On Wednesday, March 15th,
Sam Thomas and I headed west on Highway 2 to Minot, North Dakota, where we'd meet Ody Berg for a ride to Lignite, up in the northwestern corner of the state. Before we arrived in Minot, however, we pulled into Denbigh to see the Denbigh School, built 1907. It is a classic square school, a big box of a building which is being kept up in a town that is weathering.
We also pulled off the highway to the south, to look at the Denbigh Experimental Forest which has been in existence since 1930. I thought I saw several stands are larch, which look pretty tough in this season. It is a conifer with deciduous needles that are lost over the winter. In March, a stand of larch looks everything like a collection of dead pines. Mary and I saw them in Iceland a year ago, in the national forest there.
As we pulled back onto the highway, the morning Amtrak was running west on the tracks alongside the road. We hadn't heard it go through Towner while we were having breakfast, and hadn't seen or heard it earlier, so we were expecting that it would be coming. Some things are predictable. And of course it was late. Let me repeat: some things are predictable.
I had seen a bald-headed eagle on the ground yesterday. I saw another one this morning. "Sam, there's an eagle."
Off in the distance, to the north, sandhills. We were rolling across a great wide flatness, a fine hay-producing area, and there were sandhills in the distance.
There was still snow on the ground in places, certainly in the shade. "Winter hasn't let loose yet," Sam said. "It probably won't until the end of April."
You never forget that you are in North Dakota.
We had coffee in Minot, with Ody and his wife, Bernice, coffee and cinnamon rolls Bernice had made. I have to report that food is love in Minot, as it is on the other side of the 100th Meridian, in Rugby.
Soon enough it was time for head northwest, along the Mouse River for a bit, then up the Des Lacs River valley on Highway 52, headed towards Lignite. As we drove up the valley, there was something strangely familiar about it, like deja vu all over again. Earlier, when Sam had wondered whether I'd ever been to Minot, I told him "No." I didn't have any memory of being in Minot. Yet now the roll of the hills on either side of the river looked so familiar. Why, why was that?
To be continued....
hey that's my schoolhouse you were talking about
Posted by: dave | December 30, 2006 at 02:30 AM
Hi, Dave. Thanks for stopping by. When you say "my schoolhouse," do you mean that you attended the school, or that you own it? It was pretty well cared for when I saw it, so if you own it, kudos for the good job.
My schoolhouse, St. Mary's in Mallard, Iowa, has been torn down. There is nothing there now but emptiness.
Posted by: Tom Montag | December 30, 2006 at 06:02 AM
Hi, Tom, Any chance you had further contact from Dave, who owns the Denbigh School? We are trying to contact him and get the school on a Prairie Places bus tour by Preservation North Dakota on May 6, 2007. thanks! Janinne Paulson, Stanley, ND, PND Board Member
Posted by: Janinne Paulson | March 10, 2007 at 03:33 PM