I was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. If you know Jamestown, you know the giant buffalo statue and not much else. It's a small town on the prairie — the kind of place where everyone knows your name and the nearest anything is a long drive. I don't remember much from those early years, but I know the plains were the first landscape I ever saw. Flat got into my blood before I was old enough to know there were alternatives.
Detroit Lakes
We moved to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota when I was a kid, and that's where I grew up. If Jamestown was the prairie, Detroit Lakes was the water. Lakes everywhere, pine trees, the kind of small-town summers that feel like they'll last forever. Riding bikes until dark, fishing off docks, the whole picture.
Detroit Lakes taught me what it means to be outside. Not hiking-in-the-Rockies outside — just regular, everyday outside. Catching frogs. Building forts. Exploring the edges of town on a bike with no particular destination. That's the childhood I carry with me, and it's the version of growing up I try to give my own kids, even if it looks a little different now.
West Fargo
My teenage and early adult years were in West Fargo. That's where I grew up in the other sense — figured out who I was, got my start at BNSF, became a dad for the first time. West Fargo is where things got real. It's also where things got complicated, as they do when you're young and making the kind of decisions that shape everything after.
I spent a lot of years there. It's where Allie was born. It's where I learned to work hard, to show up, to keep going when things aren't easy. West Fargo doesn't get a lot of love — it's Fargo's quieter neighbor — but it's where I built the foundation for everything I have now.
Glyndon
And now, Glyndon. Almost two years in a house that's ours. A yard. A shed that's slowly becoming a workshop. Neighbors who wave. A town small enough that you can hear the trains at night — which, given what I do for a living, feels appropriate.
Glyndon is where all the pieces came together. Samantha and I, the kids, the full loud chaotic household. It's not where I started, but it's where I landed, and it feels right in a way that's hard to explain.
The Thread
Four towns across two states, all within a couple hours of each other on I-94 and Highway 10. I've never lived anywhere that wasn't the northern plains. I've never wanted to.
People ask if I'd ever move somewhere warmer, somewhere with mountains, somewhere "exciting." And I get it — minus thirty in January is not everyone's idea of a good time. But I think about the sky out here, how it goes on forever. I think about the quiet. I think about standing in the yard on a summer night, the kids inside, the light fading slow over the fields, and knowing that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
Jamestown, Detroit Lakes, West Fargo, Glyndon. Four small dots on a big map. But they're mine, and they add up to a whole life.