Category Archives: Adventure

I can’t be trusted with spring…

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Summer arrived here for a minute or two this weekend.

And when summer arrives, I can’t be trusted.

I drink more alcohol because it tastes better on the deck.

I eat grilled brats for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I blow off chores and work to get on the back of a horse.

And, I, uh, well…

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I do shit like this…

Because I lose my mind out here when the weather thaws the ground. There are so many fun things to do and not enough time to do them, so I tool around the place looking for projects that inevitably turn into predicaments…

predicaments like these…(Cue Prince Charming…)

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No worries though. Despite my idea that I should drive, followed by my insistence that I was trying to avoid the mud, and the thought that maybe, after a few minutes of rocking back and forth and flinging mud into the atmosphere, my mouth, face, hair and everything in between, we should, you know, go get the pickup and a rope, Husband and I saved the machine from its muddy, messy grave…by man power (and woman thumb on the throttle) alone.

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Here’s hoping that you had a similarly successful, summery weekend of your own.

Coming Home: Muddy March a sign of bright days ahead
by Jessie Veeder
3-15-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

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Sunday Column: About an impromptu sledding party

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Last weekend we had an impromptu sledding party with the neighbor kids.

I just happened to be hanging out with my nephew building a snowman in 50 degree weather, so it was perfect timing.

Impromptu is always perfect timing for me. Especially in the winter when the days can get sort of long without a project or a visit or two from the neighbors.

We gotta stick together around here.

Stick together and then, you know, let small children push us down an icy hill into a quickly melting crick below.

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It was fun watching my friends’ kids playing on the same hill where we used to play, sliding down with their dads, squealing the same kind of screams, laughing the same kind of laughs and pushing it to the limit they way we used to, you know, trying to see how many could actually fit on a sled at once without crashing into a pile of tears and bloody noses at the bottom.

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There were rice crispy bars, 

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Snowball fights,

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Soaking wet mittens,

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Negotiated rides back up the hill…

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It was the best way to spend a winter afternoon out here in the middle of all this snowy hills.

It was just like old times.

Coming Home: Sledding quickly into the life we imagined
by Jessie Veeder
2-15-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

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Sunday Column: Full car, empty tank…

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Rear View Road

In my life, by my own unscientific, not so mathematic, sort of a wild and exaggerated calculation, I estimate that I have driven approximately 7,538,390 miles.

But it’s probably more.

I mean, living 30 miles (give or take) from the nearest town and having acquired my drivers license and a 1982 Sorta Pink Ford LTD I liked to call Rosie when I was only 14, I’ve had ample opportunity to put plenty of road behind me in twenty or so years…

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Take that and add the five years I spent touring up and down the country singing for my supper and you think you could call me an expert…in maps, in traffic laws, in emergency preparedness, in flat tires and rear-enders, turn signals and every gas station from here to Ada, Oklahoma.

And I am. I am an expert in some of those things. Like emergency preparedness.

Just take a look in my car right now. I have everything you’d ever need if you were ever stranded…at a party…or a bonfire.

road 2A can of Big Sexy Hairspray. Sunflower seeds. A guitar stand. Blankets. Magazines. An extra pair of Toms slip ons. A beach towel. Wrapped Christmas presents I still need to deliver to my best friend and her kids in Bismarck. Thirty-seven half drunk water bottles and one sorta-full Snapple. Can cozies. A partridge in a pear tree.

Oh, and the backpack my mother-in-law packed for me in case of an apocalypse. There’s that to go along with the winter gear.

I’ve got piles of it.

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Yes, I’m a true North Dakotan, so in case the summer kegger doesn’t spontaneously occur, I’m covered for winter too.

So I should have known better…

Coming Home: Car stocked up for any situation, except running out of gas
1-11-15
by Jessie Veeder
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Hears to full tanks and full hearts.

Happy Trails.

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Sunday Column: Adventures in boots…

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Our stories make us. To sit around the kitchen table, or to stop and chat up a friend on the street, to lean against our shovels, taking a break from work. To grab a beer on a patio somewhere and lean back into our memories with our good friends, or the friends we are making. To tell about the time you got bucked off so hard you couldn’t feel your right arm for days, the one that turns into a memory from your new friend or old friend about her favorite horse that used to eat her hat, stories that lead into other stories, stories that show us parts of one another, they mean something, they say something about the fabric woven in us.

