On the Road Again - Adventures from an Empty Nest

It’s Pollinator Week!  June 19-25 is national pollinator week, and we have been celebrating by traveling through five of the top ten honey producing states in the country: North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Idaho. Everywhere we go as we travel the backroads and byways of this part of the country, we see stacks of beehives. Everyone claims their state produces the best honey. Our organizer friends in Montana told of their fight to keep Roundup-Ready GMO crops out of the state in an effort to protect both human and pollinator health.   So celebrate Pollinator Week where you are. Plant a flower. Kiss a bee.    Or better yet, breakfast on toast and honey.      Across the Great American Prairie In South Dakota, I bought a book called The Prairie Traveler, first published in 1859 by U.S. Army Captain Randolph B. Marcy, who had since the 1830s led both military and civilian groups of European Americans across the American prairie in search of...

My great grandfather came from Sweden to homestead in northeastern South Dakota in the late 1800s with his brothers. During my childhood, his farm was a home base for the family, and even today, is farmed by their descendants. My grandmother lived in north central Iowa, which is where I spent almost every summer growing up, and we would drive up to the farm in Redfield at least once every summer to visit family. Since then, my mother lost track of the South Dakota relatives, and although I have always been grounded by knowing they were there, I don't even know their names.  Gustav, Otto, Ole & Walter My great grandfather's farm never held debt because the U.S. government gave him and my uncles the land for free. They bought farm equipment together and shared it on their adjoining farms, keeping costs down. As a result, my grandfather and his brothers helped me and countless other cousins attend college, helped some relatives buy houses, and gave others the initial investmen...

The road to Sheyenne National Grasslands, ND Grinnell College Reunion 2023 Our second week of travel started with the three-day celebration of my 40th (well, 42nd, but – COVID) Reunion at Grinnell College. As a kid, I did not love high school, and when I miraculously got accepted to Grinnell with almost a full ride, I arrived in this small Iowa town to discover that I had found learning paradise. People there thought deep thoughts about important matters, took strategic action on local and global issues, and loved to talk and tell stories. It was wonderful to reconnect with those people again, to learn that they still think deep thoughts about important matters, still take strategic action, and still love to talk and tell stories. And the school itself continues to encourage those things; the alumni awards recipients have truly done things to change the world. I was proud to be among them.  Then it was on to the great northern prairies, through Iowa (a quick trip though my grandmot...