Demystifying the Prairie

I live in South Dakota by choice, not by birth. People outside the state seem reluctant to let go of the South Dakota myths—we’re all bumpkins; we live in a desolate, unpopulated, uncivilized frontier; we wear overalls and chew straw; we’re redneck cowpokes & B-western movie Indians, or we’re all Norwegians. There are other myths, but these are the persistent biggies.

I’m Marlene, and I share an acreage in eastern South Dakota with my husband, Ray, two parrots, two dogs, an unknown number of wild barn cats, and a growing flock of peacocks. Eastern South Dakota is mostly prairie and farmland; western South Dakota is plains, ranchland, the Badlands and the Black Hills. The dividing line is the Missouri River, and South Dakotans often use “East River” or “West River” as descriptors as in, “Did you SEE those tacky boots? She’s SO West River.”

In spite of being a pinkish, green-eyed redhead, I have nary a drop of Norwegian or other Scandinavian blood (no Irish, either). I’m originally from Omaha, NE—rah rah Huskers. Ray’s a true South Dakota boy from Milbank, a town famous for granite and cheese (appropriate, considering the impassable intestinal rock that cheese can become). We have four human kids who, through miraculous quirks of fate, powerful survival instincts, and a whole lot of parental elbow grease, grew to adulthood.

Ray’s a printer in Sioux Falls and drummer with a local band, and I’m an English teacher at the U of SD in Vermillion. Although we can’t see another human habitat from any window in our house, we are only minutes from the towns of Vermillion and Beresford, and less than an hour from Sioux Falls and Sioux City, IA, where the bookstores, import stores, ethnic restaurants, and pet superstores keep me in touch with my inner consumer. We don’t chew straw, but a nice salad of lambsquarters and nasturtiums isn’t out of the question.

It’s raining off and on again today. It’s been an unusually wet spring, so our pond is full, and the frogs cut loose at night in amazing Righteous Brothers basso profundo. It’s too wet to get into the garden, clear brush or make trails (my plan is for walking trails all around the seven acres). We have a 2-story meditation tower by the pond badly in need of repair, but it’s too close to where the peahens are sitting on nests or schooling newly-hatched chicks in the tall grass. So it’s a good day to read (just starting Jose Saramago’s Seeing), work on poems, or knit (working on a “kitty” hat for a friend’s son’s birthday). Peaceful grey day on the prairie.