Stories are how we come to know one another. Stories are how we share pieces of our lives with pieces of the rest of the world.

But I have to tell you that when I asked you to share the stories of your favorite boots with me here on the blog, I didn’t expect to be so moved. Each memory or commentary is touching or funny or perfectly heartfelt in it’s own way and I feel like I have the best group of loyal, well-dressed friends out there.

I’m so glad I asked for your stories…

So thank you for sharing!

And if you haven’t commented with your own boot story yet (or Facebooked at Facebook.com/veederranch or Tweeted/Instgrammed a photo with #rockybootstories) there’s still time to enter for your chance to win a FREE PAIR OF BOOTS!  I will post the winner on Wednesday!

And now to celebrate spring and our stories and all the kinds of trouble we can get into way out in the country with our best friends in our favorite pair of boots, I present to you a story about childhood, breaking rules and paying the price.

P.S. This is a story about wood ticks and I apologize in advance for that creepy, skin-crawly feeling that will likely result after reading it…

Coming Home: Bending the rules ends in surprise infestation
by Jessie Veeder
5-11-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Keep those stories coming friends! And here’s to many more adventures in those boots!

The Roof (or why I’m in search of 20 giant trampolines.)

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garage

You know Husband’s building a garage? Yeah? I’ve mentioned that right?

It’s a massive project. For the past month or so, each weekend the men in my life are up there crawling around, nailing things to other things, coming in for a beer, a Diet Coke or a sandwich or something. Every weekend I’ve been making enough soup or casserole to feed them at the end of a long cold day spent way up there, too far from the ground and too close to the sky in my opinion.

And every weekend it’s been kinda shitty weather. You know, because we wait to do these sorts of projects until it is certain to dump snow or ice on us at any moment.

Why would a person build a garage in the summer when the weather is warm and a guy could get a little sun on that white belly? That would be too practical.

No. We wait until winter when it’s kinda chilly and kinda icy and terrifyingly dangerous to be lifting rafters up 22 feet and then dangling from them like damn monkeys.

So every weekend I tell them to be careful. I plead with them to watch their step. I contemplate the cost of fashioning them all with full-body helmets. I wonder how many mattresses I would have to buy to cover the area around the entire circumference of the garage with the thought that if they’re plummeting 22 feet to their immanent death and there’s a nice pillow top waiting for them at the bottom, perhaps they’ll only break a leg and not their necks.

Maybe I should invest in giant trampolines.

Anyway, point is, I hate this project. It’s dangerous and it’s making me crazy.

Now I know life is dangerous, I have terrible depth perception. Just the other day I whacked myself in the lip with the phone in an attempt to answer it. Once, I bent over to pick something up and I nearly knocked myself out on the kitchen table.

Needless to say, I do not go on the roof of that garage.

No, I stay inside and sweep or make cookies or paint or stain something. Sometimes I go outside to pick up nails or boards or things that could get buried in the snow or possibly impale my dearly beloved on his inevitable trip off the roof.

For the past few weekends my sweet mother-in-law has been coming over to to keep me company and to organize the mess that is her carpenter son and his wife who seems to have an aversion to the vacuum cleaner (unless it’s a special occasion).

So on Sunday I worked on putting rock up on a wall in our kitchen, a project that has been in limbo for a good six months or so. And while I was mixing mortar, climbing up and down the little ladder and making up new cuss-word combinations, my mother-in-law was downstairs organizing tools in our basement workshop.

There’s a special place in heaven for this woman, I tell you what. And when this house project is finished, when the damn tiling and painting and sanding is complete and the basement is transformed from a workshop into a livable space, I’m going to pour my mother-in-law a strong margarita and then I’m going to pour one for myself and we are going to drink it while I make an appointment for a manicurist and then another appointment for a therapist.

Because last Sunday when I was upstairs trying to get giant rocks to stick to the damn wall, my mother-in-law was in the basement putting away the paintbrushes when she looked up to see her oldest son, my husband, plummet from the sky, past the window and to the hard, frozen ground.

