The Great Plains are famous for bitter winters and long-lasting
snowfalls. (I know this from experience, having worked at a museum
on the Canadian prairies for seven years.) But the snow that
blankets those flat stretches of land from November to March is part
of what makes the region so fertile; prairie farmers worry if there
isn’t enough of it. As for the arctic cold—prairie dwellers are
proud of their endurance. (“There’s no nicer weather,” an
Alberta-born curator told me, with perfect seriousness, “than ten or
fifteen degrees below zero with the sun shining.”) Even by these
standards, the winter of 1997 was fierce, marked by record blizzards
and brutal cold, especially in Manitoba and North Dakota. And that
spring, swollen by the winter’s larger than normal accumulation, the
region’s Red River rose to unprecedented levels
in a vast area
from Fargo to Winnipeg and beyond.

Normally, for the tough,
resilient inhabitants of North Dakota, high water, like ferocious
winter weather, is simply another challenge to be met. Creeks and
rivers always rise in the spring when winter snow and ice melt; if
the water threatens to get too high, it can be controlled, with hard
work and team effort. But this rising was no ordinary spring runoff
increase. The Red River became a torrent that eventually crested at
fifty-four feet—twenty-six feet above flood level—and even though
volunteers worked themselves to exhaustion piling sandbags into
dikes to contain the river this great surge of water rose above all