Am I The Only One In ND That Had Never Heard Of This Word?

I've been out here in North Dakota for over 8 years now and sometimes I feel like I just moved in yesterday

Have you ever had that feeling? You grew up and spent most of your life in another state, then in a blink of an eye it seems, a job opportunity takes you to a new city, completely different in almost every way. I STILL think it's charming when the first few days of snow arrive ( almost everyone hates me for that ) as winter slowly kicks in.

I'm from California where people have been known to panic if it gets below 65 degrees

I thought I had heard and seen most of the wonders of North Dakota. I mean, after all, just about a year ago I found out what a Fleischkukle is. One of our sales staff was blown away that this delicious treat had escaped me. I now know when to use the expression "Uff da"  - apparently, it's not just a polite North Dakota way of cursing. Now on the other side of the coin, I'm quite sure that people out here have never heard of the word gnarly. A term used by surfer dudes and dudettes ( with big white globs of sunscreen on their noses ) out in California.

So when I saw this word in use two weeks ago, I was positive they made a spelling error

A friend of mine on Facebook ( she's a native North Dakotan ) recently in conversation used the word OPE     - I immediately corrected her blunder and told her she was missing an 'N'.....ironically she wrote back "nope ...that Ope was indeed what she meant"

Then just this morning, another native friend ( yes I know, shocker that I have more than one ) posted this :

 Now completely frustrated, I did some digging......on YouTube

School Of Ope YouTube

I'm sure more mysterious North Dakota traditions are still out there for me to learn about