(CNN) -- In Fargo, North Dakota, the word "destruction" is being spoken. The reference is to the potential power of the feared floodwaters.
But even if the outcome is as dire as the starkest of predictions -- even if the Red River overflows its banks to an extent and for a duration never before seen in Fargo -- the things that truly matter in town will not be destroyed.
Proof of that is evident. Once in a great while, a community has the opportunity to understand anew what that word -- "community" -- really means; once in a while, a town defines itself as a town. The week just past has been such a time for Fargo.
The people of the city, joined by volunteers from other cities in North Dakota, Minnesota and beyond, have done what they can do to shore up the levees and barricades, to put up whatever defense they can muster against the river. Neighbor standing next to neighbor, they have worked with those sandbags in the daylight and at night, in the cold and in the snow.
Our society has grown accustomed to assuming we can accomplish just about anything with the touch of a button, the movement of a cursor on a computer screen. That too-easy word -- "community" -- has become overused in its online context. All the so-called communities on the glowing screens, all the friends and friendships to be bestowed with the click of a mouse.
And then comes a moment when the essence of community, in its bedrock definition, is required, and we witness it as it unfolds, person by person, minute by minute.
They don't know in
Fargo whether, in the end, they will have vanquished the river.
If you've ever been to that part of the upper Midwest, you are aware that self-sufficiency is one of the defining qualities of the lives the people lead. They have grown up knowing it has to be that way.
Most Americans seldom pass through North Dakota. The families who live there have long understood that when something important needs to be done, they'd better count on doing it themselves. There is a pride in that that, although not often expressed aloud, is part of the air itself.
The mayor, Dennis Walaker, speaking of the battle against the river, said, "we want to win this. We want to win this badly." Yet he was realistic. He told the people of Fargo, "I don't care how old you are. You've never seen anything like this in the Valley."
The instructions given to the residents by the city's elected leaders have, perhaps inadvertently, reflected both a faith in the localness that has always been the foundation of Fargo, yet also a need for faith in something more powerful, something about as far from local as can be.
It could be heard in the words of Tim Mahoney, a Fargo city commissioner. He asked volunteers to go to one of two places to help fill sandbags: to the Fargodome sports stadium or to the Assembly of God church.
In the 3½ years since the terrible hurricane hit New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, there has been a phrase that has entered the language: a "Katrina moment." The way it usually is spoken is not meant to flatter; a
Katrina moment, as a rule, refers to a failure by government to provide the necessary assistance at a moment of crisis.
But there are moments, and there are moments. Whatever Fargo may become in the months and years ahead, what has already taken place there as the river has
risen will serve to define the spirit of the town for generations yet unborn.
We are told so often that the world has become borderless, that in a digital age, we're all citizens of a universe without geographic definition. On those computer keyboards of ours, or so we are asked to believe, we're all everywhere at once.
It's not true. Everyone is from somewhere solid and real, from a spot on a map; everyone was born into a community in the oldest sense of that word. In the community of Fargo this past week, as the residents have worked shoulder to shoulder to fight the river, they have learned the meaning of that all over again. But of course, being from Fargo, they never really forgot.
Other than the flowers, I couldn't really figure out why it was a scenic turnout, although there were trash cans for my garbage!
