Dear Reader,
For many years, I’ve been experiencing a sickness known to white girls as “wanderlust”. Yes, I know, every girl wants to travel, but I am what I am and it is what it is. To be fair, I have my reasons! For people (like me) who have made it their goal to be well-rounded in experience and thought, nothing can replace the perspective that traveling provides.
Besides the few places that I’ve been to in the past, most of my travel has consisted of living vicariously through the exploration/survival genre of books that I love so dearly. Here are some examples that I have personally read:
- Hatchet by Gary Paulson (fictional, but who cares!)
- Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
- Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (horrible, love it)
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
Since I have two young children whose safety I must consider, I’ve decided to keep my solo adventures (with kids) closer to home and a bit tamer than the harrowing experiences in the above books. Doing so while still keeping it fun is more difficult than it sounds, though! I live in North Dakota, which means you can drive for hours and basically just see grasslands and the occasional pump jack. That’s not going to stop me from enjoying it, though!
My first step was to research interesting places near me, and in doing so I came across a place called the Fort Buford State Historic Site. Now, I have actually visited it years ago, but I don’t remember much except that it was quiet and lonely. It didn’t make much of an impression on me, but as always we need to be resourceful and work with what we have, so I decided that someday I’m going to go back, but I’m going to make it special and interesting by learning its history.
Boy, was that a mistake. I have gone so deep down a history rabbit hole that I do NOT have time for – I mean I have been losing sleep reading about this place and the people who were there, and then following the trails of those people through their lives… It’s too much! Too much! But I can’t stop; I must finish this project! Now I can’t wait to go back to Fort Buford, and I will make it there very soon so I can share what I’ve learned about this deceptively interesting landmark.
– Madelyn