Go Blackbirds

We’re in the middle of the middle.

Today we crossed the Mississippi River, full of Huck Finn-ready islands even this far up.

A few days ago, the transition from empty, treeless North Dakota plains to landscape that looks a lot like home was almost instant. We crossed the Red River border into Minnesota, and within an hour we were in a hilly landscape of trees, fields, and lakes.

We found that summer is the time for road repair, to the chagrin of cyclists trying to follow directions. We learned to go around “road closed” signs except for the time we were daunted by a deep layer of fresh chip seal gravel.

We learned that it’s hard to find a place to plunk your tent in vacation country, and we were happy to return to lower key RV land.

Our route across Minnesota’s narrow waist has been mostly on rail trails. Two and a half days of tree tunnels got a little boring, but we did make fast progress. My hat is off to Minnesota for buying and paving these rights of way, which are well used by bikers, walkers, and runners. 

Being old railroad lines, the routes run right through the center of every little village. Some places have seized on the trails to invite bike tourism. Here’s a bike tool stand in the middle of town.

Some towns have fixed up the old train stations into community centers and cafes, and some even let you camp there.

At one point on the flat rail trail we passed a sign saying “Continental Divide.” The trail was on the line where waters flow either south to the Gulf of Mexico or north to the Arctic.

With more settlement and more population here, there are more roads, and thus we usually don’t have ride on thoroughfares with big trucks. There’s less roadkill on these smaller roads, though there’s plenty anyway. It’s arguably bizarre to keep a roadkill tally (I do know this, Tess), but it’s evidence of a sort. Deer and raccoons are the main victims, and we don’t give those a glance. A sign on the summer’s advance is that don’t see dead fledgling birds as much as we did farther west. Today was our first roadkill Blue Jay and first Brown Thrasher. One thing I’ve never seen as roadkill despite it’s being almost everywhere we’ve ridden: Red Winged Blackbirds. May they inherit the earth. I’m wondering what form that earth will take. We see almost no insects. There are none on the small number of flowering wild plants in the few uncultivated spaces that are left. Finishing the book The Beekeeper’s Lament, I can’t see how our agricultural practices will leave any insect-dependent plants and birds at all.

We do see some nice live creatures once in a while. I think I saw an otter crossing the road today. Twice we have seen and heard Sand Hill Cranes. I suppose they are common here, but they are exciting to me, so here’s my not very good photo.

I am writing this in a motel that’s a nice refuge from tonight’s expected drizzle, something that we haven’t seen for a month. Mark is the good one, doing his yoga.

Before the trip I worried about the idea of being with anyone for every minute, day and night, for so long. It’s OK. Most of the riding hours we’re lost in our own thoughts. Talk time is during meals and breaks, or when there’s some sight to point out. Evening reading gives each of us a little space and a different world to inhabit. Mark has learned he must eat all the time on this trip; that insight staves off grumpiness. We sometimes have trouble over directions when he’d like to figure things out with electronics and I’d like to use the paper map. I can’t help but post this photo of where his Google Maps routing took us a few days ago. 

At least we could laugh. In the end we needed electronics, paper maps, and a local’s advice to find the route. The bonus of wandering was that we came upon this city park, where at first I thought the trees were full of snagged plastic bags.

It turned out to be a crane and cormorant rookery.

I do miss home. I miss friends. I miss my garden (though Sally and Greg, who have been working the vegetable beds, report that the deer have seen that we are away and have eaten everything). Comparing conditions, I’m often reminded of the environmental movement we have in Maine, which has had bad setbacks in the LePage years but has great organizations keeping up the fight. Just look at the bottle bill we still have. All the other states that used to collect a deposit on containers have given in to the bottling industry’s pressures. Where once cans were stamped with a roster of states collecting deposits, now only California, Hawaii, and Maine are still there. Maine is in good company. 

I wonder if you can buy fatheads in Maine. Are there fatheads in Maine? Maybe just a few Fatheads. 

And now the good one and the bad one will go have dinner. There’s the truck stop and the DQ. But “latte” written on a tucked-away sign is the giveaway that there’s a place to eat that will include a vegetable or two.