Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – Reflections over brunch

I ended up taking lunch at the one place I had seen open earlier.  The Calumet Inn was a handsome building, made up of a light quartzite (from the town of Jasper which I had passed through earlier)  with pipestone highlights.  I went through the main door not quite knowing what to expect.  Apart from the sign showing that it was open for brunch I had no idea of the quality.  A receptionist for the hotel pointed me towards the dining room and I passed by a buffet table with a modest but interesting range of dishes.  I was invited to sit and have a drink (soft) and then I started working my way through some cantaloupe, pancakes and maple syrup, slabs of beef, mashed potato, vegetables, tomatoes, salads, an array of very sweet looking cakes and cheese.

The dining room was a trifle seedy and weary.  The windows were high above the level of the tables.  the decor was dark.  But the staff were all friendly and I was left alone to get through my two meals in one.  I had my ubiquitous novel with me, but I used it to disguise my people watching.  I, as often is the case when I travel, was the only person here on their own.  The hotel was surprisingly busy after the deserted streets.  Most people were coming in from a back entrance and had obviously, like most Americans, driven over and parked up in the lot at the back of the hotel.  It was predominantly extended families.  A couple of tables had 10, 12 people on there of up to four generations.  A matriarch or patriarch might be sitting in one seat, the dominant son or daughter would be orchestrating affairs for them and the rest of the family, the numerous offspring and beta males and females all tagged on.  OK, that is a tad unfair – yes from the outside this was the makeup of the groups, but a few more minutes of observation saw that there was a friendly familial banter going on, lots of different conversations crossing the generations.  I guessed from the dress of most of the families there they were either fresh out of church, or had got together for some celebration.

I do find myself a bit of an outsider in these situations.  You are used to me writing about my travels where I am on my own dipping in and out of other people’s lives.  Even back home, while I come from what was a tight family of four brothers and mum and dad, my parents were only children so I never had an extensive set of aunts and uncles or cousins.  And because of the age of my parents when I was born, I only ever really knew one grandmother very well.  I never met my paternal grandfather.  So this picture of multiple levels of families all interacting as a unit was slightly uneasy and daunting for me.

Envy?  Jealousy? No – it is not for me so I do not crave it.  But I did have respect for it.

Small town does not mean small minded

But it was another example of this part of the US, whether it be in Minnesota or South Dakota.  Family ties run deep, there is a natural order to life that despite the harshness of the past and the economic wars of the present, the strength of those family bonds and the firmness of friendships in this area are vital.  But none of these bonds are flashy or brazenly publicized.  The people of the northern plains are quiet and unassuming.  In that way they mirror their landscape which at one scale seems monotonous, but in fact has subtle and unique beauty.

I took a different route back to Sioux Falls, sorry that this was the last journey I would take in this environment.  I had one more day of work at EROS before dropping the car off at the airport and flying back through Dallas the next evening.  But I sucked in this noble land to my memory and learned the lessons of being comfortable with what you have from these splendid people.

Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – Small Town America

It was getting close to lunch time so I headed back to the car, stopping off to obtain my own little piece of pipestone from the gift shop, and I drove into town.  I had not had much breakfast and was looking forward to a brunch.  Once more I steered clear of the McDonalds, Wendy and KFC on the main road strip and headed into the centre of Pipestone itself.  The old town was barely three blocks by two, and I parked up on the side of one of the wide streets and started to explore.  Two things worked against me; one was this was Sunday so very little in the way of shops or cafes were open in the main town.  The only place serving brunch was an old style hotel.  I decided I would take a wider tour of the town centre before plumping for my restaurant so headed on out of town.  On the edges of the old town were a few of the grander institutions, a rather handsome court house, a few churches, a couple of nice old 19th century villas.  But still no areas buzzing with life.  The streets indeed were almost deserted.  The occasional car would lazily cruise past me on a street.  One or two children were playing on swings in green squares.  But this was small town America on a Sunday and it was shut.

