December 1982. Sharyl, a friend from my days in Pierre, South Dakota, was in her first year as the grade school principal for the Harding County, South Dakota, school system. Harding County is in the far northwest corner of the state, bordering Montana and North Dakota. At that time, Harding County, with a total area of 2,678 square miles, had about 1,700 people. I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the time, and for some reason, I chose to spend some vacation time visiting Sharyl.
I wasn’t sure what one did in a place so sparsely populated, other than sit around and talk and drink wine. After all, my high school had had as many students as Harding County had people. But Sharyl was quite excited; one evening while I was there, we were going to hear Kathleen Norris, who was part of the South Dakota Arts Council’s poets in the schools program. Kathleen had moved to nearby (relatively speaking) Lemmon, South Dakota, with her husband to live on her grandmother’s spread. They’d come from New York City, and decided to stay, Sharyl said. I didn’t quite get it… as far as I was concerned, getting out of South Dakota had been one of the major accomplishments of my life to date.
So, one evening, Sharyl and I and maybe a dozen other people–no more–sat in schoolroom desks at Sharyl’s school. A slight woman with dark hair and sad eyes came in. “That’s her,” Sharyl whispered.
I wasn’t much into poetry, but I found myself lost in her voice and her words. She read from Middle of the World, a collection of poems about her life so far in South Dakota, and I bought a copy that she autographed and I still have somewhere (I hope).
One poem in particular resonated with me. It was about Norris encountering a man of her age who she’d known during childhood visits to her grandmother’s place. There was a line about that the man was good at something… lambing, perhaps?… and she had a way of writing things.
Flash-forward twenty-eight years. Millions of people around the world have followed Norris’s spiritual journey… Dakota, Amazing Grace, The Cloister Walk, Acedia and Me. She’s deep, yet accessible. She bares her soul in a melodious way. Yes, she has a way of writing things.
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It was nice to read about your visit to Buffalo, SD to see a friend. I grew up there and attended school there until I left for Augustana College in Sioux Falls. That corner of the world dug its way into my heart and is still connected to my veins and arteries.
I recall how very thrilled I was to read Norris’ Spiritual Geography of South Dakota. Your reminder of her other works prompts me to get another of her books as I try to get another inter-venous fix for my longing to visit Harding County again.