She dropped her paintbrush, clutched her chest and ran up the stairs past me in a frenzy, saying something about how “the guys came off the roof…I mean, they fell. He fell off the roof,” as she flung open the door and ran outside to assess the situation.

And I followed her in a panic, calculating the amount of damage a fall from 22 feet could inflict in the 3 seconds it took to get my body outside to find my father-in-law, standing up but dazed and bleeding a bit from his eyebrow where his now-missing-glasses dug into his face.

And then there was my husband, slow blinking, covered in snow, but standing upright, thank God, standing upright, moving his eyes from the giant frozen hump of dirt that broke his fall up to the demolished scaffolding ten or twelve feet in the air where they were standing just seconds ago before it gave out, sending them slamming hard and quick into the ground while, T, my brother-in-law, stood helpless below them.

It wasn’t a 22 foot fall. Ok. Just about half of that.

I stood in front of my husband and looked him in the eyes, probably doing the most annoying thing a person can do to someone who just experienced major head-to-ground impact. I repeated, “Are you ok? What happened? Are you ok? Oh my gawd!” about thirty-seven times before his slow blinks got a little faster and he could begin to answer me.

“Guess we didn’t put enough screws in,” he said as his brother brushed the snow off his back and my mother-in-law searched for her husband’s glasses.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah, shit,” he said.

“Come inside now for a minute,” his mother said.

But these boys, they don’t listen. And, with a few house building projects under his belt, this isn’t my father-in-law’s first plummet from a roof.

So they ignored the women’s pleas of “Taking a break. Having a sandwich. Assessing the head-injury situation” and they put up a new piece of scaffolding, this time with a proper amount of screws, and continued on with the damn shingling project, barely skipping a beat while the women in their lives stood with hands on hips trying to catch our breath and slow our palpitating hearts.

And now I’m researching what kind of money I can get for my right kidney. Because I’m going to sell it so I can hire professionals with harnesses and body armor to finish this damn garage.

It’s either that or giant trampolines.

If you need me, I’ll be in my office Googling “Tequila IV”

 

All in a day’s work…

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So there I was, legs dangling and flailing as I maneuvered and shimmied myself out of the window of my friend M’s big blue pickup parked outside the front door of the pizza place in Boomtown.

It was a perfect parking spot for a spectacle that could only occur when my friend and I get together. And it was the perfect time of day–6:00 PM, the dinner rush hour when hundreds of men are flocking in from the oil fields in search of dinner, a cold beer, and if it happens to be an option, maybe some entertainment.

Well, if the gentlemen were paying attention as they shoved their hands in their pockets, talked on their phones and shuffled past that blue pickup and on through the door for some grub, they might have paused a moment to wonder what the hell was going on in there.

Why was the pickup shaking?

Why did it just park, backup, and then park again?

Why were those women laughing so hard?

Why weren’t they getting out? What are they doing in there? Wait…is she climbing out the damn window? 

If they would have stopped to ask I would have answered:

Yes. Yes, I’m climbing out the window. Why? Because the damn doors of this pickup, the ones we used to get in here, worked just fine thirty miles ago. But now? No. Now they are stuck. All four of them. 

We tried our best to open them, punching and flinging our bodies at the doors in an attempt to dislodge whatever is potentially lodged, so that’s what the shaking was about.

We tried cutting the engine and starting it again, the sort of control+alt+delete thing that works on computers, but as you can see from my ass hanging out the window and my legs dangling and flailing as I attempt to reach the ground, kind sir, that didn’t work either.

And we’re hungry, but not surprised. This kind of shit happens to us all the time. And her husband will never believe it. She’s calling him now. He’s going to ask her if she unlocked the doors.

We did.

But I got this. I got this. No big deal. I’m climbing out the window. No, don’t worry about the gravel road we accumulated on the way here, I’ve had plenty of gravel road on my outfits in my lifetime. Yup, we’re starving and I’m climbing out the window to get the pizzas to bring home to our husbands who will shake their heads and wonder what we did wrong. 

