Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains

Thirty years ago I left the plains of Western North Dakota for the woods of Central Minnesota. I lasted six mohths. Clay S. Jenkinson expresses the reasons why I came back and why I have stayed. It is almost impossible to express to someone not from here what the badlands and the prairie can mean, but the author uses imagery that evokes a strong sense of place and spiritual belonging, much as N. Scott Momaday does. The people are real and the places are too. It is good to have someone who can say what I can't. This book is delightfully humorous and at the same time profound.

Having grown up and lived my fifty-plus years in North Dakota, Jenkinson has captured my response to this place of the Plains at a very deep, thoughtful level. It is hard to explain to a "mountain", or "ocean" or "forest" person just what the prairie and badlands evoke, but this book is among the best I've read to describe it. The people portrayed in this book are people I know or very like people I know. But most especially, his challenge to those of us who live in this place to treasure it and to branch out of our great tendency toward provincialism confirmed and gave words to many of my own long-held feelings.

To journey though this book is like being on a train. You will come to the end finding you have traveled parallel tracks. . . One is the scholarly exploration of ideas and questions. The other, a man's life filled with colorful friends and experiences. Both a book of essays and a memoir. This duality is the magic that makes the book. Even the writing balances between direct and lyrical, functional and sublime. But, what I liked most about Message on the Wind was the personality of the man telling the story. That he could make bold pronouncements and just as quickly point out his own foibles. As when he says, "Just how a man driving a tractor whose tire he could not change if his life depended upon it can feel marvelously independent is not clear, but that is the unmistakable mythology of the place. And I swallowed the whole hog."Back to the train: Wallow in the sheer joy of being carried away on an adventure. Or, examine the tracks and ponder the method. Either course will result in many delightful hours of reading. Reading, perchance to think. :-)

Forget this book is superbly written, makes complex ideas immediately accessible, or that your mind will be expanded as a result. At the core, Message on the Wind is a marvelously meandering journey filled with boisterous characters and gentle humor - and your guide is an intriguing man whom you will come to desire (perchance lust?) as a friend. Along with Jeffersonian ideas, you will be swept along on testosterone filled adventures, discover drinking buddies and mentors, hike the plains and the bad lands (pondering the absurd and the sacred), be entertained by parents and flat tires, and come to a surprising, erotically charged conclusion (that every man should take as a lesson and would make any woman's heart ache). To call this a book of essays, is to belie the fact that Message on the Wind is just delightful storytelling. All in all, an amazing amalgamation of life's joys. Read it, and have fun!

Very rarely does a book come along that is entertaining, well written, insightful, funny, lyrical, intelligent, deeply moving and thought provoking all at the same time. "Message on the Wind" is just such a rare jewel. In this series of wonderful essays, Clay Jenkinson examines many issues, including the future of rural America and the Great Plains, Native American culture and race relations, spirituality, gender relations, academia, spirit of place and, ultimately, the soul of America. From his perspective as a humanities scholar and historian, and with great passion for his subject, Jenkinson uses these essays to encourage readers to examine some of the "big questions" confronting America as a nation and us as individuals, and does so in a way that is a delight to read. As he says in the Introduction, "I have no confidence that I have any answers, but I know well that I am on to some of the right questions." You will meet all sorts of interesting people who will become part of your world thanks to Jenkinson's great portrayals. Mike Jacobs, journalist, lover of North Dakota and revolutionary; Patti and Gary Perry, of Marmarth, N.D., a couple you would want in your corner in any crisis; several academics, some whiney and some wonderful; a lonely North Dakota bachelor, who we meet only through a peek into his house; some of the practitioners and supporters of the amazing art of Chautauqua; and many others. Through these people and the worlds they inhabit you will get a new and vivid view of a part of America that few of us are familiar with.If you have ever traveled the Great Plains, you most likely blew through them on your way to or from somewhere else. In this book, you will meet the landscape of the Great Plains in a way you have never met a place before. This book will fire your imagination for the role the plains could play in reviving the soul of America. This is a book for visionaries, thinkers, Americans of all stripes, and anyone else who enjoys a terrific read. It will tear at your heart, make you laugh out loud, stretch your soul, educate you, entertain you and, most importantly, make you think and feel. It will make you long to visit the Great Plains, and perhaps have them become part of your soul and your life. As soon as you turn the last page, you will want to go back to the first page and start again. I would recommend that you buy at least two copies, and probably more, because once you have read it, you will want to give it to everyone you know.