About Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Working, writing, raising kids and playing music from our ranch on the edge of the badlands in Western North Dakota

Small spaces

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s quite clear that I am enamored with all of this space around me–all of the grass and the sky and the pink road that stretches on for miles onto the horizon. I stand outside and feel like I could simply blow away with the leaves in this vast landscape, no more significant than a field mouse really.

But I am a completely different size in this house. In fact, I am actually quite significant, and so is my shoe population, unfortunately for my husband’s side of the closet. Just to give you a bit of a visual of what we are dealing with here, when you knock on the door, you can see directly into the bedroom (and if you take five steps, you will be inside of it). Closing the bedroom doors would be an option, except that they have windows–beautiful, but not so practical when you’re in the process of changing your shorts and the neighbor pops in for a chat. And if my husband and I were standing side by side in the living room and tried to perform the chicken dance the way it was meant, our elbows would be scraping the sides of the room, which rules out any kind of gymnastics performances. I haven’t nearly successfully completed the move of all our earthly possessions from our three bedroom, three bathroom home to our new humble abode and we have already nearly covered every moveable inch with stuff. And when you throw two people, and two dogs (one of them the size of a small teenage boy) into the mix, there is not much floor space to skip around in. And I do like to dance and sometimes kick a leg up while doing the dishes, so that throws a bit of a kink in my style.

But I am not complaining. In fact I like living in smaller spaces, because, when it comes down to it it means less surface area to have to worry about dusting and scrubbing and vacuuming, and I’m really all for that. Anyway, I am sure, unless you were born into the Hilton family or are waiting to be crowned the next king or queen of a country, most of us have had the experience, or will have the gift of living in close quarters with someone we promised to have and hold no matter how many times we step on each others’ toes while brushing our teeth. In fact, I think it should be a requirement that all couples who are contemplating a life long commitment, live together in a one bedroom, one bathroom, one closet home. Because nothing spells love and commitment quite like holding your pee while your dearly beloved finishes his morning grooming ritual.

No, there is no hiding anything here really. Last night, we sat down in the living room for a lovely dinner of burned grilled chicken legs (I cooked), my husband sprawled out in his recliner, me and my plate dangerously close to his reclined stocking feet, and I couldn’t get past the fact that my instant rice tasted a bit like a foot that had been crammed into a pair of work boots all day in 90 degree weather. Ugh, I think I can still smell it.

Although there is no hiding from the unfortunate stenches, there is also no hiding from each other. You wake up in the morning and as you move about the house, reaching for the coffee, your hand gently brushes his. You get ready for the day and you lean across his body for your comb and laugh as you watch him crane and distort his nose and mouth while he works to shave his face. He stands in the kitchen, cutting up onions for his famous and favorite soup and the smell of bay leaves and butter wrap around you and you can’t help but get up to do the same to him. The walls move in on you and you move closer to one another. You are no longer swallowed up in the space between the multiple rooms you once used to get away from one another in an argument, but forced to look in the eye the emotions that have been provoked. The whispers in the dark sweep over you and the laughter rattles the foundation. There is no need to shout.

But when I am stubbing my toe on the coffee table for the thirteenth time that day or tripping over the damn dog in the middle of the floor, I can not believe this is where my five cousins, two sisters, two aunts, two uncles and my parents spent holiday weekends, cooking, eating, sleeping and, let’s be honest here, putting on interpretations of the “Wizard of Oz.” It seemed so much bigger when I was growing up. Interesting, considering that it was full of so much more than bodies, but of laughter and love and conversations, the smell of homemade bread, a house cat and a large Christmas Tree. Where did we all sleep? How did we manage to put on what I would consider successful and entertaining dance performances to Paula Abdul? How did we all fit around the kitchen table? And where did my grandmother keep all of her shoes for crying out loud?

I don’t know. I remember only faintly what it looked like in here, what photos she hung and where my grandfather’s easy chair sat. As I curse the closet space and shove my luggage under the bed of the very room my grandmother used to sleep in after a day of chores and raising three children, I wonder if she ever cursed the small stove or wished she had room for a bigger kitchen table. I imagine her life here, where her bed was placed and if the sun hit her face the same way it hits mine in the summer mornings and if she left the windows open at night like I do. I imagine her as a light hearted wife humming in the kitchen while plopping down pancakes for breakfast. Sometimes, when I’m outside, I swear I can hear her calling to the cattle or to her grandkids to come inside for supper. I compare her life to mine in this house, between these walls and how different this world must be from hers.

But seeing my tupperware shoved in the re-done cupboards, the laundry stacked up on the bed, the unopened cans waiting for me to rearrange the pantry and the work boots scattered in the entry way, I long to fill this house they way she filled it. I want people to sit close, eat my cooking and drink my bad coffee. I want our laughter and kitchen light to flood the farmyard late into the night and bounce off the buttes and make the landscape ring with life.

