July 25, 2003

Plains Folk: The Butterfly

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Elmer lives for the Butterfly. He's not much for the skip-kick steps of the verses, but when it comes time to figure-eight two women through the chorus, the years fall away, and he skims the polished plywood dance floor like a hovercraft.

I suppose the day will come when, like Elmer, I won't be able to walk ten miles across the Coteau after sharptails, or snowshoe the cattail marshes of winter, or even dig my own spuds, but now I know I'll still be able to hitch a ride to the Lindaas Barn Dance for some low-impact polkas and maybe even a Butterfly.

That will be important as life, because unlike most Lutherans (St. Paul has a lot to answer for) and most writers (so does Kathleen Norris), I never have considered life on the plains to be an ascetic denial of sensuality. The plains are a place for full play of the senses.

So now, in high summer on the northern plains, open up. Riding in an open vehicle helps, which is what we did a few days ago en route to the old Ladbury Church west of Sibley. This is the church a bunch of us saved from collapse and restored as a community center last year. George Amann, from over Dazey way, bless his heart, suggested we might run a little lecture series in the church, and it's going well. We drove over to hear Ranger Scott Tichy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers give his talk on Lewis and Clark.

It was a nifty talk, but I particularly enjoyed the heat in the church, and then the dry west breeze as we stepped back outside. That was when I thought about the sublime smells of haying that had washed over me all the way there. I thought, too, of the spidery lavender bergamot blooming up the slopes of the coulees of the Sheyenne, and imagined that its minty scent also had touched me on the road. I know the aroma of white and yellow sweet clover was downright close.

Departing Sibley, and after a quick beverage at Rock'n Rodney's of Luverne, we drove toward Mayville, where I knew Elroy Lindaas already was fronting the band up in his loft. The breeze stilled, and the slough-smell of decay hung heavy. However rotten this smell may be in late July, it is not the smell of death, it is the smell of life. Cycles of life spin swiftly during these long days.

So swiftly, and so much is humankind a part of the pace of summer here, that there is just too much life to apprehend it all. I've already missed the Buffalo Shuffle, and I don't see how I can make it to the Luverne Picnic or to Dazey Days.

We got to the Lindaas Barn Dance and noticed the crowd was a little less than usual, but then found out that was because there were dances the same night in both Mayville and Portland. I tell you, the pace of summer around here is killing me. Throw me into the slough.

All creatures great and small, we are part of this lively tempo of a northern summer. Our little festivals and frolics and fairs in our little country towns, pell-mell one upon another, are renewals of community and humanity just as surely as the rotting of sloughs and the raising of broods and the nurture of crops are renewals of nature and the land. There is much to be done in short time. After that we better fatten up for winter. Fall supper season, you know.

What are you doing sitting inside reading this? Shouldn't you be out dancing, celebrating, composting, or something? Put these words away until November.

The last Lindaas Barn Dance of Indian summer will mark a change in pace. The Ladbury church, unheated, will be shut up until about Memorial Day. Deep in hibernation, Elmer and I will dream of the Butterfly.

###

Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu 

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern that is suitable for printing. 
(1.5MB b&w photo)

Click here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern wearing a hat that is suitable for printing.
(1.3MB b&w photo)