. In only another second or two, I come across the smallish white church on the right side of the road. I can't tell if it is still active or not. On the one hand, there is no sign out front indicating a pastor's name or scheduled events. On the other hand, the building does not look abandoned; it is in far too good shape for that. Just across the gravel road, on my immediate left, I can see the Sheyenne River down through the trees; altogether a quite pleasant setting. I continue south on the remote gravel road for a hundred meters or so as the sky ahead appears to lighten. The road turns sharply left again…and suddenly, unexpectedly, there is open sky.

I find myself at a rusty girder bridge, perhaps 15 meters long and maybe 5 meters wide, over the Sheyenne River. I stop for a moment and sit there on the quietly idling machine and take it all in. Given the style and the materials used, the bridge is clearly decades and decades old; maybe a WPA (Works Progress Administration) project from the 30s--perhaps even older than that. Maybe it was constructed at the same time as was the church--a hundred or more years ago. I ease out the clutch and move quietly out onto the bridge deck, feeling the ancient, gnarled and split 3 x 12s moving and creaking beneath me. I shut off my engine and am immediately rewarded by the symphony of tings and ticks and dings a BMW air-cooled motor makes when it is shut off in cool air. There are no other sounds save for the barely audible lapping sound of the north-flowing Sheyenne moving past the bridge pilings which I can see through the spaces between the deck boards. I dismount and walk the bike in a left-bearing half-circle so it will be correctly oriented for when I leave, and I deploy the sidestand. I walk over to the rail. The river is maybe ten meters down, plodding northward on its ponderous journey at three or four mph. The Sheyenne River in eastern North Dakota, is not one of your "Coors, clear flowing mountain streams." Like most rivers in this part of the state, it is a silty brown color; but at least the color derives from suspended solids and not from industrial pollution. Still, there is a certain beauty in any river or creek wandering peacefully alone through the woods, the color of the water notwithstanding. I can see in the mud banks near the water the tracks of many different animals from birds to raccoon to deer. Just off to my right I can see what is clearly a beaver, muskrat, or otter slide, going down the steep bank and ending in the water.

As I lean on the rusted, dented angle-iron rail, I begin to study the bridge itself. I love girder bridges in general and this one is especially interesting. It is constructed mainly of angle-iron, held together with hot-hammered rivets and square-head bolts and nuts. I suppose those features would allow a bridge historian to narrow down its date of construction. It does no more for me than to confirm its obviously advanced age; indeed, it need do no more. I imagine its builders, decades ago, suspended over this very river in harnesses and bosun's slings driving and flattening those rivets–the very same rivets which I now touch with my fingers–and tightening those old square-head bolts. Touching the bridge connects me viscerally to the past in the pleasantest way. The folk singer, John McCutcheon, calls it "Water from Another Time." I look back at my beloved R-65, leaning over slightly, its side-stand braced against the uneven wood of the bridge deck. It looks particularly at home on this old bridge in this natural setting, as though it were intended by its design engineers to take me to places just like this. Maybe it was.

The dark is slowly engulfing the land. It is darker here in these woods than it will be back out on the prairie, but it is still time to move on. Reluctantly, I reapply my ear plugs and helmet. The last thing I do before I fire the motor is to plug back into my heat. I have a feeling I will need it soon. I throw a leg over the saddle, take one final look around, and regretfully turn the key and hit the starter. I trail slowly off the bridge using only the idle of the motor for power. I hang a hard right then a hard left and I leave behind the trees attending the Sheyenne. As I get back to 18, I stop for a moment to memorize the setting. This is a place to which I will want to return–perhaps with my banjo–and I want to make sure I do not lose it.

I judge from the remaining light that I will have enough time to turn southward once more until the next east-west blacktop road appears. At that point I will turn left and make for I-29 and the fast burn home. I turn left into Highway 18 south. The trees last for another couple of miles before I climb out of the shallow river valley and back up onto the plains. It feels good to once again be in the open country. Some of the fields are crowded with large, golden, round straw bales made from bailing wheat and oat stems, while others are crowded with large, light-green, round bales of alfalfa for winter cattle feed. I stop at the juncture of County Road 4 and turn on my jacket and gloves for the first time. I turn left on 4 toward Colfax. My attention is immediately drawn to a beautiful giant cottonwood tree in the middle of a field, dark green against the wheat stubble and the skyline. In woodier country, such a tree would probably go unnoticed against a background of other trees, but out here single trees draw one's attention like a beacon.

On familiar rides, there are individual trees which have become like friends to me, so familiar have they become. I once asked a family farmer why farmers would leave a tree, which must be plowed around and which takes up valuable crop space, in the middle of a field. "Oh," he said, "I've heard a lot of reasons offered from 'It's a good place to pile rocks' to 'It helps break the wind.' But I think most of us leave the trees just because we like trees and don't want to cut down a healthy one." I sure liked that answer.

I get to Colfax and continue-on through town for two more miles to the entrance ramp of I-29. I burn down the acceleration ramp at full throttle, taking each gear almost up to soft redline before I shift and begin my race with the night to see which of us will get to Fargo first. The sun is down now, but there is still light lingering in the western sky. The wispy clouds of earlier have gone from a soft, back-lit orange to blurred watercolor brush strokes of dark grey as I bear due north at 85mph. I turn my electrics up a little bit. In deep dusk, I come to 52nd Avenue, which sort of demarks the southern end of the FM metro. I drop my speed to 60. A couple of miles later, I pass 32nd Avenue which used to demark the southern end of the metro. Next up is the I-94/I-29 interchange known as "the tri-level." In another three miles, I exit right on 19th Avenue. As I pass Hector International Airport, I am rewarded with a jet passing a few dozen meters directly over my head on its final landing approach. Ten seconds later I see the puff of smoke as the tires spool up to speed on the runway. A couple of traffic lights and stop signs later I pull into my own yard. I have traveled 112 miles tonight. It has been an evening of peacemaking with myself; of releasing tensions, discovering new places, and wringing one more bit of pleasure out of my riding season.

How was your evening?