And some days, when I am scrubbing the floor or dusting the shelves, I feel like her. I feel her smile spread across my face, her kink in my back. And I wonder if this house held her the way it is holding me. I wonder if these walls closed in on them the way they have on us, urging us to break down, to touch, to hold on tight to each other. I wonder if she stood in the kitchen making dinner for her husband and if he felt moved to come up behind her and gently kiss her cheek. I wonder if she danced in the living room. I wonder if she tripped over her coffee table and walked out into the landscape and opened her arms up wide and smiled as the big, blue sky swallowed her up.

Weekend Ride

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It was a gorgeous weekend at the ranch and wanted to share some photos of moving horses between the two places. It’s a simple chore, but I love summer evenings when the light is disappearing slowly, casting dramatic shadows across the landscape. Truly a breathtaking backyard if I do say so myself.

Chad moving equipment

Attempting a simple swing on.

Another approach

Failed. I guess I'll just walk to the barn and get the saddle with the understanding that I'm not what I used to be (although, I blamed it on my too-tight pants). The mare is not enthused, as you can see here.

The guys and the mule taking it slow down the road

Critter trail

Taking the long way. Can you see the moon?

Mushroom Tree

Shadows

My view. Always a bit behind, I bring out the slow in horses. Fine for a leisurely ride, but never won me any buckles.

Almost there

Coming into the yard

Settling in

Home

The in-between pages

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I was smart enough along my way to save the books I have written in since I was given a blank page and told to put it all down. Good advice I think, considering that is what I have done.

I wrote it all down.

Not in a literal, this is what has happened today sense, because considering my art of choice has been poetry much of my musings have been in that form. Beginning with simple rhyming about my horses or the frogs I caught in the pond below our house, which were quite awful actually, and moving into words I was able to put to music once I began learning to play guitar.

I go through these books periodically. I am urged to open them when I am at a crossroads, or lonely, or feeling a bit dramatic or angry or overwhelmed. Because we all get caught up in that. So caught up in the ladder climbing and paycheck earning and dinner making and lawn mowing that we sometimes forget who we really are, and consequently, who we wanted to be in the first place. I’ve done it. I’ve lost it before. And only we can save ourselves.

So lately, as I am running my eyes across the words on worn out pages that I scrawled on ten years ago…five years ago…yesterday…I realize that I have given myself a gift. Because these pages have taken me through my life, my completely raw and unedited, for my eyes only, emotional life. And as a woman, or if you are a man who knows a woman, you can appreciate what a nice little jaunt this can be.

Reaching into my vault, I get a glimpse of who I was as far back as elementary school, where (drawing conclusions from my writing that my memory won’t fill in) I was an energetic, optimistic, animal fanatic who was terrified, absolutely terrified, of growing up (and wished a little bit that she was born a boy). And I take myself through junior high, where that fear of losing my innocent outlook and wholesome relationships was very evident. I learn, each time I page through, what it was like to be 16, in love for the first time, and surrounded by all of this space, waiting for him to knock on my door and take me out. I learn again, about my fragile confidence, my torn heart, my full heart, my fear of leaving and losing and hurting–all of the dark places I went, all of the bright spots, all of the anguish and indecision and certainty. I am reminded.

I am reminded what it was like to be on the cusp of marriage and visualizing my life moving in two different directions. I see my pen marks run down the lines of the pages, working it out, writing it out, asking myself questions with indecisive replies. I hear the adventure in my voice as I packed my bags and headed down the road, alone, with so much work and music and heartbreak and let downs and thrilling moments ahead of me. With a boyfriend, then a husband, then a vision of family weighing on my mind.

I see the blank pages I left as my time was swallowed up with miles and moves and a wedding and a house and a dog and another dog and a job to pay the bills and feed a new ambition.

I hear my meek voice in between those blank pages, something I wrote down after thumbing through and searching my soul one late night, trying again to speak out so confidently into the still air of my room as my husband slept beside me.

I hear her. I feel her. I try to know her again.

So I appreciate that I have been blessed here with a moment. A moment created by a decision to make my home where it has always been, a place where my soul has been fed, a place I come back to time and time again. A moment that allows me to take a deep breath while my husband rises at 5 am to head to work with a sandwich I made for him and kisses me goodbye and tells me to do something I love today.

I realize that this particular gift I was given isn’t possible for everyone. That not everyone can up and leave a job with security and insurance and settle into a beautiful landscape that brings you back to earth. That others have babies and husbands and wives who count on them to bring home the money to fill the fridge and pay off the home and SUV. That others aren’t ready yet. That others didn’t save all the pages. I understand this. This could have been me. This has been me. This may be me again.

