The Rebirth of North Dakota After a Near-Death Experience

Ten years have now passed since I moved back to North Dakota. I drove in on Labor Day 2005 with the last of four big U-Haul rigs. I began writing this column for the Bismarck Tribune four weeks later, and I have appeared in this space on Sundays ever since. I'm fond of special anniversaries (the Lewis & Clark bicentennial, the hundredth year of our National Park System). They offer us the opportunity to look backward and forward, to step out of the iron tyranny of the present for a moment or two and engage in some serious reflection. With your permission, for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to make sense of the last decade. I will try to sum up, if I can find a way.

When I arrived home ten years ago, the great North Dakota agony of outmigration, school and farm consolidation, small towns on life support, and general rural decline was in remission. Things were not at all ok west of the Red River Valley, but the worst of the outmigration crisis of the 80s and 90s was over, and a kind of fragile (and nervous) stability had set in. I remember reading a book then entitled The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains) in which the brilliant historian Dan Flores argues that the Great Plains are a formidable and forbidding place where humans come for a time (wet times usually) and then are eventually driven out by drought, wind, economic marginality, and geographic isolation. Back in 2005 it seemed that we were perhaps living through one of those macro-historic waves of human withdrawal. Something much bigger than human agency was taking place on the Great Plains (in rural America generally), and all we could do was try to adjust to the changing dynamics. 
Officials in my hometown of Dickinson were having emergency meetings then to see if they could find a way to keep the hospital open. A newly arrived hospital CEO told me at dinner at my mother's house that he had been brought to Dickinson "to manage decline." One of my closest friends, also at my mother's dining room table, speculated that the population of North Dakota would continue to spiral down, but perhaps it would find a sustainable plateau at about 500,000. 

That was then.

Thanks to God and Harold Hamm, who saw the possibility of applying emerging technologies to the oil-saturated shale that lies beneath northwestern North Dakota and had the gumption to take the pioneering risk, almost every significant problem in North Dakota life has been solved. Thanks to the Bakken oil boom, North Dakota has finally reached a population of more than 700,000, for the first time in its history. The western towns that were ready to dry up and blow away—Grassy Butte, Killdeer, Stanley, Crosby, Epping, etc.—have staged a startling, almost miraculous, at times overwhelming comeback. Houses that couldn't be sold for $35,000 or even given away in 2001 sold overnight for three, five, even ten times that in 2013. New businesses on main street; coffee kiosks and food trucks in whatever vacant lots remain; whole new subdivisions in towns that had thrown away their infrastructure development manuals; full employment—indeed long lists of unfilled jobs. Towns that would have fought against a highway bypass with fierce defiance back in 1995 now begged for traffic and dust relief. And perhaps best of all, many of the young people who left during the desperate years to find jobs and fulfillment in Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, or Spokane, were now returning to spend the rest of their lives where they grew up, among their kin and authentic community.

Meanwhile, the state's coffers are full to bursting. Finally, we are able to pay our K-12 teachers and professors something closer to what they deserve. Centers of excellence have blossomed all over the state, thanks to former Governor John Hoeven. The magnificent new Heritage Center would have been unthinkable before the boom. Property taxes are coming down. The Legacy Fund now exceeds $3 billion. Even at the low oil prices of the last year, when you are pumping 1.2 million barrels per day, the tax revenues pile up like manna from heaven.

When I came home in 2005, the question was how to manage decline. That was the period of the Buffalo Commons, "emptied prairie" trope. Who will be left to turn out the lights? 

Now, just ten years later, the challenge for the people of North Dakota is how to come to terms with unprecedented success and prosperity. I know a few philosophers who believe we North Dakotans are masters of perseverance in hard times, of getting by on little or nothing, squeezing a trickle of life blood out the turnip, finding a way to hold things together—somehow--with some gray tape and hand-me-down overalls. But we are not, these sages say, trained to handle prosperity, because the history of North Dakota has largely been the history of hardship and gumption, of grinding a bare subsistence out of the soil in the face of inhospitable conditions: climate, isolation, and colonial predators. How we choose to manage success, how we invest these gargantuan surpluses, how we choose to imagine what North Dakota might be in an era of unprecedented prosperity and confidence, has become the challenge of the twenty-first century. We're going to need some visionary leadership. We do not at the moment, I believe, have visionary leadership.