So back into the main town I went.  The buildings downtown were substantial versions of the old wild west.  Two storey buildings at best, possibly with an awning.  But they were built of deep red quartzite from Sioux Falls or imported rock.  You could see at sometime this town had been quite prosperous; when the railroad was built through the area it became a great impetus to develop a hub that served both the quarrying and agricultural communities around.  Indeed Pipestone became an important junction for lines at one time spreading out in seven directions.  But both of those industries struggle in the modern world and now only one through railroad dissects the town.  Only scraps of modern America had reached here and some of those, like the strip of 7-11, super 8 and Esso gas station on the east side of town, were none to glamorous.

The town had preserved its centre well, but not just because it was Sunday, the second thing which worked against me was Pipestone did not look a thriving town.  Whereas Brookings had a quiet confident buzz about it, this looked like it was just holding on to what it had already achieved.

Downtown Pipestone

Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – The enduring importance of Pipestone

While the historical quarry wall had been the centre of the industry for years, nowadays permits were given to smaller quarries on the flats nearer the visitor centre. Pits arranged in two clear straight lines parallel to the main quarry face had been dug down to the pipestone level. They tended to fill up with water in the wet season and the Parks Service had to arrange for these to be drained whenever someone wished to quarry.

In one or two pits I saw recently active workings; some of the craftspeople who worked in the visitor centre maybe.  Their tools were scattered around the pits.  Here you got a much better picture of the thin seam of the glossy deep pink pipestone.  A few fragments of the rock littered the ground, a stark contrast to the grey stone of the quartzite.  It is a captivating stone; you could see why it was valued for its beauty by many tribes.  It is not just its appearance but the softy smoothness when you held it in your hand is almost magical.  It was relatively easy to carve into any shape but some care had to be taken.  It could break under pressure.   It still meant that the stone could be made into the intricately carved cylinder shapes and drilled with a bowl for the tobacco and a long tube to allow the smoker to drawer.  Only the bowl and far end of the pipe would be made of the stone, the rest, where the smoker would chomp down with his teeth, would be wooden.  The wooden pipes would be regularly replaced but the pipestone parts could be past down generation to generation.

Pipestone

Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – The Pipestone Quarry

The stream I was following topples over the quarry edge in a pretty cataract, and it zigzags manically in amongst the quarry workings.  The removal of the rock appears piecemeal, of course.  The rock has all been hand dug over the centuries by individuals and small groups. Modern equipment could have systematically dug out the overburden easily and sliced off the layer of pipestone in an even manner, but that is not allowed.  Various treaties and agreements allow Indians to obtain permits and come and take small amounts of pipestone for pipes, ornaments, jewellery and souvenirs.  The result are intricate and artisanal facets to the stone.  In a couple of places stacks of quartzite have been left standing away from the main face. One is called the Leaping Rock – the challenge is not the distance from the cliff edge to the stack, more to ensure you manage to check the momentum used to jump the gap so you don’t go shooting off the far side and smash yourself to death on the ground below.

The pathway runs along the bottom of the man made escarpment for a while then steps up in amongst the workings.  Some rocks when carved have given the appearance of various characters and animals, and are now preserved.  From a particular angle, one face has the appearance of an old woman, not a natural impression but more like the carvings you might see on totem poles.  When you first see the excavations by the waterfall they appear modest, but the quarry face goes on for nearly a quarter of a mile, and all the way along you see the rubble, cut blocks and the remaining exposed solid rock showing the excavations are of monumental proportions.  All those hands, all those years, all those generations.  There was some ingenuity in the excavation.  To constantly chip away at the quartzite would take months just to get a small piece of pipestone out.  The technique most commonly used was to exploit the natural cracks in the quartzite at the top of the hill; bash down long metal pegs to weaken the joins and using crowbars to lever chunks of rock off, that would tumble down away from the face.  There they would be broken up into rubble to be transported away from the face onto the big piles I had seen earlier.