And I know this moment won’t last forever. It can’t. I know my life carries on its back responsibilities and longings and lifetime goals that I wish to achieve–I need to achieve. But I’m working hard to not take this for granted. To take my moment and run as fast as I can with it, to search, to ask, to really find out.

So I write. I write it all down. Because I was told to. I write into existence the person I want to be, the way my hair might look, the clothes I could wear, the things I would say, the people I love, those who don’t understand. I put it all down. Write it out into the universe. To help the woman tomorrow understand who this woman is today.

Because there are things we cannot change. There is time we won’t get back, people we will never see again and those we can never heal, who will never love us, who we may never love. There are houses we will never live in, cars we will never drive, ocean shores we may never feel beneath our feet, children who will never be born.

All we have is who we are and we owe it to ourselves and those we love to take a moment. Take a breath and take off our working shoes, wipe our hands clean and find out who that really is.

I found this in one of those in-between pages.

Wait

somebody told me
somebody warned me
that little piece left can’t be filled
that you’ll always look in the quiet spaces
or moments without the songs you should have made

and you’ll stop for one breath

and hold it

and your hand may still be working
dusting off the highest shelf
you forgot about during the weeks filled with coffee
and neatly pressed shirts

and you’ll think

allowing it to only take you for a moment
before it stings too much
that you may have missed something in that conversation that led you to this place
you may have forgotten to say
“I have one more thing left”
“I have something up my sleeve”
“It may work this time”
something that could save you from needing those mornings
and checks with the insurance withdrawn

this may not be what I want

but when your eye catches the crumbs that you left
after a late night dinner of cornflakes
you let yourself move your hand from the shelf to the table with ease
and the brave woman you used to be
moves on to the laundry from there

Impractical Shoes

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I have nothing on my face except sunscreen. I haven’t shaved my legs in enough days to make the neighbors uncomfortable. I have yet to take a shower today, even after a long run in the hills. I think small animals have begun to nest in my wild, frizzy hair (it’s the humidity people, the humidity). I have dirt under my fingernails, horse hair stuck to my sweaty arms and yet another wood-tick crawling on my pants.

And I am loving every minute of this stinky day.

It’s not the first day I’ve spent like this since officially moving out here a couple weeks ago. In fact, I’ve spent more days than not, shall we say, au-natural. And this is how it used to be for me. Back before I discovered that maybe a little mascara wouldn’t hurt anyone, carrying a purse is convenient as well as fashionable, and yes, I should probably wear a bra in public (that is the decent, Christian thing to do). See, I was a bit of a tom boy growing up, but most wouldn’t peg me as one now. Because, I was also blessed with a mother who has an eye for fashion and worked pretty hard to make sure her girls looked the cute part in public.

Thank God for her really.

When I first began singing with my dad, on stages, in front of people, my mom was charged with the gift of dressing me. And I had a strict idea of what I should be dressed like (wranglers, shirt buttoned up to the top, cowboy hat, belt, boots…I think we have gone here before with the whole 4-H thing? Yeah, that wasn’t just my uniform for the County Fair, that was my uniform for life…after I got over the whole leotard and tights thing…).

Anyway, my mother, God bless her again, would gently coax me to maybe undo the top button of my Garth Brooks inspired brush-popper, or try to tip my hat up a bit so people could see my eyes. She would bring some new outfits home from her travels and convince me to try them on, and depending on the day and the garment, I may or may not have agreed to add it to my wardrobe. During my first few real stage performances standing alongside dad, all of my nerves and anxiety would not be thrust into the fact that I was about to go up and play guitar in front of people for the first time, that would be too logical. I could have used that energy to practice a bit more, Lord knows I needed to. No, all my nervous energy was thrown at my outfit. And my poor mother would have to sit with me as I sprawled out on the bathroom floor of the venue, crying while I blamed her for the fact that I looked like a total dork, dweeb, loser face and asking her, while we were at it, why, why, why did you let me wear leotards and tights? I mean, that stuff is documented in family photo albums across the country!

But my mom never fought back. She was always about self expression in the form of fashion, whatever your fashion choice might be. She was a pageant queen and a dancer for crying out loud (how far apart in worlds could I possibly be from this graceful, dignified woman?) And with her quiet guidance, I eventually found my own style that was acceptable outside of Jazzercise classes and the rodeo arena. As I continued performing and went on to the big school in town where the styles looked a little more like “Saved by the Bell” than a country music video, I began to get the point. In High School I started to develop a love affair with shoes and that spiraled into purses and cheap sundresses and belts and heels and I went on to college and on the road with my music. I learned to manage my less than tame-able mane and cleaned up my style with the idea that I should always sport something that I won’t regret in photos years later. The neon western shirts never returned.