Perhaps the single richest conversation I've had in my homecoming years occurred five years ago during the pitchfork fondue on the Tjaden Terrace before the Medora Musical. My dinner partner was John Andrist, then a state senator and the emeritus editor of the Crosby Journal. He continues to write a lovely, lively, and insightful column for a number of North Dakota newspapers. I was asking him whether the social and environmental strains of the oil boom should be regarded as "temporary growing pains" or the "unavoidable cost of industrial extraction."

Senator Andrist put down his fork and gave me a look that mingled annoyance and his characteristic wit. "Look," he said, "I've spent the last thirty years watching my hometown Crosby decline—fewer businesses, our kids leaving and not coming back, empty and even abandoned houses, fewer farms. Every couple of years we formed a new civic group to try to attract new businesses to town and new citizens, yet no matter how hard we tried nothing very positive ever seemed to happen. It's agonizing to watch a community you love die." 
I could see he was deeply moved, and so was I.

He continued, "So now the oil boom has reversed everything, and suddenly Crosby is back. The town is buzzing with new confidence, new hope, new enterprise, new citizens. And the children who left are starting to return, because they really do want to live in North Dakota. Do I wish it were happening a little more gradually, and with less social disruption? Of course. But it would be insane to prefer decline and death to the strain of sudden growth." 

Amen.

Still, if the oil boom has solved many of our problems, it has created some really challenging new ones. How well we address them will determine what sort of place North Dakota will be for our grandchildren. 

But there is no question that the main thing I have observed in the last decade is: renewal.

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#1145 Williamsburg

A special show this week as Brad Crisler returns to the Jefferson Hour as guest host and speaks with President Thomas Jefferson about Williamsburg.

Download this week's episode.

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More from the Thomas Jefferson Hour

The Nobility of Voluntary Renunciation of Power

I was really surprised to learn that Governor Jack Dalrymple has determined not to seek another term. And a little saddened. He has presided over North Dakota at the most prosperous and successful moment of its history. I believe he would have been re-elected effortlessly in 2016. He's popular and extremely well respected, well spoken, calm, unassuming, immune to the superficial trappings of power, without vanity or the slightest hunger for grandstanding or self-praise. When you run into him in the capitol, at the grocery store, or at a restaurant, you would not inevitably conclude he is the Governor of North Dakota. There is none of the Rick Perry huff and puff about him, no stern security detail, no glad-handing, and no inflated self-regard.

When a man of power leaves office before he would have to, two really interesting things happen. First, we suddenly remember that these are actual human beings, not just governors, presidents, or senators. We remember that they have families, interests, hobbies, friends, health concerns, personal goals, travel plans, bucket lists, and a growing pile of books they have neglected during their term of office. Whenever I remember that Barack Obama is a father--of two girls—I like him better. Second, it always makes me feel more hopeful about our system of government to realize that there are people, like Jack Dalrymple, for whom power is not the only measure. Paradoxically, the person who voluntarily relinquishes power restores credibility and dignity to the system.

Renunciation of power is always breathtaking. People ache for power. They calculate and coordinate every element of their existence to achieve it. They avoid glittering temptations and distractions to stay on track. Even when they just want to sit with a beer and watch a ball game on television, or have a quiet evening with their spouse and children, they drag themselves to that precinct dinner in some marginal zip code, because generally speaking you cannot achieve power without making it the central purpose of your life. Bill Clinton openly said that he had wanted to be president of the United States since he was 16 years old.

Think of the two dozen 2015-16 aspirants to the presidency, taking all of those oppressive donor calls, telling every audience as much of what they want to hear as possible, flying at dawn day after day after day to stand at a factory door, do four television interviews with "important" local TV anchors, read a book about whimsical goats to third graders at Lincoln Elementary, address the Rotarians of south Sioux City, then whisk off to Pahrump, Nevada, for a "major speech" about trade policy.

All this to achieve power. In the end, someone—some one—will achieve it. And then, for four or eight years, to have the pundits of the Other Network hammer at you every single day, taking everything you say out of context, gripping like a pit bull anything that could possibly be construed to discredit you, searching incessantly for the slightest crack in your private life, replaying the moment when you tripped off the helicopter like a continuous loop, or the one clip (from 10,000 solemn alternatives) of you smirking through the National Anthem. Look at the before and after photographs of any president. That gray and haggard survivor is who you are going to become.

