A New Frontier
Written by by Susan Severson
I write this on a blizzarding night with Per Hansa and Beret on my mind. The magnitude of our forefathers’ sacrifices is as clear and heavily laden on my heart as the snow on the towering pine trees outside. This is what good literature does. It is fiction that adds weight to our very real and very brief lives. Through the following experience, I have been struck by the importance (once again), of this literature-induced weight.
After having read Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag, I took my yearly visit home from the woodlands of Minnesota to the prairies of Kansas. My father always takes me on what he affectionately calls an “Ag Tour”. The tour consists of driving down long dirt roads to check out the farmland that belongs to my family. Several years ago, he was able to acquire the land that my ancestors originally settled when they arrived on the windblown grasslands of Kansas. I’ve driven by this land before and thought it was neat, but this time I was really struck by this place. Having read Giants in the Earth, I was able to enter into an experience more fully and experience gratitude that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
As we navigated the truck along the bumpy track down to the area of the original homestead, Beret made my distant grandmother feel much closer. My parents and I clambered out of the truck—as did my five young children. They were thrilled with the trees and the lime green hedgeballs strewn across the leaf-littered ground. They were even more thrilled with the steep creek banks with their tangle of exposed roots and limestone (a very natural jungle gym). As we walked through the tree-lined creek bed where she had made her home (widowed and with seven children!), I began to wonder, truly wonder at this woman. How incredible to be a traveler, an immigrant, to a new frontier. To carry the values, sorrows, and truths of the mother’s heart into the wilderness!
While there is much more I could say about my great, great, great, great grandmother’s story, I’ll offer this: we may be too quick to see her and Beret’s experiences as singular. In our own way, we are also immigrants—arriving in an age of unprecedented technological change, carrying old instincts into a new world. Which of us will be the conscientious objectors in the foreign landscape that we are traversing? The ones that can see the good, while holding on to what is important and refusing the things that bring damage and decay? Once again, I will assert that reading good and abiding literature is not frivolous, not even simply good, but absolutely essential.
The work we are doing is foundational. Of that I truly believe. And if that’s true, let’s make it a foundation worth building upon.
About Susan Severson
Susan Severson is a wannabe saint, a homeschool slogger, a sometimes-but-wants-to-be-all-the-time writer, and a mother to five little rapscallions. Prayers are welcome. She resides in Crosby, MN.
About Well-Read Mom
In Well-Read Mom, women read more and read well. Our hope is to deepen the awareness of meaning hidden in each woman’s daily life, elevate the cultural conversation, and revitalize reading literature from books. If you would like to have us help you select worthy reading material, we invite you to join and read along with us. We are better together! For information on how to start or join a Well-Read Mom group visit our website wellreadmom.com