In my younger adult life I was fortunate enough to have some fun with my style, but as a professional woman who, until recently, worked in fundraising at a small college, I dressed the part. I wore heels and liked it. I wore a suit jacket and appropriate buttoned up shirts. I wore tights and dresses and ironed my clothes.

And I confused people.

When the email went out to my co-workers a few weeks before my scheduled departure about my plans to move back to the ranch where I grew up and begin “eco-tourism opportunities” I got a few curious inquiries and guests at my going away party. One person, in particular, made a special phone call to me to wish me well, but to mostly get the scoop. When I explained my situation, and convinced him that I was indeed excited to be moving back, and that yes, I ride horses and yes, I will be helping my dad and starting a business out here, his reaction was disbelief. He said he wouldn’t have guessed it. By the way I dressed, he always saw me as some sort of prim and proper prissy girl. Another person indicated that I looked a little too “uptight” to receive his typical going away gift (a framed portrait of himself), another told me I will have to start dressing the part out there if I wanted to convince people.

They thought I was full of shit.

Which got me thinking about appearances. It is like our clothing, our makeup, our hair is our invitation for people to read our book, to hear our story, to open our cover and take a look inside. None of these people who knew me only at the office, or as a fellow college student, or someone I just met at a bar or on the street, would have pegged me and my big damn hair and my strappy sandals as a woman who used to get shit canned off of a green-broke horse regularly during childhood or someone who really doesn’t mind snakes or heavy lifting (although “heavy” is really relative. Despite my upbringing, I have never actually developed any form of upper body strength or confidence with large machinery…in fact, once I nearly killed one of our hired men with a tractor, but I’ll explain myself later.)

This somewhat superficial judgement is not a bad thing. This is human nature. This is society. This is the real world.

But today, in my grass stained jeans, bare feet and unpainted face, I am reminded of the girl I used to be–or the girl I really am. The girl who paid no attention to the fact that her socks didn’t match. The girl who would wear the same shirt day in and day out because it was my favorite, dammit, and it had horses on it. The girl whose skin was brown from the sun soaked up from playing and working hard in the dirt, the girl with the fuzzy ringlets springing out of her ponytail, unwilling to be tamed, unwilling to conform, much like the girl herself.

And I am relieved. Like take a deep breath and hold back the tears relieved. Because I’d lost this girl for a little while. I’d lost her to career paths and paychecks and date nights and deadlines and making an impression that it turns out, I didn’t really want to make. I was working so damn hard to smooth out the wrinkles of who I really was without realizing how important those wrinkles were to me. I was going to the gym to tighten and tone a body that was meant not to sit in a chair behind a desk, but to shovel rock and brush horses and mow the lawn and get bucked off and run up to the top of the hill to see the view. With my buttoned up blouses and my hoop earrings, I was putting up a shield I was unaware of. A shield that was blocking out the best parts of me, not only from others, but from myself as well.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. This confusion will still remain I am sure. Because I like my fancy shoes and my purses and, because I finally got my ears pierced, my dangly earrings. I can strut my stuff with the best of them. But this wardrobe thing is an accent–my abstract book cover that entices you to read the back to get the gist of the plot.

Yes, some people will hear about what I’m doing and where I’m from and wonder why I’m walking around in impractical foot gear with a pile of bracelets on my arm. They will think I’m full of shit.

But you can be whoever the hell you want out here. The cows don’t care.

And I am not confused anymore.

I am a sweaty, muddy, perfumed, tattooed, mascaraed, diamond donning woman in great shoes with scrawny arms,mosquito bites, a bad tan line, chipped nail polish and well groomed eyebrows.

And I haven’t showered in days.

Summer Walk

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

What I see on my walks around this place. I have been trying to snap a photo of the yellow and blue birds outside my window, they are loving bathing in the puddles on the road after last night’s thunderstorm, but my old digital camera, limited photography and sneaking skills leave something to be desired. Enjoy this beautiful day!

Summer Flies

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Clover blooming in the pasture outside my house.

It’s hot today at the Veeder Ranch. Not a smoldering heat, but the sun is beating on the scoria road outside my house and quite unexpectedly, the trees are standing relatively still due to the lack of push by the usually relentless wind. Which entices the flies to buzz confidently at my front door and around our horses’ noses, sending them into a some sort of trance, bobbing their heads like a metronome in an attempt to keep the persistent insects away. They head for the hill tops to find a breeze.

The cows also have a ritual, which I’ve only noticed, but haven’t studied (as I don’t claim to be, at the present time, a cow expert. I am however, to my husband’s dismay, hoping to become a pig expert, but we won’t go there today). They gather together in a cluster, maybe near the corner of a pasture, or on a side hill, and at a sporadic pace, switch their wiry tails, slapping each other over backs, on faces, under bellies, forming a sort of jumbled up assembly of “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.” I imagine them saying to each other on these days, after a long winter of trudging through the snow, “Really? We just can’t catch a break here can we?”.