And yet they line up like lemmings to win the prize.

The Founding Fathers understood the intoxication of power, and its danger to republican values, so they created a mythology of renunciation that they borrowed from ancient Rome. All the Founders read Plutarch's Lives (short biographies about ancient Greek and Roman leaders). Jefferson and Adams read them in the original Greek. Everyone else read them in John Dryden's English translation (1683). The most important of Plutarch's Lives, from this perspective, was his biography of Cincinnatus, a fifth-century Roman aristocrat who lived in great simplicity on a farm, was called to public service during a severe war crisis, served brilliantly, saved Rome, and then immediately retired and returned to his modest agrarian life. All of the Founding Fathers had to pretend they admired the example of Cincinnatus, and a few, like Jefferson, genuinely did.

The great American Cincinnatus was George Washington. As soon as the Revolutionary War was won, Washington resigned his commission and returned to Mount Vernon. This, one of the greatest moments in the history of America, occurred on December 23, 1783, in Annapolis. There, Washington quietly handed his commission as Commander in Chief to members of the Continental Congress. He had his horse waiting at the door. The next day he left for his farm. There were many things he valued more than power.

If he had been Napoleon or Julius Caesar he would have clung to power at the end of a sword or musket, would have installed himself as dictator for life, and ruled with as much force as necessary until death or a coup d'état. When King George III of England heard that Washington was planning to renounce power and return to private life, he said, "If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world.

I was sorry to hear Barack Obama hint recently that he would like to serve a third term as president, if the law permitted it. Bill Clinton loved being president so much that he is said to have slept hardly at all during his last few weeks in office. In Rudyard Kipling's terms, he wanted to "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run," or, to invite the inevitable gag, he sought to squeeze every possible joy out of his last moments in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt loved power so fiercely that he was really never fully happy after March 4, 1909, when he left the presidency.

Jack Dalrymple's path has been comparatively smooth. If he is a man of ambition, it doesn't show. Now he has the satisfaction of knowing that he leaves the state of North Dakota better than he found it. And it was already doing well on December 7, 2010, when he became our 32nd Governor.

Dalrymple's voluntary retirement leaves an open seat in 2016. The automatic advantage of incumbency will not be a factor in the next election. We all have a short list of likely candidates, but no matter who winds up running, the governor's withdrawal provides a great opportunity for the people of North Dakota. What we need now is a serious and sustained statewide conversation about the future. Thanks to the governor's decision, and the downturn in world oil prices, we have a unique opportunity to step back, take a deep breath, and assess the revolutionary developments of the last dozen years, to ask ourselves who we have been (1889-2008), who we now are, and who we are becoming; what we value, how we want to manage the future of this amazing state, how we should invest the surpluses and the Legacy Fund; what landscapes and habits of our North Dakota identity we should try to conserve as we move into the second phase of the Bakken Oil era; above all what kind of statewide community we want to sustain or create with all of this unprecedented opportunity and abundance.

Meanwhile, no matter what your politics or party affiliation, I think almost every North Dakotan agrees with Matthew 25:21. "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

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A Whiff of What's to Come in the Morning Air

There is no moment quite like that first faint whiff of autumn on a late August morning. I felt it last week, and it filled me simultaneously with sadness and joy.

You can sense the imminence of autumn by the frenetic way people are seeking recreation on our lakes and rivers. I was out on a sandbar on the Missouri River south of Bismarck a few days ago, at what I suppose you would call a pontoon party. To the extent I could still see through the fog of about twenty varieties of brats and beer enough to lift the level of Lake Oahe, I noticed a little edge of anxiety on most of the faces of my companions. You could almost feel the seasonal clock ticking.

The English poet Robert Herrick wrote, "Gather ye rosebuds while you may, Old Time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles today, To-morrow will be dying."

This has been an unusual summer, at least in my experience. Six weeks ago we had those two whopping thunderstorms in short order, both of them assassins of our precious trees. But there have been very few classical thunderstorms this summer, the kind where the massive gray-black thunderhead moves in with stately and unhurried violence from the far west, deepening its fury as it crosses the plains. Such storms seldom bring much rain, but the prolonged light show they provide is one of the three or four most characteristic experiences of Great Plains life. Silly as it may sound, I moved home to North Dakota ten years ago in large part to stand out in thunderstorms, the kind unique to the Great Plains, and also to hear the lucidity of the meadowlark, and to lie out under cottonwoods as they dance to the tune of the autumn breeze.

