Winded

May 26. Greenfield to Randall Creek Recreation Area. 52 miles. 1,800 feet elevation. Headwinds.

When the wind is with you, you hardly notice it. Pedaling is easy. You feel invincible, self-sufficient. You insist that you’re doing it all by yourself. Turn a corner and something blasts your shoulder, your bike wobbles, your biceps fight the handlebars. Turn a corner again, and it all turns against you: the wind in your face, the waves white-noising your ears, the acid burning in your legs.

It never stops. A steep climb has a predictable end-point. All you have to do is pace yourself for it, anticipating the coast that rewards you when you reach the top. But the wind on your face doesn’t stop. It might slow, maybe pause, but it’s always with you.

Before reaching the Yankton Sioux Reservation, I met a couple jogging in the middle of the road. They had some ranch land nearby. They had biked a part of the same route I’m riding – up through parts of North Dakota. We chatted. I probably outstayed my welcome, not really eager to ride off, but we finally said our goodbyes.

Maybe an hour later, on the Reservation, I met up with a group of people at what looked like a community center of some sort. Some of them were riding horses. They offered me water, asked about what I was doing. We joked about trading my bike for one of the horses. One person said I was strong. I laughed and said “I don’t feel strong.” They were getting ready for a ride in honor of missing and murdered Indigenous People. There was a little ceremony. I don’t think it’s appropriate to share the details, out of respect. One person spoke about disappearances that don’t get investigated. One of the leaders asked the riders to hold the victims in their thoughts through their ride. I promised myself to do the same on my ride.

They rode off on the fields, and I rode off on the road, feeling rejuvenated, and also humbled and grateful for the kindness they showed me.

I could not find the 1857 Treaty Monument that I remembered seeing in 2018 on my last trip this way. I kind of hope it has been taken down. The wording was disrespectful, I thought. On the other hand, I was glad to have learned about Struck by the Ree. I hope maybe to find out more about him someday.

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While reading up in preparation for this trip, I read a historical essay by Michael L. Lawson called  “’We lost our way of living’: The Inundation of the White Swan Community.” It’s about the impact of the Fort Randall Dam and the creation of Lake Francis Case on the White Swan community.

The White Swan community is a part of the Yankton reservation. Like many families, their community was inundated by the massive Lake Francis Case.

It’s interesting how the topic of civil engineering and its impacts – both positive and negative—comes up on every one of my rides. Sometimes the transaction is quite harmonious—like the town of Pollock, South Dakota, which I will ride through later. Sometimes the transaction is, you might say, hard, but fair—like the family I met on the Tombigbee River who missed their multi-generational home, but who, as far as I can tell, were fairly compensated at least. But the White Swan community, according to Larson, lost out completely.

The town of Pollock is a stark contrast. They had advanced notice. They were able to keep their community intact. They even had a vote on the placement of the new Pollock townsite. Native communities had little advance notice. They were poorly compensated for their land. Some in the White Swan community weren’t even given time to move their homes, and were forcibly cleared out. The process of reinterring gravesites was rushed and haphazard.

The White Swan community had been mostly subsistence-based and cooperative. They harvested deadwood for fuel collectively, fished, hunted, and trapped for each other. It was a good life, as Larson described it, based on his interviews with people from the time. Dispersing the community took much of that away. Not only were they poorly compensated, the cash-poor families had to contend with rising land values after the dam was built.

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When I got to the campsite, I didn’t have much left in me. I had hours riding against the wind, the road rising gently at a one or two percent grade. By the last hour, I had to stop every 20 minutes to catch my breath.

Then, one last big, steep climb, before a sweet downhill coast the last 4 or 5 miles, over the river across the Fort Randal Dam, and down to the campsite at Lake Francis Case.