These instinctual methods for dealing with the mites that come with the short North Dakota summer seem a bit more methodical than my form of extermination, which is cussing mostly, and a flyswatter made available on every table in the house. Oh, and Raid.

But the pastures are green. Like neon green. After a couple days of rains that poured down from the sky like God was

The paint catching a breeze on a hilltop.

throwing out his bathwater (and God, I imagine, has quite the large tub), the sunshine is working on drying the puddles and putting a nice crust on the gumbo buttes of the badlands and the ruts created in the gravel roads around here.

So I roll up my sleeves and my pants legs and, with my flyswatter in tow, I sprawl out on the porch. Because of course I love the warm sunshine. It is what I have been waiting for since it left us last September. I welcome it to come and brown my skin and entice the sweat-beads on my forehead and chest. I tilt my head upwards, squint my eyes and say “bring it on!” Because, in my sun-worshiping opinion, we don’t get enough of these kinds of days up here. And when we do, unfortunately for the office bound and car bound and truck bound and shovel bound North Dakota employees, they do usually land on a Monday or Wednesday, followed up with a nice rainy weekend, which doesn’t stop the hearty residents from loading up their fishing boats and digging out their Bermuda shorts anyway, because dammit, the summer is short.

Clay butte outside my window baking in the summer sun.

I found in my days touring the Great Plains as a musician that there are two things people want to talk about when you tell them you are from North Dakota (as if they didn’t already figure it out as soon as I open my mouth): your accent (say “You Know”) and the weather. And as soon as I got done explaining that yes, I know I have an accent, and that I blame it on my Lutheran Church Lady heritage, and yes, I know I say “Dakoota” funny, and haha, yes, I wish I talked more like you and said “ant” instead of “aunt” and “yes” instead of “yah,” the conversation always turns to weather.

“It’s cold up there isn’t it?”

“Yah, sure is”

“How cold does it get”

“Pretty cold. Sometimes like 30 below zero” *

“Holy Shit”

“Yah”

Yes, we talk about the weather. Ask us and we will proudly declare that it takes a certain type of person to live here.

Cows switching their tails near the water tanks.

That the winters keep the riff-raff out. That we hunker down and deal with it.

But we, from the humble stock we sprang, rarely talk about the summers here. Maybe because, in our minds, they are not so dramatic. They don’t incline us to use as many puns and metaphors and exaggerated stories about the neighbors nearly freezing to death in a blizzard or almost dying walking across campus at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks (which is the coldest place on earth I am sure of it), or how the wind could blow the snow in a flurry one thousand miles an hour over roads coated with sheets of ice and North Dakota schools would not think of shutting down. No, North Dakota summers could not possibly be that dramatic.

But I think we are wrong here. The summers here are not to be skipped over on your way to explaining yourself out of why we endure the bitter cold. I believe there is something to be said, I mean, really be said, about the season that was sent here to save us.

Hondo cools off in the dam

Because graciously summer unfurls itself from its cocoon ever so slowly for us, year after year, revealing its colors in soft buds of green on the trees, allowing the sun to shine for just a few more minutes every day, enticing the crocuses to poke through the earth on the sides of hills. It gently whispers to us to open our windows, to let the winter air out of our houses, to let the dirt creep in on the bottom of our shoes, to water our lawns and watch the blades grow, to throw something on the grill. To warm up already!

It eases us into the new, refreshing sensation, like a mother coaxing her child to get his feet wet in the pool, to come in a little further, until he finally, after giddy squeals and nervous shakes, dunks his head under the water.

And although most North Dakotans don’t truly believe it’s summer until it’s half-way over, until we have complained

Pearl the mule going in for a drink.

enough about the rain and the wind and the tornado warnings, it is days like today we jump right in. We say to each other as we walk down the street “What a beautiful day!” “It’s gorgeous out there.” “Finally! The sun!” And we plop down in our gardens, and jump into the chilly lakes, and take our sandwiches to the park, and tend to our flowers. Because days like these allow us to completely and utterly forget about the long, frigid January, the snow we shoveled through to get to our garages and the white out blizzard on the highway we were stuck in during Christmas. We finally get a chance to thaw out enough to suck on a popsicle from the Shwan’s man.

In fact, show us a photo of the previous winter and it would be unrecognizable on a day like today when the sky is so blue and the birds are chirping and the dogs are panting and our children are covered in sunscreen and sweat. Those snow drenched houses were another lifetime. Another world.

My summer fly.

Because it is hot today at the ranch and North Dakotans everywhere are turning on sprinklers, nursing their first sunburns, opening their windows and feeling at least a little grateful for the flies.

And that takes a special type of person.

