Hi! Back from vacation! Every summer when I come back from vacation I promise myself I won’t go away in the summer again. Truth is, I really needed to get away, and it was only four days. Still, I spent the last two days utterly overwhelmed with work and with rescuing the garden from weeds. I ‘m gonna spend the whole day today pickling to take care of all the beans and cucumbers I came home to. Not a bad thing, I know.
My friend Doug from California met me in Bismarck, North Dakota, for a trip to the western part of the state. My goal was to get to Williston, the heart of the tracking boom, but also to explore Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the North Dakota Badlands.
On the way, I visited three Benedictine Monasteries. I stayed the first night in Jamestown, ND, and got to Bismarck and Annunciation Monastery in time for Sunday Mass. This monastery has a lovely chapel that looks a lot like my home church in St. Joseph, Minnesota, with field stone walls and very similar light wood pews. Their original church, now part of the Benedictine Center for Servant Leadership, was designed by Marcel Breuer, who also designed Saint John’s Abbey church in Collegeville. It has a distinctive concrete bell banner and “Breuer black” pews. It has the same floor as the abbey church and even the clay tiles that line the cloister walk in Collegeville. The Sisters told me that Breuer had the interior field stones painted white, something they changed when they built their smaller chapel.
Breuer church
Sisters’ chapel
It was great to visit with them and share some cheeseburger soup after Mass. An added bonus was that they’ve been passing around Habits, and the woman at the desk recognized me from my name.
After I picked up Doug, we were on to Richardton and the two monasteries there, Assumption Abbey for the men, and on the outskirts of what is barely a town, Sacred Heart Monastery, where we stayed overnight. The women’s monastery is distinguished by their two wind generator windmills and, when you get there, the flock of llamas they keep.
The next day we hit the park, which was incredibly beautiful. Although you’re in the West, where grassland and high desert has replaced the prairie, it was less like a desert than the South Dakota Badlands. We saw prairie dog towns and buffalo, but the highlight, and one of the best wildlife experiences of my life, was to come upon a large herd of feral horses. They stood on a hill right next to a parking area, and were so quiet. They nuzzled and stood close together. They had shiny coats and looked very healthy. Their colors were rich and varied and unusual. I could have stayed there for hours.
That night we stayed in Watson City, just 15 miles north of the park. And that, my friends, is a story for another day.
Oh, and bonus– “World’s Largest Sand Hill Crane” between Jamestown (birthplace of Louis L’Amour) and Bismarck.