We will say nothing. They won’t believe us. Thanks for asking.  Now if you’ll excuse me…”

That’s what I would have said if one of those men had asked. But none did. Thankfully. They probably knew better, knew not to get involved as my friend made the call to her husband and I lowered myself to the ground, laughing uncontrollably and wondering how the hell I was going to get back in that big truck of hers with two pizzas and a box of cheese balls, a dinner clearly made for adventurers like us.

Adventurers and friends who have found ourselves in the throes of a small photography business we created that sends us along muddy back rads to chase toddlers through fields, try to fit babies in buckets and race the sun with a senior in a prom dress to the top of a butte in an attempt to get the best shot.

We’ve been nearly a year in business and we’ve learned a lot about our craft and our friendship, but mostly we learned that it isn’t a day’s work until one of us twists and ankle, trips over our own feet, drops a camera, slips and dangles dangerously from a ladder, or, you know, runs out of diesel twenty miles from town.

So we weren’t surprised about this door thing, because we were due for another mishap, that dark cloud that hovers over our fluffy hair hadn’t quite delivered that day.

But it was a mystery, I declared as I handed the pizzas in to M through the open window, giggling, mumbling, grunting, hoisting and stretching my legs up there in an attempt to follow.

And then I said, “You know, when you get home to show your husband, these doors are going to open right up.”

My friend laughed and said she was sure of it, “but really, what the hell?”

And we laughed for the next 15 miles where I said goodbye and got in my car, praying the doors would open and that it would start, because, you just never know.

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But we did know. We knew it was going to be a mystery forever.

We knew we would laugh about it now and be glad we had one another for witnesses. Because when she got home to declare the pickup in need of repair,  those doors opened right up.

Ah, well. Just another days’ work…

Why I’m shopping for khakis and a house in the suburbs…

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Last night I went on a ride with Pops to gather the cows. We were in a hurry because every day it gets darker a little earlier. It was 6:30. It gets dark at 7:30…or something like that.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, I have never been able to keep up with Pops on a horse, and I’m afraid no matter how much help I think I am, I’m quite certain he would be better off without me.

I mean, I could be riding a race horse. You know, one of those fast buggers that wins the races race horses win. It could have countless trophies, made jockeys famous and fans from around the world could be chanting his name. And that horse would take one look at me and decide that running isn’t his thing today.

And neither is trotting for that matter.

Nope.

Not until we’re pointing toward the barn anyway.

Or cutting a path through the thick trees. Yeah, in the trees he’d find his pace.

But Pops. Pops could ride a horse that was half-way to the light at the end of the tunnel and that horse would turn right around to give him his last breath.

So this is what I deal with when we’re in a hurry–kicking and pushing and working to find a pace on a lazy horse to keep up with Pops as he heads toward the trees, providing me with directions that I cannot hear because he is facing the hills and I am three horse lengths behind him.

I yell “What?”

And he says something about following a cow through the trail in the trees.

So I do.

Only there isn’t a trail.

So me and my suddenly-lightening-fast horse make one through the brush so thick that I lose sight of the cow I’m supposed to be following (and all forms of life and light for that matter).

I hear Pops hollering from what seems like twenty miles away and wonder how he got that far in what I’m certain has only been thirty seconds (I’m not sure though because I lose all sense of time as soon as I get into the trees, you know, because I’m focusing on trying to not die a horrible, mangled death now that my horse has found his first wind…)

“Jessss!!!” Pops’ voice echoes through the trees. “Wheeereee youuuuu attt?”

“Uhhhh…” I spit the leaves from my mouth. “Just, uh, cutting a trail here…”

…and bringing with me some souvenirs from the experience–sticks in my shirt, leaves down my pants, acorns in my pockets and twigs jammed nicely in the puffs of my ponytail as I emerge on the other side of the brush alone and searching for any sign of the cow I was supposed to keep an eye on.

Ah, nevermind, looks like Pops has her through the gate.

Shit.

Shit.

I kick my horse to catch up while I work on ridding myself of the vegetation I acquired on my “Blair Witch” journey through the coulee.

I catch up just in time to follow him to the top of a hill, down through another coulee, along the road and into the barnyard where we load up the horses and I wait to make sure Pops’ tractor starts so he can get home and get a bale of hay.

It does not start.

