There are no buffalo

in north dakota anymore, but I did stop in Buffalo, ND to get gas. I left Fargo with a too-hot americano in hand and didn't really pay attention to the gas gauge; by the time I did, it was inching down, and as soon as Fargo was three sips behind me, it was pretty much farmland on both sides of the road. I developed that itchy worry about how long I could keep driving with the quarter tank, trying to calculate distances to likely nodes of services with the shifting "your tank will take you this far" number on my dashboard. It's such a weird little tension when driving, the desire to keep going and not to get off the road, wanting to push it, and the surging anxiety about the Unknown and possible empty miles.

So I pulled off at an exit that had the little gas pump icon, and followed it down a flat winding road, to a completely empty, dusty town. I spotted some people loading folding chairs onto a truck and asked them where the gas station was. I'd missed it completely -- just a couple of pumps, one diesel, one not, with no sign at all, deep ruts. Friendly woman, non-premium fuel that I tossed into the audi recklessly.

A drive this long is so intense and intimate, such a sway between Big Expansive Thoughts about the Big Expansive Landscape and all of the people in them, and the intense moments where you get locked into a tractor beam of relationship with the big wide truck in front of you that is stuck behind a small car, with not-quite-enough room to get between them. This becomes the Total Focus for what seems like an indefinite, forever period of time. And then, you pass, and suddenly you're in the landscape again. Moments where the google-approved border crossing turns out to be a Bad Idea because of a static long truck lineup, and setting off to look for another maybe-border unmarked on the map seems both just sensible and anxiety provoking.

I didn't expect to find North Dakota so stunning -- yes, the flat plains that look remarkably like where I grew up, especially around the cottage, the familiar memory of running in blazing open-sky heat, where the one tree 2 km down the road was a sought after oasis for the 5 seconds of shade as I passed under. This part was familiar, but the flow of rolling hills, green green green was surprising, somehow. High plains, stunning. Beside the road, high water still, sloughs that are probably not always full, the residue of the only-dimly-noticed floods of last month. The sparkling blue of inland lakes in the west that is so different from Ontario's dark green-blue, or the grey of the greats.

So many stories hinted at -- the class years gouged into the hills near Kenmare (state champs in 68!), the empty shells of farmhouses, the first oil drill I noticed as I was nearing the border. I stopped in the town of Kenmare, lured by the promise of the Historic Mill! Sunny saturday afternoon, completely empty town square. The choo choo cafe closed down, another empty store next to it, one woman carrying a take-out container across the square, a couple of rough looking red-tanned guys muttering about how it was too nice a day to work heading into the windowless Beer Bob's bar.

As soon as I crossed into Saskatchewan, the landscape was radically different -- people doing saturday things in pickups, recreation areas, a different kind of farmland, dustier, populated. Dusty not-green golf courses with holes on crazy lumps of land, golf carts perched on top. Driving more slowly, the opened up throttle on the empty land of ND far behind me, just trying to stay alert enough to pass sensibly, grateful for the zoom of the german engine but perhaps a little too scottish in my recklessness.

The day, to moose jaw, 924 km altogether, and a tatty hotel because the slightly more cheerful ones were full or available only to smokers, spying on the Vanier Grad of overheated parents in suits, girls in Fancy Prom-type gowns, one accessorized by a weeks old baby. Dairy queen chocolate dipped cone, sleep. Momentary reflection on how there is no time to reflect when you're busy driving and noticing. Wondering where I'm going to.