The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 he high that February afternoon was minus-22 degrees Fahrenheit. We had not seen another car on the road for at least two hours. Over in the distance a small blue elevation across a snow-swept field was grandiosely known as the Turtle Mountains. Brad Kirbyson, the consulate’s political-economic specialist, and I were about halfway through our two- day visit to all 12 of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection posts located between Pembina and Antler along the North Dakota-Manitoba border, when we stopped on a stretch of gravel road to take in the view. That North Dakota would seem like the end of the earth never occurred to me in my prior assignment, when I was walking the dusty streets of Timbuktu. Still, exoticism is in the eye of the beholder. And mak- ing sure one has a passport to be able to get the best chicken-and-fish dinner in five counties is pretty exot- ic. Fortunately, this is not a tale of a sudden blizzard sweeping in and our having to spend a night awaiting the Mounties to dig us out. We may have been out of cell-phone range, but our old Jeep got us to where we were going. Together with our counterparts across Canada, we were visiting each of the border-crossing posts in our district. This trip was followed three weeks later by a second one to cover the seven border posts between Lancaster, Minn., and International Falls, Minn. Any fantasy I may have had of a Foreign Service tour at one of these border stations to catch up on my reading was quickly dispelled when I learned about the full work- load of truck and passenger vehicles regularly passing through ports seemingly so distant from any major city. The volume of traffic may not be high at some facilities, but the value of the loads passing through even the smaller ones makes it worthwhile to keep them open. Prior to 9/11, most of these posts had one person per shift, catering almost exclusively to local traffic. A majority of the facilities were identical brick buildings dating from the 1930s that have since been abandoned. (Local agents now commute from nearby towns.) Not worth the expense to move, the old buildings mainly provide shelter for local critters escaping from the cold. Nothing else was in sight except for the Canadian bor- der station just up the road — or down it, depending on how you view the world. F O C U S O N T H E U . S . B O R D E R S F OREIGN A SSIGNMENT IN THE U NITED S TATES M AKING SURE ONE HAS A PASSPORT TO BE ABLE TO GET THE BEST CHICKEN - AND - FISH DINNER IN FIVE COUNTIES IS PRETTY EXOTIC . B Y M ARY S PEER AND B RAD K IRBYSON T Mary Speer, an FSO since 1986, is consul and principal officer at the American Presence Post in Winnipeg. Brad Kirbyson is the post’s political-economic special- ist.