North Dakota - PA - Hunting

North Dakota - PA - Hunting
Tonight I’m writing about North Dakota. Yes, I am feeling a lot better today, I’m eating a very limited diet. No, I’m not planning a trip to North Dakota. In fact I’ve only been to North Dakota once, and that was Fargo, N. D. which is a border town of Moorhead, Minnesota. Fargo is all I’ve seen of North Dakota, on a very long bus trip across Northwestern Minnesota with our son’s hockey team to play in a hockey tournament there several years ago. It was in the dead of winter, so can’t say I was impressed, and I wasn’t there to see the land.

One of my favorite columnists, Sam Cook, wrote a column in the Duluth News Tribune this morning titled “North Dakota offers more than a Stereotype”. I found it interesting because he talked about the “rural landscape, with gently rolling hills that are mostly treeless, except for the groves around farm homes.” The title refers to the sterotype that “you can see the end of the world from North Dakota”, Sam says this stereotype is not fair.

Sam is a hunter, and he goes to the rural farmland in ND to hunt, like my uncles and my uncles friends would come from the city to our farm to hunt in the fall, when I was growing up. October – December were busy at our homestead, especially on the weekends. The uncles and cousins would come and hunt with my Dad and brothers. All the men in our family hunted pheasants, rabbits, squirrel (and deer during deer season). My Mother would make a big meal for them over the noon hour, I would help. It was fun having them all around the table talking about their morning of hunting. My Mother always said she didn’t mind cooking for them, didn’t mind that they hunted, but one thing she refused to do was to clean their animals. Some farm women did clean the prey for their husbands, but she would not. I think it bothered her that they hunted, but she would never say that to anyone, I suspect that was probably why she drew the line.

Dad had a dear friend that would come up from York to hunt with him, his name was Sam. He was an uncle to my Uncle Bob. He came up with Uncle Bob for small game season. If Uncle Bob couldn’t come, often he brought along his wife Floss, to spend the day with Mom. I just loved when she came because she and Mom would talk and talk, and I would sit and listen to them. It was so interesting to me to listen to them, often they would include me in the conversation, which always made me feel grown up. A lot of girls when they were growing up, weren’t interested in being with “grown ups”, but I always enjoyed it, and took every opportunity to listen to their conversations. One time my aunt and she were talking about someone’s pregnancy, and their talk scared me, my Mother told me that I should not be listening to such grown up talk, as I didn’t understand. Well, I learned a lot about life being with grown ups throughout my childhood and teen years! On the first day of deer season, Floss and my Mother would spend the day baking Christmas cookies, squeezing the noon meal in for the guys. I really enjoyed helping to bake.

Now, I’m getting off track what I was going to write about concerning Sam Cook’s article on N. D. I enjoyed it because it brought back those “hunting days” at the farm memories, but all that was an afterthought. What really struck me when I read, was his description of the landscape there. It sounded a lot like what PA used to be 40 years ago. He described a lot of wide, open space left yet in North Dakota, it doesn’t sound like there are lots of homes being built on what used to be farm land, like in Pennsylvania. In the 36 years that I’ve been gone from PA, every time I visit home, I mourn about more farms becoming housing developments. There are less farms every time I go there, and I fear someday, all the little towns we have in rural Southeastern PA will soon be all run together! I do realize that the Northeastern part of U.S. naturally has more cities, towns and population, than states like North Dakota and some of the western states. Maybe the farmers in North Dakota have it easier to make a living, so they don’t have to sell to land developers? I don’t know. I just know I don’t like to see the farms and the wide open spaces where I grew up, dwindle as fast as they are dwindling. It’s just so sad to me. I thank The Lord that our homestead is intact, at least for our generation.

Some day, I’d like to go through North Dakota and the states in the west, like Wyoming (where I’ve heard also has open spaces). I have been to South Dakota, as far as the Black Hills. I was surprised to see the grasslands and open spaces there too. It was a beautiful state to see.

Please click on my link on the left for the Duluth News Tribune and click on "columnist" and Sam Cook. Read his article and you will see why it struck me. Thank you, Sam, for letting me know that there are still wide open spaces left in these United States!

Feel free to comment, your thoughts, feelings, etc. I’d like to hear what you think.