At the quarry face – the pink pipestone clearly visible

Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – A sacred site

I bypassed the centre of town, drove past a small strip of eateries and car services, and came round the north side to where the entrance to a small park was marked by a modest paved road.  Although this time I was in a national monument, the approach was manicured to the nth degree like in the State parks.  I drove up to a generous sweep of car park  (made no doubt to keep the RV drivers happy). I emerged from my car in the sunshine, then dived back in again to get my fleece.  The wind was still a bitingly cold northerly.  I’d noticed on my journey north from the Interstate some road side infrastructure.  There were several huge red and white barriers next to the road which could be brought down when the snow got too deep to venture out.  I’m used to closed roads to be part of the mountainous terrain of Europe; I am less used to seeing where transport routes on flat lands can become impassable.

I headed over to the modest visitor centre and spent a few minutes learning of the story of this location and its significance not just for the US today but for all native Americans.   The location is one of only a handful where Indians would excavate a special form of dense but pliable stone that could be cut and carved into pipes, including the iconic peace pipes so beloved of Western films.  The stone here is something called Catlinite and the only other place it is easily quarried is in Canada.  Another form of pipestone can be found way west in Utah, but for the tribes of the plains, Pipestone was the only practical source of this valuable stone.

The importance of this site for such a culturally vital raw material meant that it had become neutral ground for some of the older tribes, including the Dakota and Lakota.  The Sioux, maybe with a reputation for not being the most peaceful of Indians, had taken control of the site a few hundred years before white settlers reach the location.  But it was still a sacred place, and was managed carefully by the native Americans and National parks board alike.

The little museum in the visitor centre was informative but a bit dusty, and what I wanted to do was look at the quarry itself, so I zipped up the fleece and put on the gloves and woolly hat and headed out into the sunlight.

At the site – the quarries in the trees

Bird’s Eye View of a Wildfowl State – Crossing the State Line

Next day, the Sunday,  was another perfectly sunny day and I headed east along the Interstate and into Minnesota.  With this I had now been in three states, for as well as Minnesota and South Dakota, I had popped over into Iowa.  Having spent most of my time in America to date either in enormous states like Florida, California and Texas, or rooted in one city; I had not hopped over many statelines.  Of course like any boundary they are totally artificial and the countryside on one side looks little different from the other.  I had found it funny in Iowa though that as just as I crossed the stateline and the road gently curved to the right up a hill, the prospect of an enormous casino loomed up in amongst the cereal fields.  The natural landscape may not change but the legal landscape varies dramatically across the USA, and more favourable gambling rules meant Sioux Falls residents would head out of town some twelve miles to cross the stateline, but wanted to stop right there and place a bet instead of going to the next town.

From the air at Brookings you look into Minnesota

Passing a little lay by on the Interstate was the only real landmark on the border between South Dakota and Minnesota, and I turned off the almost immediately and headed north on another road which could have been anywhere from the Rockies to Chicago.  After about ten miles I hit my first bend in the road, mainly to drop down into a small valley then up the other side.  I drove through the quarry town of Jasper.  There were several of these towns around I noticed.  The road and the railroad would be the dominant features of the town, and on one side some industrial complex and the other the residential side.  The quarries were often set in the valleys and the rocks cut out of the bluffs on either side, or else there was gravel extraction from river beds and the alluvial deposits in the valley bottom.  There would be some crushing plant and piles of its end products littered around the compound.  The surrounding vegetation would be coated with grey dust and everything looked a little dingy.  You could see why the residential area would be set apart from both the polluting industry itself, and the grimy sidings where the rock was piled onto wagons for moving all over the country.

My destination for the morning was a much more substantial settlement.  It was the county town and contained all the institutions you would expect, court house, hospital, fire station.  But the town itself was still only had 5,000 inhabitants but probably accounted for more than half of the county’s population.  This was Pipestone, and this curious name was also the reason I was here.