The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota

by Clay Jenkinson

North Dakota is regarded as flyover country, but extraordinary narratives play out on this improbable Great Plains landscape. North Dakota is the home of one of the world's largest nuclear missile fields, one of the first mosques in America, a zany collection of roadside attractions, resurgent Native American communities, one of the nation's most productive oil fields, and the magnificent Little Missouri River badlands.

Join Clay Jenkinson as he searches for spirit of place, cultural identity, sacred landscapes, and a future for rural America at the center of the continent, where Lewis and Clark wintered, Sitting Bull resisted the conquest, and Theodore Roosevelt became America's leading conservationist and the exemplar of the strenuous life.  

Part travelogue, part love song to the prairie, and above all, a vision for a cultural renaissance at the heart of the continent, The Language of Cottonwoods will make you laugh, cry, and think, and inspire you to visit North Dakota.

Genres: Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

Published June 22, 2021

Reviews

[Thomas Isern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed this work in a series of four features for the weekly feature, Plains Folk. Because it is an important work on the state of the state. You may not agree with all its conclusions, but you'll find its questions are discussion starters.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would be an excellent book for all leaders and would-be leaders in North Dakota to read. No one (probably not even Clay Jenkinson) will agree with everything, but if people care about the future of the state and its people, I would hope that they will read it and engage with his arguments. My one bone to pick was that he sometimes seems off-base in his comments about the ND universities. Doesn't he know about the College of Agriculture, Food Systems and Natural Resources at NDSU? Doesn't he know about the distinguished contributions to ND history made by David Danbom? Nonetheless, he deeply loves the sacred wilderness in our state, especially the West River Country; he is not afraid to challenge white racism toward our Native American neighbors (multiple times); he has some provocative ideas about what we need to do to promote a healthy future for the state; and he can laugh at himself.

[Laura Schmidt-Dockter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. The art. The writing. The talking points. I was especially moved by the essay of a fall trip spent under the Cottonwoods in the Badlands. This essay so clearly defines and describes the reason, not only for this book but also why Clay so deeply loves North Dakota. His thoughts on his own mortality hit hard. Beautifully and honestly articulated. “And whatever little quantum of nutrients my pocky corpse contains, let them be the difference in the survival of a cottonwood tree that grows a hundred feet tall and lives 150 years, unknown, unmolested, unvisited”

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the final year of ten that I spent clinging to the role of graduate student in geography at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, I charted a summer trip around North Dakota. I did it for no reason other than 1) I hadn't ever been there; 2) most other people hadn't, either, since it was at the top of the list of least visited states; and 3) I liked organizing and executing road trips. In fact, I would rather plan a road trip (or for that matter fix a broken sash pull on a kitchen window, which I also did during my stay in Lincoln) than plan a dissertation. But I was a faithful Capricorn, who had to succeed, so I did both. I mapped out a dissertation (three, actually, completing the last one), and I mapped out road trips, including this grand 7-day tour of a state split from a territory taken from Lakota people and several other nations (who still have a strong living presence in this place and would like their pieces of it back).

Using that relatively fresh resource of internet mapping, search engines, and websites, I plotted out and ran a virtual dress rehearsal of my trip. Then I began driving north through eastern Nebraska on a two-lane US highway. When I entered South Dakota, I pulled off at an anachronistic picnic-table wayside to photograph the road gently rolling and curving ahead over grass-covered plains and fields snugged up against the horizon with nothing vertical to cut into the broad swath of sky that the two yellow lines kissed as they disappeared over a swell.

I swung to the northwest and made it to Pierre, a tiny state capital town, akin to Frankfort, Kentucky, where I spent the night at very affordable Super8. It reminded me of my undergraduate dorm room with its cinderblock walls painted white, but it was comfortable and clean and all I needed. Better yet, it was next to a cheery family-run Mexican restaurant. Tex-Mex restaurants are cheery by design. I learned about a couple decades later in a lecture at a geography conference I was attending virtually. They are for that reason, a favorite place for me to stop at the end of a long day or a long trip.

The next morning, I poked my head in the suitably small state Capitol on a hill at the edge of town, which I had seen one or two previous times, before heading farther north and west. I stopped for a classic car show that just happened to be taking place on the main street in Gettysburg as I rolled through, and I read in my Triple A guidebook how that town was linked to its more famous namesake in the state I had originally come from, by way of St. Paul, Minnesota, where I went to college and stayed on for a total of 11 years.

