Much as I am saddened to see the autumn season come to an end, it makes my husband, Jim, delighted when I spend about 12 hours decorating Red Oak House for Christmas. He is just a big kid at heart. I’m stubborn about not taking down the autumn decorations until Thanksgiving has passed, even though I began seeing Christmas decor …
I am a daughter of Slope County, one of the many grandchildren of Andy and Lillian Silbernagel. Slope County is one of the least populated counties in the United States. I was named after Lillian Hovick, my maternal grandmother. I can see my daughter Rachel’s nose in her nose. My last memory of her is when she and I went picking …
The year I was a sophomore in college, one of my mentors, my Lutheran pastor, was reading a novel. He told me I should read it, and so I did. I remember exactly where we were and what the car in which we were riding looked like. I paid attention, as I greatly respected this man. The book was “Beyond …
Jim requested that I bake a cherry pie. We found a jar of Door County Cherry Pie Filling at Seed Savers in Iowa and brought it home. I tucked it away for this special occasion. While pumpkin pie is traditional Thanksgiving fare, I set my mind to making the cherry pie for the holiday feast. I mixed up my pie …
In the last days of 2016, Jim and I sent a handwritten letter to President Barack Obama, a heartfelt plea to him to act in his last days to protect the Elkhorn Ranch. We were inspired to do this after a Christmas winter campout to that area. Here is a two-part series Jim wrote about that campout: Camping at the Elkhorn …
Friends and family know that I’m a fervent fan of the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’ve written about this before on my blog, including in this book review. There was a time in my life when I read her books over and over, but I eventually moved on to devouring the books about her, of which I have a …
Some weeks ago, my dear friend, Ken, loaned me a gem of a book, one he had enjoyed and he knew that I would like it too, entitled “As Kingfishers Catch Fire: Books & Birds,” by Alex Preston and Neil Gower, an exploration of birds in literature. I started it very soon after that day, but then the library alerted me …
Although it is now more than 30 years ago, I remember very clearly the day when I was a graduate student at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University and Dr. Michael Rothacker gave his students the assignment of reading a novel of our choosing and writing a report on said novel. My friend, Pamela Jean, and I went right over to …
Jim and I took in the most enchanting exhibit at the Bismarck Art Galleries Association this afternoon, one of the treasures of our city. The exhibit is “Northern Plains Native Americans: A Modern Wet Plate Perspective” by Shane Balkowitsch. I was particularly taken with many of the subject’s Native American names. Although there were dozens that deeply moved us, my …
How do I write about a place I’ve waited four decades to see, with great anticipation? Only to say architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin (near the town of Spring Green), was worth the wait, and I find myself ttruly inspired anew. All of my life, I’ve been an admirer of Wright’s work. Long ago when I cataloged Stoxen …
It was a three-skillet supper day at Red Oak House on Monday. Walleye fresh from the Missouri River, fried red potatoes from our garden and creamed corn we put up in August. Just like my Mama Crook did, I cooked up this “mess of fish,” dredging the filets in self-rising cornmeal (mixed with salt and pepper) and frying these in …
We are settling in here at Red Oak House for the winter, tweaking our list of indoor projects and savoring meals of turkey, pork roast and ham. Outside my kitchen office window, the chickadees and woodpeckers on busy on the suet feeder. Specifically, ours in North Dakota are black-capped chickadees, parus atricapillus. Parus is Latin for “titmouse” and atricapillus for “black-capped, formed …
The communities of Bowman County, North Dakota, hold a gathering at the Bowman High School every year celebrating Veterans Day. This year, they chose to honor my father, Garland Crook, who is now 93. We traveled there Thursday. Sadly, he was not feeling strong enough to attend. He would have seen many of his buddies there. In fact, one even …
I received a unique blessing Saturday morning: an Indian cooking lesson from Sister Mary Michael, one of the Carmelite nuns who serve our Spirit of Life Roman Catholic Church parish in Mandan, N.D. She is a cooking whirlwind and chopped the onions in a blaze. She does it all from years of experience, with nothing written down, and uses the …
