North Dakota

I’m sitting in the Moonrise Cafe in Fargo, North Dakota. I was thinking about my upcoming keynote for the Capital Coaches Conference, Venture Boldly Forward into the Unknown: Nomad Insights to Transform Your Work, Leadership, and Life, and I started thinking of you—you who, for whatever combination of reasons, are reading this post. I want to share some thoughts about decisions to venture into new places and experiences, and the surreal awe that can arise from them. 

Of all the places I’ve been on this journey, North Dakota felt among the most surreal to enter into. I’ve known for the last year or so that I would come here, but still, when I actually began to approach the state line and ultimately crossed over, I felt a little…dazzled; shaken up; unsettled; startled. 

Based on the semi-stunned response my body was having, I realized I’d crossed an unconscious boundary, and come to a place that, for most of my life, I’d never thought about as a place I would ever be. 

I felt spooked as I drove past the enormous grain silos, and wondered why I felt so spooked. (I sensed it was largely because it was round about 3 AM—a story for another day—but not entirely.) Part of it was this strong sense—not just a factual knowing, but a full-body awareness—that I was somewhere unlike anywhere I’d been, or ever imagined being. It was as though I could feel this in my cells. I was in new territory, literally. 

Of course, this has been true of almost all of the places I’ve visited on my adventure. So why was it any different from all the other places I’d never been? Why was this crossing extra intense? 

I’m still not totally sure. I’ll be pondering this for a while. But it has me thinking, as I often do these days, about the value of bringing ourselves to places we unconsciously assumed we’d never be; of saying yes to opportunities to do things we wouldn’t have thought to imagine doing.

A special kind of awe unfolds when you truly enter new territory as an adult, to do something you would not have expected to do, on the power of your own decision. I decided I would come to North Dakota, I thought, and I did. That’s so…weird.

This is a flavor of a feeling I’ve experienced again and again over the course of my nomadic adventure—“Whoa. I decided to say yes to this adventure, and so now, instead of sitting in my toasty apartment in Philadelphia, I’m standing on the frozen ground at Jamestown, the wind biting my face, imagining the people who populated this spot exactly 408 years ago in the winter of 1610.” “Whoa. I’m in a backyard in St. Paul, being enthusiastically offered casserole by half a dozen strangers. What are the odds?” “Whoa. I’m making art nearly every day. Who even am I?”

Since arriving in Fargo a few days ago, I’ve had several experiences of connection and expansion that have affirmed my decision to come here. I feel, as I often do, as though I have been showered with unnecessary generosity. I was gifted a moving conversation and a small ceramic house by a local artist. I arrived at the Fargo Moorhead Roller Derby Pride game only to be greeted like a friend by a local who saw me scoping out the bleachers and invited me to sit next to her, gestured wildly to make sure I would get the free t-shirt that was being thrown out into the crowd, and talked to me for the rest of the match (match? I still don’t really know much about roller derby). I’ve experimented with needle felting, surrounded by fiber artists. I’ve received the community kindness that is the display of rainbow flags and pride event notices all over town, markers that instantly showed me, a stranger, that I am welcome and cared for here, at least by many. I’ve delighted in the collective welcome of flyers tacked up in coffee shops, inviting me to events that could put me in the way of humans and creativity and beauty. Sunset on the Riverfront. Red River Market. Little Gay Art Exhibition. Drawing club; drag brunch; writer’s retreat. 

Who knew all of this was waiting for me in North Dakota? I did, and I didn’t. I didn’t know the details of what would unfold here, but I did know that there were experiences, people, surprises in store for me. 

This is one thing I’ve learned as a nomad: life is always inviting us, whether or not we’re paying attention, or inclined or able to accept the invitation.

North Dakota will never again be just a vague idea of “up there” to me. It will be the people who showed me welcome and kindness; the signs and trees and lamps and other objects I painted as I listened to surrounding accents I’d only ever heard on TV; the magnet on my Airbnb host’s refrigerator; the kids running in and out of the interactive fountains in Broadway Square—so evocative of the fountains in Dilworth Plaza back in Philly!; the places that held my body as it sat and slept and thought and felt. It will be this cafe. By putting decision-level energy behind my instinct to come here, I have converted the unknown into the known. The foreign into a part of my inner infrastructure. The idea of people into actual people. While I certainly can’t truly know or understand a place by spending a short time in it, and while I can only know it as I am experiencing it, and not as someone else would, I know the littlest something of North Dakota now. I will carry that littlest something with me everywhere I go from here–including westward, into another part of this state.

Meanwhile, I continue on about the business of being human that goes on wherever I physically am. I’m integrating wonderful and difficult experiences. I’m sifting through gratitude and acceptance, hope and relief, joy and loss, failure and forgiveness, residue and growth. I’m open to the insights and light that North Dakota will throw on these experiences. I trust it’s there, even though I can’t know the shape it will take.

I’m wondering, as I think about you today—what decisions are you making that will put you in the way of experiences you couldn’t imagine? What are the “North Dakotas” in your life—the places you aren’t even conscious of assuming you’ll never venture into? What are you being invited to–either by your own intuition, or by other people or your environment? How can you shake yourself up? And why would you want to? 

You don’t need to drive to North Dakota—or any far-flung destination—to do this. You don’t need to venture far, to venture boldly.