I took a picture of the bridge over the Missouri at Mobridge, walked up a hill to see a monument that marked or may mark, depending which camp you ask, the grave of the great Lakota chief Crazy Horse, and then rolled into Lemmon, on the border of North Dakota. I was there because it was the hometown of an author, Kathleen Norris, whose book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, I had received as a gift from my parents and read during my final year in Minnesota, the year before I went into grad school at age 29.

I headed for the Petrified Forest Park in the center of town, a quirky bit of folk culture that employed chunks of petrified wood and grass to create castles and towers and benches and other whimsy. The park had been mentioned briefly in the book, and I talked to the woman behind the counter of the gift shop. She knew Kathleen's family, and so we talked for a couple minutes as neighbors in a small town might about someone who used to live there. For something different to do, I walked across the North Dakota border, which was at the end of a short block on the edge of town. How, after all, could I pass up the opportunity to literally set foot in the least visited state in the union for the first time.

I entered North Dakota by car farther west near the town of Bowman, with the eponymous figure, kneeling with bow drawn, silhouetted on its sign. It didn't look like he was trying to pass as an indigenous hunter, and the town didn't either. Just a way to make a picture symbol out of a name in hopes it would stick in the mind of those passing through. I remember it because I took a picture of the sign and have seen it several times. It had a picturesquely decaying wooden mill structure behind it. Outside of town, I passed by blazing yellow rapeseed fields and teal green new wheat, as well as a local police car right out of the 1950s, single dome light on top, parked on the side of the road with its officer snoozing in the front seat, hat pulled down over his eyes. Right out of Andy Griffith. I laughed as you would expect a guy who grew up in the suburbs of a big east coast city with modern police cars to laugh, with genuine hilarity born of an ignorance of rural realities.
That night I camped at Theodore Roosevelt National Park and went into Medora for the one man Teddy Roosevelt show. It was entertaining and I marveled at how the interstate exit was, for someone who had only lived around big and bigger cities, practically like a driveway into someone's home, so little was there of or around Medora, North Dakota at the time. I also drove and hiked around the park a bit that evening and the next morning. After picking my way across a wide muddy stream with steep banks and then seeing several people on horses, I realized that trails in these parts are really meant for horses carrying people, not people on foot. What did I know. I was a goofy, anxious graduate student from big cities.

The next day I headed toward Bismarck, stopping at Dickinson State College, along I-94, where I took a newspaper clipped into a wooden roller off of the rack that held them and perused it for a bit, perhaps like I imagined a scholarly tourist seeking local information and news of the world beyond would, before moving on to my next set of stops, all of which were part of something called the Enchanted Highway. This is a boldly creative project that seeks to draw people off the interstate down a two lane state highway fifteen miles or so to a small town lucky enough to count among its own a metal sculptor with an expansive imagination. He could take oil drums apart and turn the metal into gigantic grasshoppers, farmers, jumping deer, or geese flying across the rays of an abstract sun. Those were the ones I saw and photographed. They were huge, bigger than semis or even some airplanes. Then there was a random but interesting stop inspired by Kathleen Norris again, to get a tour of a monastery and Catholic school near I-94, then a quick picture of Salem Sue, a few exits farther east. She's the world's largest Guernsey - fiberglass - cow. On to tour Fort Abraham Lincoln after setting up at the state park next to it. This, near Mandan, the west bank (of the Missouri River) sister of the capital city, was the last comfortable quarters Custer ever enjoyed in his life. It was also the home of Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa villages in the time of Lewis and Clark's visit, and there are reconstructed common homes I took in.

On this trip, it was my custom to bring food for breakfast and lunch and then treat myself to a dinner in town, but the only food I could find that night was a sandwich at a gas station in Washburn.

From there, a stop at the Lewis and Clark Visitor's Center, built around the site where they built their first winter quarters near the Mandan people. I bought a prairie-themed jigsaw puzzle - our family is big on puzzles and I'm no exception - and poked around in the reconstructed Fort Mandan. Definitely less comfy than Fort Abe, but L & C had a much more successful outcome to their venture than Custer. I had had an idea that I would become a Lewis and Clark expert to cash in on the bicentennial of arguably the most diligent, successful, and luckiest, expedition ever sent out by the hungry-to-colonize American government. Perhaps one of the most honorable. Not without flaws, but still, I was impressed by how few there were, and how well they conducted themselves, with two or three questionable exceptions.

The next day I braved a blizzard of cottonwood seed puffs that were piling up like snow on the edges of a long green mall in front of one of the more unique and beautiful state Capitols I have encountered. The art deco-era tower past the prolific poplar family giants was worth a full tour.