When we opened the blinds last Friday morning, it was to a world of whiteness. The snow shovels are staged, and all that was left to do was rummage in the garage storage box for the windshield scraper and the runner rug for the slate front patio (which gets very slippery in the cold weather). I even dug out the …
These past two days back home at Red Oak House found us back to fall chores, and Jim catching walleye on the Missouri River, supper tonight. Wednesday night, with the gorgeous tiger’s-eye beans we’d brought home from Seed Savers Exchange and grass-fed beef from the Striefels, I cooked up a huge pot of chili, making enough so that Jim and …
Lizzie was sad Monday a week past. She saw those suitcases, and she became clingy, not sure whether she was going with us or not. For her, this time it was the kennel, as Chelsea is gone for schooling and thus her best pal not available for dog-sitting. Thus, it was that we two English majors made a road trip east, …
It has truly been a lovely autumn here in Bismarck. On Sunday, our small aspen grove rewarded us with golden glory. Three of the aspen trees were a gift from dear Sheila Schafer, as a tribute to Jim’s late mother. Sheila came over to watch Cashman Nursery plant the trees. She loved to see trees planted and frequently gave these …
Well, on Thursday I said it to Jim. That statement that comes around every year: “I don’t want to see another tomato again for quite awhile.” By this point, we’ve converted thousands of tomatoes (Jim says over 1,700, plus my sister gave us some of hers) into salsa, juice, marinara — and Thursday, I canned 14 quarts of tomato basil …
My close friends and husband know that the musician Lucinda Williams rocks my world. Has since I first listened to her decades ago. I have all of her recordings, and I’m currently listening to “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone” in my car. She is the daughter of the late poet Miller Williams and a fierce songwriter. I’ve been …
Tuesday morning, I worked in the cool autumn sunshine on yard chores, getting things done before the snow flies. First, I tackled the pile of limbs we had accumulated over the summer in our trailer, breaking and sawing up the branches to add to our kindling pile. Lizzie the springer spaniel happily nosed around in the fallen leaves and disappeared …
Jim and I maintain a lifelong love affair with the Little Missouri River. It is one of the things that most deeply bond us together. We know every mile of this river intimately. What follows is my letter of last week to North Dakota Department of Transportation regarding the Long X Bridge project. The bridge is near to the North …
“But your solitude will be your home and haven even in the midst of very strange conditions, and from there you will discover all your paths.” — Ranier Maria Rilke My path this past week took me to North Dakota’s Roughrider Country. Our first stop was a meeting of the Little Missouri River Commission in Dickinson, where we bore witness …
“A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.” — “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” a book by Terry Tempest Williams In what has been described by many as a “soul-crushing week” in the United States, I’m trying my damnest to focus on the blessings and gifts in my life. One of the finest gifts of friendship in my …
“That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. … Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.” — George Saunders My next door neighbor’s ash …
Frost is in the forecast for Red Oak House. It was inevitable and is an integral part of the life cycle. On this chilly and breezy Tuesday morning, Jim and I harvested the last of the vegetables — that is everything but the Brussels sprouts, which are left out until they produce. We’ll see. Together we dug the parsnips, the leeks and …
On Saturday, I began a nine-week meditation on nonviolence. Monday morning, the anniversary of the birth of Gandhi, a leader who taught the world so much about nonviolence but died by an assassin’s bullet, I awoke to the horrible news of the carnage in Las Vegas. Although my grandparents saw great hardship in their long lives, I feel certain that …
Like millions of others, I’ve now watched all 10 episodes of the moving Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary, “The Vietnam War” on PBS. My thoughts are filled with the stories and images in this film and with my personal Vietnam War memories. After we’ve watched each compelling episode, my husband and I talked about his Vietnam War memories. He served in the …
Jim took a break Saturday from fishing and hunting in order to work on his garlic bed. He also cultivated an area in the vegetable garden for me. Now that we have a chicken-wire fence around the vegetable garden, I can plant tulips and the rascally rabbits won’t gnaw them down to nubs. I planted 80 bulbs — yellow and …
