The Wind, the Work, and Home

I don’t know how to explain North Dakota to people who only look at it on a map. They think it is empty. To me it never felt empty. It felt like room to think, room to work, and room for a family to stand on its own two feet.

My dad used to come in with his face red from the cold and act like it was nothing. My mother would tell him to shut the door before he froze the whole house, and then they would sit at the table with coffee like every hard day was just another thing to get through.

That is what this state taught us, I guess. You don’t have to talk big. You just keep going.

This hex is for my parents, for North Dakota, and for the life that looked simple from the outside but took everything they had to build.