New town, new library! We’re at the library in Fargo and camping in Moorhead. Bismarck turned out to be great. I really liked it. I guess it wasn’t what I expected, though I’m not really sure what that was. I liked the landscape, though I’m told that it is unusual to have things be so green at this time of year--they’ve gotten lots of rain.
We made contact with the clerk of the Bismarck Friends Meeting, so we were able to go there on Sunday and participate in a really thoughtful and interesting discussion regarding an excerpt from Quaker Faith and Practice.
Later we went to the home of the clerk and his wife, where we went out on their boat. He ran it down the river and out into the center and we floated back. Other than a motorboat that went by, there was no one else there. It was quite peaceful and very beautiful. Then we had tea and cookies on their deck and had a nice chat. It was fun!
The campground at Bismarck was the best we’ve stayed at. There was the usual problem of inadequate bathroom/shower facilities, but that was the only drawback. The tent sites were away from the RVs, nicely shaded, the boundaries were well marked, and they were large. We got to Moorhead and things were rather different. It’s just got a different vibe. The guy did put us in the back away from the highway, which was nice. It was pretty quiet, which was nice, too. But the bathroom is kind of yucky--the showers are full of mildew stains and the toilets full of rust stains. I suppose this is a difficult problem because you deal with the kind of water that you have, after all. But it doesn’t look nice and it’s not pleasant to try and take a shower in such conditions. But there’s hardly any water pressure and one of the showers doesn’t work anyway! So last evening, I went and got ready to step into the shower, turned the knob and a trickle of water dribbled out. Thinking I was doing something wrong, I tried every which way, to no avail. So I packed up my soap and shampoo, got dressed again, and stormed off in a bit of a snit. I was highly annoyed. Then awhile later Bill decided to do laundry. While we were waiting for that to be done I jumped into a working shower. Then we went back to the laundry room to put stuff in the dryer. It wouldn’t work. The only other dryer was being used and the same person had two more loads of laundry in washing machines waiting to be put into the dryer. So we loaded up our wet clothes, went back to the campsite, and hung them up in and on the truck. The office was closed by this time. This morning we got up early and used the working dryer and when he came in the guy gave us the money back that we had placed in the non-working dryer. I was just so annoyed last night. Coming from Bismarck where I had enjoyed myself and the campsite to the Moorhead campground and all of these niggly little issues was not fun. Things seem more reasonable this morning. I am still not a fan of the bathroom. But I should not have to do laundry again while I am here, so that will be one less thing to get annoyed about. The campsite is pretty nice--or at least I would’ve thought so before Bismarck. We are backed up against a couple of rows of big trees and beyond that is a cornfield. The wind was blowing pretty good last night, but we didn’t feel much of it because the big trees acted as windbreaks. So we have shade. Not sure that will be much of an issue this week as the temperatures are supposed to be in the high 60s tomorrow (!) and the 70s for the rest of the week. We will go on to Minneapolis/St Paul next and maybe have the opportunity to teach a workshop. We will see how that works out.
I was thinking about the fact that it was Sunday yesterday and I suddenly had the thought that I was homesick! I had to unpack that a little bit because Klamath Falls as a community never felt like home to me. I tend to create “home” wherever I am, so I had my house and that felt like home, but not the community. That felt more like a prison. Now I have my truck/tent and those feel like home. I have been astonished to realize how much of my life gets lived outside now. Anyway, I realized that for me, the church felt like home in some ways. Not that I was in line with the stated Christian theology. I feel like a Quaker, but not a Christian one. I recently read a book about the history of Quaker thought and found myself in the idea of a post-Christian, nonrealist Quaker. So I was not at the same place as many of the attendees of the church. But that really didn’t matter. We were all there, doing different things and being in different places, but we were still a community. It made me feel good to think about that.