From there, after a quick drive around town, it was time for a geek-out stop - the Geographic Center of North America at Rugby, where a couple took my photo in the era before selfies were a thing. There was a quick drive through the town of Minot and down a hill to a zoo along the Souris ('Mouse') River. Just driving by. There's a university and an air force base in Minot. I had applied to teach at the university after I graduated, but didn't hear back.

I moved on to my destination for that day, the International Peace Garden, which shares - indeed, crosses, the border with Canada. There, after arriving at my campsite, I was immediately and completely enveloped in a swarm of mosquitos when I cluelessly opened the window of my Ford Contour. I spent time walking around the peace garden and was yelled at for forgetting to heed the 5 mph speed limit in the campground. Fair enough. But getting the contents of my trunk mussed up by two customs agents for no reason other than I had just exited the duty free gift shop that apparently shared the international border and therefore required serious searching before fully re-entering the country I was a citizen of? That was just sheer jerkdom. Guess they needed to feel they had something important to do at their post along an undefended border in a peace park in 2005.

I drove south to the town of Rolette, near the Turtle Mountain Nation, where Anishinaabe and Dakota communities both reside, and bought a sage bundle from a vendor in the entry way of a local supermarket and a paring knife, which I still use when camping, from the supermarket itself. On to another state park, a quick stop in a town built by Icelandic immigrants, and, after setting up camp, a few hours in a movie theater in another town being entertained by the 1995 Spiderman movie.
I poked around an historic mill and drove to Pembina the next day. This is a town on the Red River of the North (to differentiate it from the one on the Texas-Oklahoma border). Pembina is on the Canadian border, upriver from Winnipeg, which lies to the north. The Red River is the eastern boundary of North Dakota and the location of its two largest cities, the university, and most of its population. I was here to learn about the Red River oxcart route. Imagine creaking wooden-wheeled carts drawn by oxen piled with furs and other goods making their ear-splitting way from Canada to St. Paul in the mid1800s. There was an observation tower in the museum, but little to look out on, it being in a river valley in a pretty much flat landscape. I don't actually remember going up there. Maybe it was closed. I think it was. I might have stopped at the elevator and read a sign that said as much.

From there it was on to Grand Forks, the university town, where I checked out the new levees and signage about the great floods they sustained a few years back. When there are cold winters with lots of snow, things flood when the weather finally warms in the spring and rivers, backed up with ice, start moving. I also drove a bit off path to Warsaw and Moscow, little towns I had to stop at for their names, and finished up at Fargo, the largest city in the state, where I went back to a hotel before heading back to Lincoln on I-29 and I-80 the next day. I got a picture of a dumpster, a street, and the Fargo theater behind the hotel. Guess I didn't do much exploring in town, because it was a long drive ahead and I wanted to get back. Or maybe I only carry the memory of the photograph. Some say that is a reason for putting away a camera and just having the experience. But I enjoy the process of seeing things and sharing what I see in a picture. The act of grabbing the sight and sharing 'the beauty I see in the world,' as a friend insightfully put it, has become more important to me than creating the perfect product. I use them to illustrate lectures now, and I also make calendars every year.

So that's my sole experience of North Dakota. Not much, but more than a vast majority of Americans can claim, so maybe it's worth something. And I'm a geographer, so I can assert that I was intentional in my exploration and at least a little educated, though in that regard, probably not much more than any amateur explorer. I think I can nonetheless say that Clay wonderfully and comprehensively conveys the landscape and culture of this northern Plains state. He made me long for the wide open spaces and corny sculptures and historic sites again. Hearing my then-girlfriend read the opening pages, I recall saying yup, yup, yup to every description of the places I had traveled through. That was just before the Bakken Oil boom exploded, so that chapter was really something.

The only disappointment I felt was the book's lack of real connection with the indigenous population. Although Clay treats them with respect and knowledge, they are given the attention an outsider would give them in a place that is his home - and theirs! It's a state where the divide between the cultures is a chasm, and I wish he had delved into that much more rather than stay on one side of it.

My opinion, then, is that the indigenous people living in the state of North Dakota merited a chapter rather than sentences in chapters. There are more than a few indigenous communities there - quite a few more - and from someone who visits and takes students and friends to sacred sites and gives his (most likely white) North Dakota readers sincere advice about the truths they need to face and accept about their historic and contemporary attitudes toward their native neighbors, I thought there would have been more stories of Clay doing things and having conservations with some indigenous friends. I thought we would have got to know a few such friends, rather than see them from a distance or in the abstract or the historic. And, having read about regenerative agriculture and finding it fascinating and very important for the future of the country, I also would have loved to have seen him write about some unconventional agricultural innovations like the Burleigh County Soil Conservation District's work in regenerative farming methods.