Deciding that my knees are sufficiently recovered to again ride my bicycle, I hit the trail Friday. That is the trail along one of the most beautiful rivers in the world, the Missouri. It was a gorgeous autumn day, 63 degrees, with a zephyr breeze and blue sky. I loaded my bike into my car and headed for Steamboat Park. …
Autumn beauty continues to emerge in my yard, including peak hydrangea color, hinting at the frost that is nigh. Jim complains that he has about 500 green tomatoes still on the vine, and the folding table is back in the dining room in preparation for bringing those in for ripening, ending the cycle that began with the seedlings in that …
First of all, wear a comfortable and supportive pair of shoes. It is the apple time of the year. We have only crab apple trees, and I had it in mind to make applesauce, so I put out a plea on social media begging for surplus apples. Jim and I picked a basketful at our friend Mylo’s house this weekend, …
The typhoons we experienced when we were living on Okinawa in the mid-1960s are much on my mind these days, what with all of the terrible Atlantic hurricanes in the news. I have some vivid childhood memories and my parents and siblings and I have talked about these, reliving those memories for decades. My most vivid memory is of the …
With the arrival of the autumnal equinox, my writing will begin to shift away from the garden returning to the topic of Dakota Trails, among other topics. My two favorite days on the calendar are the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, when the light of the world is equal, in complete harmony between day and night. Although autumn is my favorite …
As I sit down to write this, I’m listening to thunder and hoping that regular rain will return to the northern Plains. Today I’m reflecting on the Theodore Roosevelt: the Naturalist in the Arena Symposium that Jim and I attended at nearby at Dickinson (N.D.) State University last week, the 12th annual. We attended the first and several others in the intervening …
Finally, it rained. A two-day soaker Friday and Saturday. We were in the Bad Lands for a four-day trip, an immersion in Theodore Roosevelt, where we attended the 12th annual TR Symposium at Dickinson (N.D.) State University. Jim and I have attended a number of these (including the first), and this year’s topic of TR the Naturalist was irresistible to …
On Wednesday, I commandeered the canner from Jim so that I could make the season’s first batch of marinara at Red Oak House. He grows a variety of tomatoes, including paste type, starting these from seed in the basement in the early spring. As I’ve previously written, he has harvested more than a thousand tomatoes and cans many jars of …
“Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.” — Theodore Roosevelt Gentle reader, if you are looking for the perfect autumn getaway in North Dakota, I suggest the fifth annual Dakota Night Astronomy Festival, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in beautiful Medora, N.D. From the Theodore Roosevelt National Park press release: “People have been marveling at the …
Something is puzzling me this year in the garden. In the front yard, the impatiens are insipid, but in the backyard perennial beds, these bright shade annuals are robust. What could possibly be the explanation? My first instinct was the hot, dry weather and the lack of rain water, but this would be true both in front and back. Naturally, …
It was Pow Wow weekend in Bismarck and the time of the biggest rummage sale weekend of the year in these parts. I partook Friday and found some treasures, with the bonus of driving around river city and seeing how creative residents are in their decorating and landscaping. It is also the weekend of the Sr. Kateri Festival at our …
My favorite month in North Dakota is September. It is a difficult choice. June is filled with new growth in the perennial beds and the planting of the garden and with birdsong. But September. Ah, September. The heat of summer has passed. I dislike the hot weather. I wilt easily. My children and husband were born in September, so it …
The most auspicious day on our calendar arrived. My husband and our twin daughters share the same birthday. (Karma, eh?) And we celebrate big each year. This year was ramped up by a long shot because it was Jim’s 70th. Around this milestone, we planned a family reunion with his six siblings and their spouses, held in historic Medora, N.D. …
“The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind, but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it …
“Steamboats in Dakota Territory: Transforming the Northern Plains,” Tracy Potter. The History Press, 2017, 140 pages. I can think of no one more qualified to enlighten readers on the history of steamboats in Dakota land than Tracy Potter, Bismarck, the author of the book “Sheheke: Mandan Indian Diplomat.” Potter is deeply read in history and his work leading the Fort …