I was driving through the North Dakota countryside last Wednesday, and for some reason, I started thinking about the first time I ever drove to Jamestown by myself.
I was 16 and had just gotten my license. I was driving from Minnesota to visit my family in Jamestown. My grandparents lived there, one of my aunts lived there, and another aunt lived a little farther outside of town in Woodworth.
I had been to Jamestown plenty of times, but this was the first time I was making the drive on my own.
I remember calling my mom and asking, “How do I get there?”
Typical teenager. I was already on the road and had no idea how to get there… Ha!
Of course this is funny now, because as I am sure you already know, the directions are incredibly simple.
You get to Fargo. You get on Interstate 94. You drive west for about an hour and 15 minutes. And then you are in Jamestown.
Side note, my husband and I have an ongoing battle on the time it takes to get to Jamestown; please do not tell him that I know he is right.
At any rate, as long as you keep going west and pay even a little bit of attention, you are probably going to get there.
At 16, it felt like a much bigger deal.
I remember wondering if I was going to get lost. I had never driven that far by myself before, and even though the route was simple, it did not feel simple to me then.
Now, 22 years later, I found myself having almost the exact same feeling.
I was driving somewhere in North Dakota that I had never driven to before, especially not by myself. I was running a little behind because I missed my exit while I was on the phone and had to backtrack.
So there I was, 38 years old, wondering if I was on the right road and how I was going to get there, just like I had when I was 16.
Apparently, some things do not change that much.
I consider myself a city girl. I am pretty well traveled and have been incredibly fortunate to see a lot of the world, but this new phase of my life is taking me into parts of North Dakota I have not spent much time exploring.
I think I am surprised at how good it feels to be “out in the field.” Like, literally driving through the farm land.
As I was driving last week, I kept noticing how beautiful everything was.
The rolling fields. The open space. The two-lane roads. The stretches where you can drive for quite a while without another car passing you.
The canola fields. I do not know if there are more of them this year, or if I am just noticing them more, but they are so pretty. Those huge, bright yellow fields stretching out across the landscape.
Maybe I am older and appreciate things like that more now. Maybe I am simply spending more time driving in the country. It is probably a little bit of both. There is something interesting about being so well traveled and then realizing how much there is to see in your own backyard. I think that is probably true for most of us.
When something is close to home, we do not always pay attention to it. It feels familiar, so we assume we already know it.
People can live in Chicago and never visit some of the city’s best places and rarely go downtown. There are people living in New York City that have never been to the Statue of Liberty.
I have lived here for more than 20 years now, have gone to school here, bought a home, raised a family, and yet, I still have so much of North Dakota left to experience.
This work is taking me deeper into North Dakota, both literally and figuratively. I am driving to communities I have not visited before. I am meeting with people I have wanted to meet. I am learning more about what is happening in different parts of the state and hearing directly from the people doing the work.
While I will always love traveling and seeing the world, there is something really grounding about being here right now.
Driving on a two-lane road. Looking at the crops growing in the fields.
Noticing the yellow canola flowers.
Remembering the 16-year-old version of myself who called her mom because she was worried she would not find Jamestown.
And realizing that, even now, I still occasionally miss an exit. (No really, I did!)
There is a lot to discover in North Dakota.
Lessons from the Road: Mining the canola fields in our backyard
One of the things I learned early on in entrepreneurship that I think translates to any industry is the importance of mining your own backyard. The idea was expressed to me in a short story I heard years ago called Acres of Diamonds.
As the story goes, there once was a man who owned a farm but became convinced that real opportunity was somewhere else. He heard stories about people finding diamonds and becoming wealthy, so he sold his farm and left home to search for them.
He traveled far away. He spent everything he had. He kept searching for this life-changing opportunity, but he never found it.
Meanwhile, the person who bought his farm was walking along a stream on the property and noticed a stone sparkling in the water. That stone turned out to be a diamond.
It was not just one diamond. The farm was sitting on an enormous diamond deposit.
The opportunity the original owner had spent his life searching for had been right there on his own land the entire time.
I have always loved that story because it is such a simple reminder of how easy it is to assume that something better, bigger, or more exciting must be somewhere else.
Sometimes we become so focused on finding the next opportunity that we stop looking at what is already around us.
As I drove through North Dakota that day, I kept thinking about that.
- How many opportunities are already here?
- How many incredible people are doing important work in communities we have not taken the time to visit?
- How many partnerships are waiting to happen simply because the right people have not met yet?
- How many ideas are already growing quietly in our own backyard?
I do not think the lesson is that we should never look beyond our communities. I have learned so much from traveling, meeting people from different places, and seeing how others approach their work.
I also think we have to be careful not to spend so much time looking outward that we miss the diamonds buried in our canola fields.
For me, this season is about looking more closely at North Dakota. Getting on the road, meeting people where they are, and paying attention to the strengths, ideas, and opportunities that are already here.
The diamonds may not always look like diamonds at first.
They might be a small nonprofit with a big idea, a community leader who has been quietly solving problems for years, or like two organizations that could do more together than either could do alone. Sometimes diamonds are mined by approaching opposing community partners to rebuild trust and find common ground. Or maybe in building the confidence to reapply for funding that has been denied in the past after renewing your understanding of how your mission meets their initiatives.
Turns out, diamonds can especially be found on a two-lane road in the middle of rural North Dakota.
Keep on mining,
Kayla
