Tag: Columns

An enlightening 12-hour drive around the Bakken

Five years ago, the drive from Dickinson to Williston was considered boring by some and peaceful by others.

Western North Dakota’s quiet beauty and emptiness, accentuated by Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s North Unit, surrounded dying towns such as Grassy Butte, Arnegard and Alexander.

Today, the 132-mile trek is a scene of semi trucks lumbering up and down hills, wild pickup drivers with out-of-state plates, vast crew camps, random infrastructure construction, dirt (Oh God, the dirt!) and, most importantly, oil rigs and wells.

On Thursday, my fiancée Sarah and I and put 435 miles on my car while spending more than 12 hours on an exploratory mission of the Bakken.

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Graduation a day of celebration, relief and dreams

Today, hundreds of area high school seniors will don gowns and mortarboards with tassels, walk across a stage and receive the diploma they’ve worked toward for 13 years.

It’s a day of celebration and relief for many students as they officially end their high school days and set off for either college, a trade school or the working world.

In my seven years working at The Dickinson Press, I had the pleasure of meeting several of the area’s youth through my prior experiences as sports editor.

This year’s senior class was going into the sixth grade when I first began to meet them.

My, how time flies.

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Dickinson undergoing fast, amazing changes

Dickinson is a community changing so rapidly it’s almost to the point where it’s difficult to know exactly what is going where. Seemingly every day, a new building or business pops up.

The city has never been stagnant, however. In my short lifetime, I’ve seen a variety of changes.

I remember eating at Skippers and Sergios, going to Anfinsons for farm — and, as a kid, toy — needs, while shopping for groceries at Buttrey’s and going to Woolworths downtown, where my prime enjoyment came from getting to ride the escalator.

We’ve changed so rapidly over the past two-and-a-half decades that it’s amazing to sit back and realize that most of the businesses in town have held steady through one oil boom and bust, and now many are thriving like never before thanks to the latest boom.

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Growing trash problems can be fixed

An abandoned mattress sits in a ditch on the side of the road that leads to the south side of Patterson Lake outside of Dickinson on Monday. Littering and the abandonment of big items is becoming more of an issue in the Dickinson area, one of many impacts being felt because of the oil boom.

Trash and littering are becoming hot topics in western North Dakota. Just about anywhere you look, there are plastic bags and paper stuck in fences and sitting in ditches, or beer cans and bottles that have been dropped in random spots.

McKenzie and Williams counties in the much busier northern portion of the Oil Patch have been fighting an increasingly difficult bout to maintain clean prairies and cities than we have here in southwest North Dakota.

But don’t rest easy folks. As we see more and more oil activity and population influx, we’re simultaneously going to see a larger wave of trash.

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Spring is sprung, now make it worthwhile

To some, a dreary day is a great day to be productive. There’s nothing to do outside, so why not stay in and clean the house, watch five episodes of a TV show backed up on your DVR or read that book you bought five years ago and have been putting off reading ever since.

I don’t fit that mold.

Sure, I can get stuff done around the house on a rainy or — more often in our case — snowy day. Yet nothing gets me motivated to work outside or inside the house quite like a beautiful day.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my office at The Dickinson Press. Sure, it’s nice in here.

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