It’s fall again. The leaves have changed color and are dropping off the trees faster than they can be raked, pumpkin spice is everywhere and, most notably, the temperatures have dropped and sweaters have made their annual reappearance.
I don’t love the cold. Anywhere between seventy and ninety degrees is fine with me.
Fall is tolerable, but it’s the bitter-cold North Dakota winters that really get to me. Maybe if winter was a mere three to five months, it would be better, but snow can fly from October to May, give or take a few weeks.
Cold is really my biggest gripe about North Dakota. Our great state has its 135th birthday on Nov. 2, but I decided to celebrate a little early.
So, as I dread the weather in the upcoming months, I decided to pay my respects to the things I actually like about living in the Upper Midwest—before the plummeting thermometer really gets me down.
- Landscape.
Yes, the Red River Valley is flat as a pancake. You can watch your dog run away for three days. I love it. I love seeing nothing but plains and prairie grasses and farmers’ fields to the point where the earth meets the sky.
You can catch a magnificent North Dakota sunset, painted orange and purple, or see every single cloud for a fifty-mile radius.
However, there is more to the terrain than open prairie. The Badlands in Western North Dakota have some of the most beautiful landscapes that I’ve ever seen. Painted Canyon, just outside Medora, North Dakota, is especially gorgeous.
There are trees and (short) hills, and plenty of lakes and rivers. Have you ever seen a field of sunflowers right before harvest? Every yellow petal stands in salute, like a picture right out of a storybook.
- Not-so-peopley
I love people, but not a lot all at once, and not all the time. North Dakota is the third from the bottom in terms of population in U.S. states (below us being Vermont and Wyoming with the smallest population).
In the 2022 census report, there were 779,261 people who call North Dakota home. Just going to Minneapolis or St. Paul, their one city has more people than our entire state!
I love that North Dakota doesn’t feel crowded. There are cities if you want them, but there’s room to breathe. Our larger cities, such as Fargo, Bismarck or Grand Forks don’t have the “big city” feel, but they are certainly no small town.
I can’t explain it, and maybe it just comes from living my entire life in the same state, but I feel like we’re in a sweet spot: not too much, and not too little.
- The People in General
Speaking of people, North Dakotans have a culture all their own. From giant buffalo to tater tot hotdish, we take pride in what is ours.
Mostly, I love North Dakotans supporting North Dakotans.
Being a mostly rural, small-town state, there are only a handful of famous people who have claimed this place home. Celebrities such as Carson Wentz and Josh Duhamel. To turn back the clock, Lawrence Welk, Peggy Lee and Angie Dickinson. North Dakota people are proud to claim them as our own. In fact, we get excited to discover that a celebrity spent any amount of time in our state!
This is no Hollywood, with every other VIP having grown up in the four corners of California; our claims to fame are worth a lot to us, and we take a lot of pride in every single recognition we get.
North Dakotans don’t just support their celebrities. We take care of our own people. When there’s a flood, the community rallies for sandbagging. When a neighbor is in a crisis, friends fall in line with support, from food to yard work. We watch each other’s houses when they go on vacation, give everyone else the right of way at a four-way stop and we definitely know how to shovel one another out when the snow piles up.
- Food
Sauerkraut. Wishek sausage. Sauerkraut on pizza. Hot dish. Wild Rice Soup.
More sauerkraut.
Midwesterners know how to do comfort food—the perfect dishes to fend off the cold. Like so many places around the world, we know how to “sit down and eat,” especially when it comes to celebrations and holidays.
North Dakota doesn’t have a lot of publicity (and we like it that way), but what we do have, we are proud of. We love our state, and despite the weather, there are still plenty of reasons to love where we live. 135 years is a reason to celebrate! Happy birthday, North Dakota!