(Good thing I have patience, you know?)

So I drive him and the horses home.

Slowly.

Because I have precious cargo.

And because apparently I like to torture this man who is trying to beat the sun.

And the other man in my life who was still at work when I got in from “helping” and decided to make him a casserole, only to be asked, three bites into his meal, what I put in this thing.

To which I replied “cheese, noodles, hamburger…the regular…why?”

He gets up from his chair while pulling something from his mouth, looks and me and says:

“Because I just bit into a stick.”

Shit.

If you need me I’ll be shopping for khakis and a house in the suburbs.

Paddlefishing. Who said Rednecks aren’t fancy?

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Oh, the river. So calm, so peaceful. So beautiful and serene. Take a look at this scene and you would never guess that during the first week of May the shore is filled with hundreds of rednecks, grilling bratwurst, pitching tents, sporting camouflage, making small talk and casting their fishing poles and hooks into the current on a hope that emerging from the surface will be one of the North America’s largest freshwater fish.

Husband was one of those lucky rednecks.

He pulled this from the river on Friday afternoon.

It’s a paddlefish. 74 lbs of a prehistoric, dinosaur-esque creature with fins and no scales, tiny eyeballs and a long flat nose from which it gets its name.

Husband’s smiling because he’s managed to snag one with a giant rod, reel and hook at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers where, ironically, the state’s biggest and brightest rednecks work to harvest a creature that supplies some of the best and most coveted caviar in the nation.

Who says hicks aren’t fancy.


I can say this because I’m one of them. And I am behind my camera-phone barely able to hold the thing up while my dearly beloved basks in his victory. Because I have been casting and whipping my giant fishing rod into the channel of the river for nearly three hours and I haven’t caught anything but a couple of logs, lots of sticks and my father-in-law’s boat.

Yup.

Caught that thing on the first cast.

But I was happy for husband. And so were the 20+ people down stream from him when he hollered “FISH ON!” and worked to keep the creature on the line. The other fisher men, women and kids who shared our sandbar came running toward where they saw the fish roll to the surface to assist with its capture. Two kids appeared with a gaff (a long stick with a hook on the end used to pull the giant river-dwelling creature to shore), a girl came over with her camera and muck boots, a couple older men chimed in with advice, our friend waded through the strong current to try to locate the thing and I screamed and started running toward it with my video camera fully engaged.

That’s the way it is out there during the few short weeks when these massive and strange creatures are up for catch. Sports-people from all over the region gather at the banks of the river, pitching tents, making little cities with their campers, revving the engines of their pickups, barbecuing, drinking beer and sharing fish stories. Depending on how the fish are moving fisher-people generally have less than two weeks to snag their fish before the limit is reached and the season is closed. So they move through campsites and shoot the breeze, asking about the catch-count so far, exchanging stories about the one that got away, the one that weighed almost 100 lbs, and the one their friend’s, sister’s grandmother caught yesterday up river from them…

Yup, if you happen to be down river from someone who snagged a paddlefish, their fish story becomes your fish story. Because one man cannot reel one of these creatures in on his own. It seems it takes a village of men and women in muck boots and ball caps cheering you on, offering advice, grabbing supplies, hollering, and leaning in toward the water to see what’s on the other end of the line that’s bending the pole and making the fisher-person attached to it sweat and squirm for a good five to fifteen minute fight.

If it sounds intense to catch one of these buggers, I tell you, it is.

But it doesn’t take skill.

I know because once upon a time I caught one myself. I was somewhere in-between the first verse and chorus of a Disney song as I cast that giant hook as far as I could throw it…(ahem…three feet in front of me)…into the current. I looked over my shoulder to my audience shaking their heads at me on top of the steep banks. I  laughed and threw one of my arms in the air to really hit the punch line of Pocahontas’s “Just around the river bend”  and just as I started in on my grand finale my hook caught something and jerked me dangerously close to the edge of the bank and ironically close to a literal image of the song I was performing. I gripped my pole and worked to regain my footing just as my brother-in-law came bounding down the riverbank to grab the back of my shirt to prevent me from becoming just another casualty of the sport.