*just a note for those of you looking to take a visit, and don’t know me personally–I do tend to exaggerate, especially when it comes to the weather. 30 below zero has probably never occurred here. I am included in the dramatic bunch.

Happy first day of summer you crazies!

What are we holding on to?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The Old Red Veeder barn where the reunion will take place.

So the Veeders are coming home. All of them. (Or as many of them who can fit in the time, take the drive, plan the flight and find it worth while).

It’s reunion season after all and that is what the Veeders intend to do. Reunite. Over casserole, bad lemonade, bars, jello salad and coffee and coffee and coffee.

My dad has been helping to plan this reunion for the past year. I mean of course. He is an important link in all of this as he has chosen, or has been charged with, or blessed, or just stupid enough to serve as the steward of this home place since his dad died nearly 20 years ago.

So, upon our official and gradual move from the city of Dickinson to our permanent residence at the ranch house, I have been helping a bit to get the place ready. Because, did I mention this house we have moved into has been vacant a good 10 years off and on? It turns out it needs some maintenance. (For those of you who have ever set up shop in an old house, I know you are nodding your head while recalling that lovely must-like scent.) Anyway, I spent most of my day yesterday in the basement, cleaning out some goodies and numerous spider webs.

Now I must mention here, that I am no stranger to this place. I basically grew up here. It wasn’t my childhood house, but it was my grandma’s home. Which meant that I spent many holidays, sleepovers, weekends and weekdays playing and reuniting with my cousins and aunts and uncles from across the country. It was our 600 square foot meeting place. Our stomping grounds.

The Veeder cousins with Grandma Edie during Easter at the Veeder House. I'm directly next to my grandma in the striped jumpsuit, always a good choice in the early 90s.

So there I was yesterday, in the depths of the basement, waist deep in boxes filled with other people’s stuff. Because over the years, this place has become the unofficial hiding spot for pottery, homemade doilies, ill-fitting clothing, and as it turns out, that sunflower latch-hook pillow I may have mentioned earlier. These boxes are full of the important things that people on both sides of my family, myself included, are just not quite ready to release their grip on. And this got me thinking. On the eve of family infiltrating the landscape, what, really, are we saving?

See, to me the act of organizing stuff in this particular basement was a little unnerving. Because this basement was the location of the wonderment of my youth. It is where my cousins and I performed faux marriage ceremonies, established the “Kitten Caboodle Club” to help save stray cats all over the farm-yard, and played “don’t fall in the hot lava” (the flaming red, orange and yellow carpet may have served as inspiration). It is where I performed my first interpretive dance to “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” learned, with regret, that the Easter Bunny does not exist (and just to help me out, neither does Santa Clause), and was informed that some of us were moving far away to Texas. According to me (and I’ll speak for my sisters and my cousins) nothing that was currently in this room really belonged there.

Old butter, canning and milk jars found in the basement of the Veeder house.

I raised up my hands in frustration (and consequently swiped up a cob-web).

Then my dad came over and we found, under the bed, a collection of his old albums and we went through them one by one. With each Neil Young and Emmylou Harris and Bruce Springsteen record came flooding back to my father a memory, an image, of who he was at the time he played it, over and over and over. He flipped to the back and read off, out-loud, the titles of the songs. Not surprisingly, many of them were familiar to me, because many of them he sings to this day. It was an exhilarating experience for him, to show someone else something that meant so much to him, to have his memory sparked enough to tell a few stories. We laid them all out on the bunk bed where I used to sleep. We laid all of them out.

But now what? I mean, I was working on cleaning this place out, to make room for the next batch of things I am not ready to release. What are we doing with these physical things and what does it say about the human condition that we insist on holding on so long? I mean, really, did my dad need to run hands over the covers of these albums to remember that he was once an afro donning, hippie-style ranch kid, in touch with his creativity and the front man and member of a traveling band? Do I really need to physically put on the mint green, 1960’s bridesmaid’s dress my grandma had in her dress-up drawer to remember that I once dramatically danced to Bette Midler in front of my entire extended family in the living room of this very house? I am not sure. I really am not sure.

I remember going through this house with my family, aunts, uncles and cousins after my grandmother died when I was

Veeder Cousins outside the Veeder house. Probably after one of our "Kitten Caboodle" meetings. Im am wearing the leotard and tights and carrying the blanket. That is a story for another day.

eleven. I remember there was an agreement that the grandkids each got a pair of her reading glasses (which she left all over her house, even though she usually had a pair strung around her neck) and we got to pick a few things that meant something to us individually. Something to remind us of her. I took one of her lipsticks. The kind that was blue or green and changed color on your lips. Mood lipstick I think they called it and it was always bright fuschia on her mouth. And also a Norwegean doll, who she referred to as “bestemor,” or “grandmother.” I am sure I found a couple other things, but I don’t remember. What I do remember was the stillness in the house that day– so quiet, even with all of us kids roaming around. I remember the smell of the grass softly seeping in through the open windows. I remember not giving a shit about her eyeglasses or her doll or her handkerchiefs. I wanted her voice, her laugh, her hands, her smell, her bread dough and homemade pickles. When I grew up, I wanted to ask her things and compare our features and understand why I may have turned out like her. And none of her things that I would put on my shelf could keep that from going away. Not when I lost her at eleven years old.

