Highway 1

Minnesota is a bit screwy when it comes to numbering highways. For the most part, it follows that conventions of odd-numbered highways go north-south and even-numbered highways go east-west. Yet, Highway 23, which goes through my hometown, runs across the state at about 45 degree angle, but, at the start and finish, it runs more north-south over east-west. Highway 11, along the most northern tier of the state, also runs east-west. I could go on and on, however, that's not the point of this post...

Highway 1 stretches across the northern tier as well, stretching from Oslo, MN on the North Dakota border (from downtown Oslo to the Red River of the North it's less than a quarter mile) to Illgen City on the shores of Lake Superior. It goes through Thief River Falls, snakes around the bottom of Red Lake, then bounces around through Northome, Cook, Tower, Ely, Finland, and a bunch of other smaller towns before ending up going into the basin in a small town between Silver Bay and Little Marias. I find it interesting that two of the Scandinavian countries are connected by a highway such as this.

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time on 1 between Alvarado and Thief River. It's a stretch of about 35 miles in total, and it's like no where else I've ever been. It's extremely flat, as I've stated before, but, it's more than that. The idea of saying it's lunar is both over-used and incorrect; it's ...

Something else altogether.

It's similar to the Canadian prairie going into Winnipeg ...

But that's not it, either.

It's almost as if, when making the world, by the time God got to this part of the world, He felt like he was starting to repeat Himself and thus, lost the creative spark and just left it with full intention of coming back later to finish it. I can see it on His Palm Pilot now:

Week 20: Finish Aggassi and Steppes areas after figuring out what's happening in the orchard; A & E got some 'splainin' to do.

He got busy; I drive through the land God forgot.

*****

Tuesday through Thursday last week, the temps were hovering around freezing, we had strong winds and snow. Thursday as I was coming home from Thief River and after I passed through Warren, I felt like I had driven into a wall. My friend, Michelle, who makes the same drive every day, calls it driving in a snow globe. At times, I couldn't see the front of my car, and three times, I had my letter of resignation written in my head. I made it back safely (but not without peril), and if the temps hadn't dropped from 28 to 10 (-15 with the wind chill), I would have kissed the ground.

It was calmer on Friday, and I went to Thief River with another collegue. He had a meeting up there, and I wanted to do a little research. The computers in our campus library are messed up at the moment, and instead of fighting with them, it was just easier to do it there. We took backroads up there, but, they were a bit too icy to travel comfortably. On the way back, we took 1 to Alvarado, taking 220 south to home, and since I wasn't driving, I got to observe the wind sculptures in the ditches and on the farms.

One of the pleasures we get for living in an area God forgot to decorate is that in the winter, we get paybacks with temporary art that shifts in a hard wind or under a brillant sun, made of pristine white and sapphire blue shadows. Deer were everywhere, eating after the storm, and ravens and crows were doing their work on the hapless deer that tried to shoot the moon and race that car, or pickup, or semi that glides along the tarmac ribbon, stretching from Oslo to Illgin City, two towns on opposite ends of the state. Two towns in two different worlds.

Such is the state I travel.