FIREWORKS, FEISTY HORSES AND FRISKY COWBOYS
Kathleen Eagle

 

If you’re ever in North Dakota on the Fourth of July, head straight for Mandan, “Where the West Begins.”   Bismarck and Mandanare the Twin Cities of North Dakota, and like my current home near the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the cities are separated by a great river—the Missouri in North Dakota and the Mississippi in Minnesota.  In both cases, a state capitol looks across the water at its sister city.  In both places, the two siblings have two very different personalities.  It’s East meets West personified, where cowboys and Indians may be one and the same.  My husband’s people, the Lakota, are sometimes called “West River Sioux.”  Their Dakota cousins’ homeland stretches from east of the Missouri as far as the Mississippi.

 

THIS TIME FOREVER, my latest release from Bell Bridge Books, begins as rodeo cowboy Cleve Black Horse runs into serious problems on his way to the annual Fourth of July Mandan Rodeo Days, advertised nowadays as “The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Boots On.”  You couldn’t prove it by Cleve—he didn’t make it to the rodeo—but I can tell you from experience that Fourth of July in Mandan, while maybe not the most fun I’ve ever had wearing boots, is definitely right up there in the top tier of good times.  When we lived in North Dakota, we rarely missed what I consider to be the real Western rodeo—outdoors, old-fashioned grandstand bleachers, clowns shouting out the same jokes you hear every year, a snow cone for every kid and a pretty blonde buckle bunny for every cowboy.

There’s an afternoon  parade down Main Street, of course, home of thriving local stores and lively saloons.  One of our favorite features is Art In the Park, where artists and crafters sell everything from fine pottery to funny whirligigs.  I have many treasures made by people I came to know through Art In the Park.  If you appreciate American Indian Art—and who doesn’t?—you’ll find it in the Five Nations Gallery at the Mandan Depot, which isn’t too far from the park.  One of the beauties of Mandanis that nothing is too far from anything else.

 

On “Patriot Night,” July 3, the rodeo committee does a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Project.  On the Fourth, the evening rodeo is followed by fireworks, made especially wondrous by the North Dakota night sky.  Most of my books are set in the Dakotas, where the sky is everywhere you look, and the stars are gloriously bright and abundant.  You have to see it for yourself.  Day or night, sunrise or sunset, no IMAX or Omni Theater or Biosphere will ever do justice to the Dakota sky.  It’s “America the Beautiful” in real life, real time.

 

And that’s what the Fourth of July is all about.  Have a good one!

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