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I mentioned a couple of days ago that son-in-law Cameron (Josie), his brother, and a friend were planning to drive from here to North Dakota. Cameron, a Master electrician and a long-time IBEW member, planned to take the N.D. Master's test at Bismarck this morning at 8:30 am. Jobs are scarce around here. His brother and the friend have been back and forth between Pocatello and North Dakota doing stints of work connected with, but not consistently within, the notorious "Oil Patch" where acute, super "boom town" social disorganization has given it near infamy. I suggested a few times, before they left early Sunday morning in a vehicle with 4WD -- and that was cutting it rather short time-wise as it was, but they drive much faster than I -- that they carefully check the weather. We spent 16 years in North Dakota and we could see via the weather reports some very ominous signs. The storm was raging even as they entered Montana -- and yesterday afternoon they were forced to take refuge at Glendive, Montana in the eastern part of the state -- a very small town where they likely got the last motel room available. Interstate 90/94 is totally closed. They'll reconnoiter later this morning. It's still snowing but beginning to taper off -- but high winds will blow snow hard, some into drifts. It will be at least a day, maybe two, before the highway is even half-way passable. They may wait it out or return to Idaho. Meanwhile the heavy snows in the Dakotas spell serious flooding in the rivers, especially the Red River of the North -- which flows north to Winnipeg. There's been heavy snow off and on in the Red region and in its tributaries in South Dakota and Minnesota. Fargo will be hit hard -- I look to John (oldest son) to give us some reports on that. North of Fargo could see even more flooding -- and the relatively new huge and high dike at Grand Forks will be severely tested. It is expected to hold. That was built several years after the extremely disastrous flood of '97 which wrecked almost all of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks and drove over 60,000 or so residents into the North Dakota and Minnesota hinterland, neighboring states, and Canadian provinces. (I've recounted several times how, after having recurrent "feelings" about the Red, I moved our family in 1991 well to the west of town. Friends were puzzled and enemies jeered. When the Flood came in April, it missed us by only 300 yards. We stayed around to help out as best we could -- and then came here to Idaho later that summer of '97.) A basic component of every Native tribal culture -- and, I'm sure, that of other tribes and also many non-tribal rural folk, is that, "You can't fight Nature and win." So, when the weather signs and intuition tell us to "hole up" for a time, we do just that. The only thing that will bring me out are emergencies involving people who seek my assistance. I've recounted before how, when much a Teen, and sensing snow in the middle of a late November night, I left my hunting camp on the Sycamore rim and got back to Flagstaff even as snow was falling. The next afternoon, a desperate Air Force colonel from Tucson, who, with his friend I had met when I was on Woody Mountain Fire Lookout the previous summer -- they were planning to hunt elk in the fall -- came to our door. They were snowed in at remote Harding Point and his friend had had a heart attack. He had walked out, finally caught a ride into Flag. City hunters were stranded all over and official agencies couldn't help him. We left early the next morning in my trusty Model A Ford -- I tied ropes through the wheel spokes to serve as chains. With, I am sure, the support of Good Spirits, we broke trail through the heavy snow on a trace of a road, got the colonel and his friend and their pickup out, and finally back to Flagstaff to the hospital. The friend made it OK. More than a dozen big city hunters died in the Northern Arizona woods on that one. Years later, our family was snug at home in Iowa City with a ranging storm outside. Shortly after midnight a desperate phone call came from Cedar Rapids, about 35 miles north, from a young Meskwaki woman and student of mine at the University of Iowa. She and a friend, also a Meskwaki and a law student, had been in a car wreck and, while she was OK, her friend was in the hospital. I drove through the blizzard, met them in the hospital room, and took her back to Iowa City. Again, I credit Good Spirits on that one. The wife of a professor friend of mine had been killed in an accident on that very highway a year before by a Semi. There've been other instances where I've risked for good causes. And sometimes I've gotten the last motel in a town. But we basically follow the example my Native father consistently set and expressed when I was little and we traveled much, often in isolated and rural snow country. "If your inner feelings tell you to stop and wait it out, do just that. Don't fight it unless you absolutely have to." And, yes, I do see climate change/global warming playing a key role in many of these recent and contemporary Extremes. H. HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO www.hunterbear.org (social justice) See the new expanded/updated edition of my "ORGANIZER'S BOOK." It's the inside story of the rise of the massive Jackson Movement -- careful grassroots organizing, bloody repression, sell-out and more. It also covers other organizing campaigns of mine through the decades since Mississippi. It's replete with grass-roots organizing examples and "lessons." And it has my new 10,000 word introduction. Among a myriad of positive comments and reviews: ". . .a local activist's important account of the deleterious effects the involvement of national organizations can have on indigenous protest movements." (Historian David Garrow.) http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm See the related: http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]: http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