Wagon Wheel outside the Veeder House

The funny thing is, that here I am. In her house. Wanting so bad to keep the bricks and mortar in tact. Wanting to keep the windows clean and the floors swept. For her. For her family.

What am I holding on to?

My friend recently wrote that she too has been tempted to move back to her family farm to help make it “alive again.”

Maybe that’s what we’re doing here. All of the careful collections of things are set on shelves or in boxes to remind us about the spirit of the place, about ourselves. Because these relatives, my relatives, are not coming back for the noodle salad and family gossip. No. They are coming to touch the soil where my great-grandfather built his first home, to walk the hills they once rolled down as children, to stand on a familiar landmark, to breathe the air their great aunt sucked her last breath in, to visit the spot she once had a garden, to gather in the old barn. They are coming to remember and to celebrate the spirt of the place and the souls that rejoiced, wept and cussed here. Because we can’t hold on to the flesh and bone, the voices, the pain and the triumph, but we can preserve a tea-pot. And that helps us remember that we came from something. From something quite great.

Cornelia's Roses getting ready to bloom.

Which brings me to the roses.

I was told that below our house is a patch of yellow roses that my great-grandmother planted before she died early and suddenly in 1932. Cornelia’s roses. My great-grandfather, Eddy, tended to these flowers every day during the summers after her death, making sure they had water, sunshine, and were free of weeds. Since his death I am not sure that anyone has hoed or weeded or fed those roses. Yesterday, after emerging from the basement flushed and searching for air, I walked down to where her garden used to be and found, that after over 80 years, those roses were holding on too.

Old Homestead

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

My dad emailed me these photos this morning after we visited last night about where the old homestead was located-just below the house where we are currently living. This house, my house, where my dad and his brother and sister grew up, was actually moved from its original location to its current location on a basement when my dad was 10 years old (so 45 years ago dad? Give or take a few). It was only then they had running water and a toilet in the house. He told me that he was so upset to have to move from an area with plenty of trees that he took it upon himself to work on landscaping, hauling trees in a bucket from nearby pastures (quite revealing of his character, even at that age). He’s proud to say that many of his transplant trees are thriving today.

The photos and his message:

“The first picture is your great grandpa Eddy standing in the door of his tarpaper shack below your house where I pointed out last night. He eventually built a house around that. It had a cool porch that a milk cow chased me into one day when when I went to get the milk cows. Kerry (sister) and I got chased home. The cow’s name was appropriately “Dummy”. Kerry would remember this, as she outran me!

The second pic is Grandpa Pete, you can see the butte east of him so it was taken close to the lilac bushes.”

Wildflowers

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

When I was 10 or 11 I was obsessed with wildflowers. Obsessed.

Coincidentally, I was also obsessed with 4-H.

See the 4 H’s (head, hands, health, heart…pretty sure that’s right…funny how those logistics kinda slip the mind ) was a country girl’s lifeline to the rest of the world. It meant to me, not only PROJECTS (which I LOVED, and devoted my entire summer to), but also that I had one glorious weekend to spend in town with my almost equally nerdy friends comparing creations, eating fair burgers and flexing our flirting skills in the stands at the rodeo.

Yes, the county fair was a big damn deal people. Because my almost equally nerdy friends were from little and big farms dotted in a 30 to 50 mile radius from where I was headquartered, the fair provided the only time I actually got to see them the entire summer. A typical bike ride to meet half way would have surely killed us both.

Yeah, the seeing the friends thing I did not take for granted. But given my athletic ability and the fact that the outlook of a successful sporting and rodeo career seemed pretty grim even at 10 or 11, the real reason for my devotion to the sport of 4-H was its trophy potential.

Trophy Potential.

(I feel compelled to mention here that I was the kid who followed 4-H dress code to annoying perfection. White pressed collared shirt buttoned up to the very top, strategically placed four leaf clover badge over my heart, tight wrangler blue jeans and polished boots. I was the epitome of 4-H, a model member, a spokes person. I should have been on the cover of “4-H Weekly” really. And if that magazine doesn’t exist, it should. Call me and I’ll make it happen).

Over the summers I had tried my hand at various activities. Like latch-hooking.

Does anyone even do this anymore?

