In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an
area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs,
heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is
an old concrete two-laner that hasn't had much traffic since a four-laner
went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air
suddenly becomes cooler. Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up
again.
I'm happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere,
famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions
disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete
between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and
marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look
closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles. --
There's a red-winged blackbird.