Sadly, I get the impression that this important book, as he describes it, will be discussed in bookstores, college seminars, and campus guest lecture events. Maybe a few legislators will receive a copy and put it on their bookshelf after saying good things about it. Clay's passion for the state and its future comes through in great billowing clouds of good-natured derision for the stupidity of short-sighted developers and politicians and sometimes for no apparent reason, as he admits in one description, other than, most likely, Clay is an individual who is in love with his state and with his knowledge of it. While I sometimes grew tired of that aspect of his personality, and was unsatisfied with his connection to the indigenous people of the northern Plains, I nonetheless enthusiastically read one chapter after another through to the end, acknowledgements included, and would recommend it to the vast hordes who haven't visited North Dakota but want to learn something.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up in a small town in Western North Dakota, received a terrific and affordable education in the Eastern Universities, and lived in Williston during the recent fracking boom. The state will always be in my heart and I so enjoyed Jenkinson’s reverence for what makes it special. I applaud his vision of what the future could be, but I am afraid not enough people there will agree with him.

[Fred Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the author is an excellent observer of life in North Dakota. I'll admit I'm one of those North Dakotans that grew up on the east side and rarely ventured out west, which is much of what Jenkinson discusses. I agree with almost all of the things that he says need to change in North Dakota for it to thrive in a meaningful way long-term. But I have zero confidence any of those things will actually happen; certainly not in the short term. I think his views hold true for many parts of the Great Plains. Even though geographically they are pretty close, he is right in that the mentality on the Great Plains is a little different from the Midwest like here in Minnesota where I live. Life on the plains is a little more demanding and insular and despite what many people now say, the federal government has played, and continues to play, a pretty big role in supporting it. He also has a pretty strong message about collaboration with the Native Americans. Their culture survived for hundreds of years in ND, probably thousands. These two cultures need to collaborate long term.

Overall I would recommend reading the essays spread out over time, not as a whole book ,as message can get a little repetitive.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book would be most appreciated by North Dakotans but as a non-North Dakotan I found it very interesting. However, North Dakota has played a huge part in my life as I have observed it for the past 28 years living 5-10 blocks away from it in Moorhead, MN. Clay Jenkinson has a weekly public radio show, THE THOMAS JEFFERSON HOUR, in which he shares his knowledge as a humanities scholar. I liked these essays for the honesty with which he portrayed the state, its people and culture; his love of the state; his good sense of humor, his depth of analysis, and the nerdiness that comes through in some of the essays. His humor and nerdiness come through well in his essay on where the exact center of North America is located--Rugby, Robinson, or Center; others are very thoughtful and in-depth as he explores the character of its people. A good overview about the state.

[Jeff Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a nice read. I felt Mr. Jenkinson tends to wander off into fond rememberances and waxes poetic with the imagery a bit much at times, and not enough at others, but that really is what this book is about in my opinion. At times you get to feeling that the essays are more geared towards "what's wrong with North Dakota" but you are always reminded about the things that are "right" with North Dakota shortly after. I wholeheartedly agree witha majority of Mr. Jenkinson's ideals, beliefs, thoughts, and suggestions. If you are from North Dakota, live in North Dakota, are interested in North Dakota, this book is a great read. Here is to the future of North Dakota, and may we always be able to listen to the cottonwoods.

[Lisa Lewton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a collection of essays, which makes it easy to read. There is a longing for North Dakota to clarify who it will be moving into the future. Highlighted are the best of what this state offers and an honest reflection on the mistakes that have been made to the disadvantage of Native Americans. I appreciate the author’s honesty, naming hard historical truths, and hard truths in regard to the energy boom.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a HUGE Clay Jenkinson fan, but I still may not have read this book if my son has not recently - September 2021 - moved to ND. I learned SO much about North Dakota. I will use the book as a reference during my future visits to Fargo, ND & beyond!!

[Sandy Hanson]

This was a difficult book for me to get through. Ha! I have yet to finish it, but what I have read I've enjoyed. I especially enjoyed listening to Clay speak on this book. I'd like to eventually get back to it - ideally read and road trip to the areas he describes.

[Verna LaBounty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, thoughtful essays about North Dakota. Good for discussion about state’s future.

[Verna LaBounty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing by Clay Jenkinson is always a pleasure to read because it's a thoughtful discussion of ideas.

[Audrey Marcusen McMacken · Rating 3 out of 5]

5⭐️ for much some of the early essays. Then less engaging to me.

[Kenneth Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible love letter to and about the plains, and specifically North Dakota. Clay gives us a lot to think about in this work.