I spent my evenings hunched over on the living room floor hooking yarn piece after yarn piece onto a pattern of a sunflower, cow, or horse. I would then commission the help of a third party to actually make the creation functional as well as decretive. My sunflower became a pillow, the two animals were rustic wall hangings…now that I think of it, I wonder what ever happened to those works of art? I mean, they weren’t tacky at all.

Anyway, latch-hooking was the only activity that even resembled girly that I decided to try. I refused baking and wasn’t going to kid myself in the sewing department, considering my mother had once sewn a pair of my sister’s pants together at the hem, and she was my sewing role model.

So I tried my hand at things like wood-burning, which always turned into an inspirational piece about the heartland or living your life to the fullest. I also did educational projects on gardening, beavers and beaver dams, tried my hand at drawing my favorite stuffed animal and took countless photos of my cats, dogs and horizons.

All of these projects I would present to the judges with pride. Even though I knew it was going to be tough to compete with my friend who would pick a needlepoint project off of her grandmother’s wall the night before the fair and make up a great story about how she had learned so much working alongside her dear granny. (I have always been freakishly honest, so I knew I didn’t stand a chance if I tried that shenanigan. That, and no one related to me actually knew the definition of needlepoint). Regardless, that friend and I would usually walk out with a respectable blue or red ribbon and a couple dollars in our pockets.

But let’s get real here. I generally do not have a competitive nature, but when it came to 4-H, I was out for blood. A hundred blue ribbons meant nothing. I wanted the grand. The purple. The TROPHY!

Which leads me to my wildflower obsession. I can’t remember, but I imagine it had been a long winter, giving me the time to consider inspiring projects that would surely land me a top spot at the State Fair (the county fair on steroids). I’m not sure what exactly gave me the idea to set out on a quest to hunt, gather and identify every living wildflower in McKenzie County, but it really was genius. It really carried massive potential. And it is exactly what I did.

As soon as the last pile of snow disappeared and first spring rain hit the earth, I hit the hills with my “Wildflowers of North Dakota” guide book and a whole lot of ambition. I became a hunter, a wild woman with a hawk’s eye for a splash of new color on the landscape. I would make my parents pull the car over if I thought I saw a semblance of a species I hadn’t collected yet. I was a seeker of the rare, fragile flower. It was a big day when I came across an in tact gumbo flower or perfectly assembled tiger lily. I remember taking my best friend out with me into the woods on our bikes with gloves and scissors because I NEEDED to collect a sample of Canadian thistle, which poked the shit out of your hands when you tried to pluck it from the ground. It is funny to me now that this became such a sought after specimen, considering every rancher would strongly disagree that this should be considered a wild flower. Wild yes. Flower no. But it had color and zest and, to me, it was beautiful as far as flowers go. I NEEDED it.

I would like to tell you that at the end of the summer, I took this project into town, stood proudly in front of the judges and confidently explained what I knew about the purple prairie cone flower and the blue flax. I would like to say that I had a worthy declaration of why I chose to include the creeping jenny and the Canadian thistle into a flower project. I am sure I was brilliant. And I’m pretty sure I got a purple ribbon, which prompted me to march my butt to the State Fair and receive the same result. I am pretty sure that is what happened.

But if I were to tell you the truth, which I aim to do here, (it’s that freakishly honest thing again), I would tell you that I guess I don’t really remember that part. What I remember is the sheer wonder I felt that summer in discovering the little gems in my surroundings. It was like searching for gold or diamonds out there in the landscape. Each yellow daisy I came across, each lady slipper I pressed and put in my book, gave me such a sense of accomplishment, such a sense of pride. I was in complete awe at the fact that the rough landscape, littered with rocks, clay and cactus could produce and sustain a vivid, fragrant, magenta flower that was so fragile that it only lived a couple days. It was the juxtaposition of it all.

This could be a brutal place, I heard stories about draughts, and how my grandparents had struggled on this landscape. But I just couldn’t believe it when I literally found myself frolicking in rolling hills of crocuses and sweet peas. Little rays of sunshine pushing through the earth. I became so engrossed, that at times, I felt like one of the flowers myself.

This came to mind again to me so vividly last night. 16 years after that monumental project I found myself walking out in the June evening air with my camera, ready to take photos of the horses, or the dogs or some form of exciting wildlife. But I continued to point my camera to the ground, snapping photos of these flowers sprouting out yellow as a single stem from between a rock, growing in flocks across the peak of a hill or in a coulee, scattered like heaven’s perfect garden along the landscape. I became fascinated again.

And I was downright giddy. Because that girl I had been looking to find again–on the road, in books, at work, in crowded bars–was finally at home with her flowers.

Summer Sunset Ride

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Photos of a beautiful evening ride. My patient husband allowed me to stop every three minutes to try to capture the sunset, colors and calm. As the sun was setting we heard the elk, who frequent the pasture, bugling just before they appeared in the draw below us. Heaven on earth!