It was the hardest I’d ever worked at the sport of fishing–a sport that usually involves me sticking my pole in the sandy banks of the river while I kick back with sunflower seeds and a brewsky and wait for the catfish to bite.

But it was exhilarating leaning back against the weight of the fish and the current of the river, reeling the beast toward shore as the party of people hanging by the river with me scrambled to help retrieve my catch with nets and gaffs and rules and superstition.

We got the fish to shore and, at 25 lbs, it wasn’t a whopper in paddlefish land, but it was the biggest fish I’ve ever caught. And ever since I  stood on the banks of the river in the rain and my camouflage coat, channeling every red-neck fiber in my body as I held that fish up for the world to see, I’ve been itching to re-live that feeling.

And so have the hundreds of other fisher-people who flock to the banks of our rivers each year.

They come with their coolers and sleeping bags to hash out the game plan, meet up with friends, and re-live past year’s catches the same way we re-live my fish story every year when I meet my in-laws and friends from college and Canada at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone River at the beginning of May.

Yes, paddlefishing is a tradition for us that includes matching t-shirts, beer darts, barbecue, laughter, bad jokes and memories of each fish caught.

And this year husband gets the bragging rights as the only man in our party of twenty who actually pulled something living from that river.

Oh, it doesn’t matter if he only casted like seven times.

It doesn’t matter that me and two of my friends stood in ice-cold water up to our crotches casting and reeling in the current of the two converging rivers as the water and paddlefish floated on by for hours.

It doesn’t matter that we wanted it so bad we held our breath and made up our own superstitious chants as we pulled back our lines, visualizing, sending positive energy into the river as our bare legs turned raw in the deep mud of the river and our arms turned to noodles with each hefty cast.

We were not bitter when husband pulled that whopper of a fish right out from under our noses. Nope. We dropped our poles and went screaming toward him with cameras and hands clasped in delight.

We took his moment with him. We oooed and awwweed over the event that was to be a part of our story too. We shared our reaction: how S had jumped out of the boat and into water up to her knees when she heard husband holler. How L threw her arms in the air and grabbed her camera. How B and my father in law were convinced husband lost it when the fish didn’t reappear…

How husband stayed calm, cool and collected as I screeched and ran and jumped up and down…

How the clouds were fluffy and the sky was blue and the sun was so warm we could wear shorts and tank tops and walk around in bare feet…

How husband caught a paddlefish on his seventh cast…

and how I caught the boat on my first….

a log on my second…

the river bank on my third…

a buzz on my forth…

and fifty-seven sticks in between.

Paddlefishing.

It’s not a sport…

It’s a lifestyle.

Falling out of the sky…

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So you might have noticed there hasn’t been much news from the ranch lately and I have some explaining to do. See, in the last week the world has kept turning out here, the steers have been grazing, the trees have been budding, the crocuses have been blooming and the dogs have been running away…and so have we. All the way to South Padre Island to meet up with some of my favorite people on the planet.

Sometimes after months of dangling from ladders, chasing the damn dogs, climbing around in the hills, cooking casseroles, trudging through the mud in muck boots and  waiting for spring you just have to throw your hands in the air and go find a place where summer never leaves.

So we closed up the house and pointed our car toward the plane that would take us to South Padre Island, TX. A place where the ocean crashes on white sand,  the air is just the right type of damp, leaving my hair in that scary place between chia pet and Bride of Frankenstein, and our friends were waiting for us with open arms and giant glasses full of tequila.

I have been planning this trip for months, looking forward to the warm sunshine and an ocean swim, but mostly anxious to wrap my arms around this group of friends who squeezed their way into my heart six years ago with their crazy sense of humor, open-minds, open arms, and just the right amount of grace and intelligence mixed in with a willingness to look and act absolutely ridiculous for the sake of a good belly laugh.

The truth is, I could go anywhere with these people, we could do anything, from scaling the tallest mountains to grinding out paperwork in a cubicle, and we have always have fun…as long as someone has the sense to provide appropriate hats.

And on this agenda we would need them because our days were filled with things like ocean swimming,


cocktail sipping,


pool floating, hot tub soaking, fishing for our supper,

sunset sailing, beach walking…


lawn chair lounging,

 and skydiving.


