Kat's Chronicles: 29 July 2011 - North Dakota

A delightful breeze is blowing through my rig. I am sitting in my RV Carri, in the KOA Kampground in Bismarck, ND, enjoying the sound of the insects and birds outside, and the warmth of a perfect summer's day. Summertime is definitely the right time to be visiting North Dakota! While the rest of the country is in a heat wave, we are having very comfortable temps here. One of the things I like about KOA Kampgrounds, is that they plant trees and bushes in between the sites, so you get a feeling of privacy, even if the next rig is only a few feet away from your door.

And, now that I'm here during the daytime, I've discovered that the campground is very quiet then. Often as I sit here, I hear the mourning doves coo-coo-cooing. It always takes me back to summer evenings in my grandmother's bedroom in northern Minnesota. When I stayed with her, which I did often, we'd sit in her bedroom, with the window open, and read and chat. She might be putting pincurls in my hair (yes, pincurls!), if we were going to church the next day. I didn't know much about birds then, and I assumed that the coo-coo-cooing I heard outside was an owl. I know now that it's the mourning dove. So my grandmother is with me today, as she so often is. She was with me, too, as I drove through North Dakota, noticing the many wind farms that have been erected in recent years. So many times she told me when I was a child, that the nation was stupidly wasting all that free wind power, that we should be putting up windmills everywhere. She was right. I can't help but think about her as I see the fields of turbine blades turning, how pleased she would be to see them.

July has been a very full month. Tuesday was my last day on this FEMA assignment, and I am thoroughly enjoying my time off. It always takes me a few days to recuperate and get back to feeling like a normal person again. This time was no exception. Once I slowed down, and the adrenaline quit running, I realized how exhausted I was.

A FEMA friend of mine said that her 30-day assignment on this disaster was the hardest assignment she's had since Katrina. I feel the same way. Don't know why exactly. Long days (7 AM to 8:15 pm for much of it), lots of driving, shared rooms (hotel rooms are at a premium because of the boom in oil field workers and the flooding evacuees), a disaster that just seems to go on and on and on - all of those contributed. Personnel hassles in one of my DRCs. (Grrr!) This job is difficult enough without dealing with personnel hassles. But, on balance, I made some good friends here. The hassles will be soon forgotten, the friends never.

I will bring with me lovely memories - again - of driving through the beautiful North Dakota countryside. I was fortunate to see some parts of ND that I hadn't seen before, and all of North Dakota that I saw was beautiful - Garrison Dam [above], Lake Sakakawea [sunset right and Hazen Bay sunset below],

the Turtle Mountains, Lake Metigoshe,

the International Peace Garden. Lake Metigoshe [below] and the Turtle Mountains are unlike any other part of North Dakota - they reminded me of northern Minnesota, with the lake ringed in birches (which is what "metigoshe" means). Not to mention the beautiful rolling hills and fields. My favorites are the

brilliant yellow canola fields this time of year[left], sometimes right next to the blue flax fields [below].

And I bring with me also, the warmth and kindness of the people of North Dakota. I was fortunate to spend part of this assignment, either staying, or working, in some of the small towns of ND (Riverdale, Velva, Fessenden, Lake Metigoshe, Sherwood), and thoroughly enjoyed them. The tiny town of Sherwood, on the Canadian border, is fortunate to have a really fine cook; I had some of the best pork chops of my life at Nettie's Diner. I heard the heart-warming stories of the town that worked together and was saved because its dike held (Velva), and their neighbors' sad stories, whose dike failed (Sawyer). As I drove by the swollen Mouse River between the two towns, I often thought of the "Mouse that Roared". But they tell me I can't use that; it was used for the flood of 1969. :-/

Interspersed amongst the beautiful memories, are memories of another kind. This disaster is unlike any other I've worked, because it is impacting my family. What I do has a more personal spin on it than it ever has before. I toured the flooded areas in Minot and Burlington with my aunt Doris. On street after street, people's belongings were piled up high at curbside, drying out, waiting to be hauled away. It looked like the pictures of war zones I've seen on TV.

But the stench of rotten water permeating everything, isn't something you can imagine from TV. I spent a little time helping her clean the muddy, moldy, slimy, stinky things out of her flooded house, when she was finally able to get into it.

Her neighborhood in Burlington was probably the last one free of water. Everyone here is always aware of the clock that is ticking away - 96 days left till winter, one local told me a week or so ago. (Assuming they get a hard freeze on the average first day.) Folks in Bismarck are afraid that the water table won't go down enough by then, and the water will freeze in the ground, breaking their underground pipes, causing a whole new round of damage. My cousin Mick, like hundreds of others in Minot, is working against the clock, hoping to get all the clean-up and repair work done in his basement (replace the walls, new furnace and hot water heater, re-wire the electrical). In ND, an electrician has to approve the new wiring before the electricity can be turned on. And there are hundreds (thousands?) who will be waiting for that inspector to come around. So they can have heat in their house. So they can move back into it, for the winter. And my aunt Doris waits for one of those FEMA trailers. There is little hope of cleaning and repairing her home by winter. She has been staying with a friend, but the friend wants her home back to herself. ("Like yesterday", she said.) That always happens in a disaster. Friends and family open their homes to their loved ones and neighbors. But after weeks of living in cramped quarters, patience wears thin. Everyone gets to the point where that FEMA trailer seems like a God-send. And maybe it is.

The fields and ditches are filled with water, there are lakes where there didn't used to be lakes, and all the rivers and creeks are full. That's bad news for the farmers, but good news for a bird-watcher!

I was amazed at the number of birds in this part of the country. I saw several birds I'd never seen before on this visit and many other notable ones [ruddy duck with its blue bill, above; avocets, below; sora, below right, female wood duck, at bottom]

And spent hours in the evening when I could, relaxing by a marsh or pond, just watching and listening to the birds.

Twilight lasts so long here, sunsets go on forever. The sun goes down around 9:45 pm in mid-summer, but twilight goes on and on. You can still drive without headlights around 10 pm, though no one (usually) does.