This summer will be remembered for the Day of the Appalling Wind, July 29, 2015. I've never experienced anything like it in my life. Oh, yes, during a terrible blizzard, or perhaps at the climax of a massive thunderstorm, but this was just plain incredible wind, unending for 36 hours, clocked at up to 70 mph in northwestern North Dakota. It blew down three rows of my corn, not in a single blast, but by way of wearing out the corn structure until the stalks just gave up and lay down to die. That wind set most of my garden back significantly. I almost cried when I surveyed the damage, after the wind broke, and I did think sympathetically of the North Dakota pioneers, our forebears, who actually depended on their crops and gardens to get through the winter in this inhospitable place.

Somehow it always makes me a little sad to see mothers and their children in the big box stores buying school supplies. It's the surest sign of summer's end. It makes me remember going into Green Drug on Main Street in Dickinson with my mother when I was in second or third grade. When I see children grabbing up school supplies in mid-August, I want to cry out, "Too soon. Too soon."

My garden this year is in some respects the best I have ever grown—largely weed-free, thanks to a little help from my friends, and flourishing in biomass. Whether my 50+ tomatoes will redden and bear much edible fruit remains to be seen. I have devoured every cherry tomato thus far straight from the vine. My corn is statuesque—taller than any previous year—and now finally filling. I have five varieties: Mandan purple/black corn, Omaha Indian corn, Jefferson's favorite Monticello corn, and two varieties of the kind you buy from the grocery store rack. My onions, for some reason, have largely dug themselves out of the ground as they grew, so they are smaller than I would like. But I'm awash in cucumbers this year. The entire top half of my refrigerator is now occupied by brining pickles, so tart, some of them, that they make my lips smack.

The owner of the for-the-moment empty land west of my house did me an immense service recently. He cut that prairie for hay. In doing so he either scared off or perhaps shredded my pesky pheasant, who spent last fall devouring virtually my entire corn crop, ear by ear, sometimes merely out of spite. My friend Jim, a master gardener and a master bird hunter, told me earlier this year that my rooster pheasant was the largest he ever encountered. It was the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, living off the fat of the land in my subdivision, smug, cocky, unapologetic, and loud. I have stalked that pheasant like a character out of Caddie Shack, but no matter how many times I have wriggled through my back yard in camo with my assault rifle paint gun, that bird got the best of me. It turns out the answer was not lethal force, but habitat encroachment. Good riddance. I shall have corn aplenty.

My friend Jim loves tomatoes so much that he eats them incessantly—the best BLT sandwich I ever consumed—until he gets his first canker sore from the ten varieties of acid they carry. I know fall is coming the first evening I come home to pluck a couple of tomatoes, an onion, a cucumber, and two ears of corn from the garden, and then eat an entirely fresh meal not fifteen minutes later. And I know it is time for winter when the yellow cornstalks clatter in the crisp afternoon breeze.

The cycles of nature are a mystery. Last year I had almost no crickets, but this year, even this far in advance of the first frost, they are massing around the foundation of my house like the Greek hordes before the walls of Troy. I've had to dispatch four or five of the boldest of these warriors in single combat in my laundry room, and I'm bracing for their full-on assault in a few weeks time. The noise they already make is grating, and I can tell that they are just getting warmed up, like musicians before a symphony concert. However unpleasant crickets are, they are nothing compared to the sluggish flies that somehow gather in our houses after the first freeze. They were out of control in my house last year, I'm not sure why. Unless you spend the day with a flyswatter or an old magazine, wreaking exoskeletal carnage in every room in your house, they are sure to light on your arm or face at the worst possible moments, and again and again.

My favorite days of the year are about make their appearance. I love the period between August 20 (or so) to October 15 (or so) when you wake up deep into the night, chilled to the bone, seeking a comforter, when it is chilly, and perhaps even alarming, when you leave the house in the morning, but 85 or 90 degrees by mid-afternoon. Autumn evenings with a good book, a glass of wine, and a fire pit, when the fire is really necessary, are like paradise on earth. North Dakota does fall better than anywhere I have ever lived.

We cherish autumn with special relish here, because we are all too aware of what must follow.

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