Turn right out of Icelandic State Park, and drive past the Cavalier Space Force site. Turn north on a road so rutted and full of holes that you’re not sure you’re on the right path—though maybe such a rough journey makes perfect sense—to Valhalla.
Or, as we say in North Dakota, Walhalla.
We missed last year, but made it back to Walhalla, North Dakota for the Fourth of July for 2024.
There is no better fireworks display than Walhalla and I say that again with firm conviction.
With our trucks parallel parked across the street from the parking lot, we left a gap between vehicles and set up our chairs. Sitting on the edge of the highway-street, we watched as cars and trucks and an old beat-up early 1980’s Winnebago trudged past between us and where those fireworks light up soon. A man rode by on a bike, one he’d rigged up with some kind of combustible engine. A pickup full of kids in the back roared by to pull off and find a good spot to watch the show. There were endless bikes mixed with lawn chairs and people settling onto blankets on the grass with snacks.
It was so ‘Murica you couldn’t do any better trying to capture the essence. Hollywood could never come close trying to capture the feeling, because watching something is never the same as living through it.
I had visited the nearby C-Store to buy ridiculous amounts of candy, once again marveling at how absolutely wonderful the store was in its crazy incredible variety of things to buy—socks! notebooks! candles! embroidery thread! camping supplies!—all currently dwarfed by a massive section of fireworks. While waiting in line to pay for the candy, a girl in front was trying to pay for a large fireworks set that I suspect her dad, who was sitting outside, had sent her in to get.
“That’ll be $61.85,” the clerk said.
The little girl pushed $60 in cash on the counter. “Is that enough?”
“It’s fine, hun, I’ll make it work.”
Back out on the street, the open lawn behind us filled in with families and the sky sparked and shouted with exploding fireworks from the private shows in the backyards and dead-end streets in town, no doubt purchased at the C-Store. I settled into my lawn chair.
But not for long.
It was impossible to sit down because so much was happening all around us.
Behind us, to the left of us, to the right of us, in front of us, smoke bombs upwind of us—everywhere were explosions and the smell of gunpowder wafting in the air.
Trying to take it all in was a workout, standing up and turning this way and that to make sure nothing was coming your way and also to catch a glimpse of the private fireworks as the sky gradually grew darker. Much of North and South Dakota were getting rain and storms, their fireworks delayed or postponed. Though the sky far above was overcast, we were in the clear as far as rain and storms.
There was an heart-swelling energy in the air, one mixed with prayers for safety and a prepped ambulance nearby as we watched kids holding Roman candles and light up a chain of fireworks by dragging a rope of sorts with flame at the end. Patriotic country music rang out from a tinny-sounding karaoke speaker in the parking lot where a group of young folks prepped the fireworks on what looked like an old hay trailer.
And then the show got started, without any fanfare. Cars still drove by on the highway, people still went in and out of the C-store and other businesses nearby. A giant, exploding show, and life continued on around it.
The fireworks show wasn’t amazing because of how high in the sky or how elaborate it was. It wasn’t about the big budget line expense some city or county poured into the thing (I suspect the C-store put this show on). I’ve been to places where the fireworks were far more elaborate, shot further into the air, more professional, cost more, or were timed to fit music or a moment of some kind. (Disney World, anyone?)
No, it was because we were so close.
The fireworks at Walhalla take your breath away because of proximity.
You don’t just see the explosion. You feel it. You smell it. You taste it. Your ears ring. You see sparks showering overhead not that far away from where you’re sitting. It gets you out of your stupor.
Nine days after this fireworks show celebrating the United States of America’s Independence, President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
We were so close to an ugly outcome, an exploding nation divided further into rage, maybe even the chaotic spark that set off the world wars currently bubbling beneath the surface, so close to a changed history. We were so close to tipping finally and completely over the edge into the blind foolishness of thoughtless rage we’ve been drinking up at the trough for almost a decade.
A quarter of an inch more and a bullet, powered by gunpowder and all of the ridiculous nonsensical ill-thought hatred—even outright not-so-subtle suggestions that Donald Trump should be dead—that has been spewed about him for eight years by politicians, federal agencies, media personalities, and everyday citizens, met what can only be described not as luck but as God’s hand of protection.
I don’t know why.
I don’t exactly know what and how God is working his ultimate plan in this nation and in this world. I mainly just want to know God, and be ever more close to Him in these days, so I become more familiar with Him rather than the language of hatred disguised as “love” and politics.
I know that there are still Trump-haters out there secretly (and not so secretly) wishing he’d been killed because their hatred for another human being has wiped their human hard drive down to nothing and they are a thoughtless rage machine unable to step back from the precipice and think about how they got there. They are too small to admit they have been wrong and to eat their words on some things.
But I can’t sit down anymore. There’s so much going on all around me I must stand up.
We were so close, but for God.
Proximity takes your breath away.
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