Yup. You heard me.

Sky. Dive. Ing.

This landlocked woman from the prairie who gets woozy from looking over the edge of an anthill, who just a week ago was hyperventilating about her husband’s location on the top of a ladder signed up for an activity that sent me flinging my body out of a questionable airplane and plummeting to my inevitable death at 150 miles per hour strapped to a laid back man with bad-ass tattoos and even more bad-ass dreadlocks.

I don’t know what was going through my mind when I responded “Yes, Yes, Yes!” to my friend’s email request for company as he attempted this death-defying activity. I am not sure what compelled me to make the decision to be his companion on this adventure except I couldn’t think of anyone else I would rather jump out of an airplane with. This friend, he’s always made me feel like I could do anything. And I believe him.

So we greeted one another with hugs and tequila and made our plan to face death.

Friday at noon.

It only took a nod of my head to get husband on board with the idea. Skydiving? Why the hell not?

And so we were off. I contemplated my outfit carefully that morning, wondering what would look best on me as a flattened corpse on the beaches of the island. Wondering what would be less appetizing to the sharks if I were to land in the ocean. I chose a pair of blue shorts and an unassuming black tank top. A classic and easy look for someone looking death in the face, and all of the paperwork that goes with it.

It turns out though, that when you are harnessed up and huddled at the back of an airplane that reminds you of a really loud VW bus, the last thing you are thinking about is your wardrobe.

No. As you stare into the face of the adventurous friend who got you into this predicament just moments before he launches his body out of the buzzing and bouncing aircraft, you wonder if maybe you should have peed first.

And as the VW plane reaches the inevitable 11,000 feet, you think about your husband who just moments before you was sent spirling through the air. You think how pissed you will be if he became a sand pancake…you wonder who will unclog the drain and finish fixing the deck…

then you think of how pissed his momma will be when you explain to her whose idea this was…

Your mind snaps back to your immediate situation when your instructor pulls you toward his lap, the plane bouncing well above the fluffy clouds. You notice that you can see the curvature of the earth. You think you might be able to see the ranch from here. You wonder if you’ve gone crazy. You remember that you belong down there, on the prairie, with the animals that graze the grass, the ones who don’t swim or fly or launch themselves out of the sky.

As your traveling companion latches up and secures your body to his own, connecting the two of you together by only a few, in your opinion, inadequate straps and hooks, the thought enters your mind that this man’s instructions to arch your back and lift your arms could be the last voice you will ever hear. Then you ask him if maybe you should have had dinner or coffee first…you know, to get to know one another…

But it’s too late, he laughs as the door of the plane flies open and a rush of air hits you like a slap across the face. He feels your body tense up and tremble as you watch your most adventurous and lovely friend swing his legs over the side of the plane and then drop out of sight.

You wonder if you’ll ever see him again.

You wonder if you ever told him that you liked his new haircut.

You hope he peed before he got in the plane.

You wish again, that you would have done the same…

Then suddenly the man who strapped himself to you is moving toward that very same door and you discover you are moving too. You think, “Wait, I don’t even know your last name!” but before you can ask what it is, or what his tattoos mean, or what his father does for a living, where he’s from, what is his favorite food, animal, plant, color, he is sitting in the doorway of the plane at 11,000 fricking feet above the tiny strip of island surrounded by ocean and really tall, sharp buildings and he is telling you to put your left leg out there on the ledge. And because you’re strapped to this man and your life is literally in his hands dangling out of an airplane you are compelled to listen. The air coming into the open door of the plane is so strong that you have to help your leg move with your hand.

You think about this for a second, about how the universe might be telling you something, that maybe, maybe…may…

And then…

I supposed you guessed the outcome, that I survived and so did my two companions. I have never been so happy to feel the sand between my toes, to hear the cheers of my best friends in the world screaming my name, to see the sparkling ocean and finally catch my damn breath already.

And I’ve never been in love with another man, but I think I might now be in love with this guy, the dreadlocked, tattooed, hero from South Padre Island that nearly killed me and saved my life all in the matter of ten minutes.

When they asked me about my favorite part of jumping out of a plane, I am pretty sure I said “when it was over.”

And then I breathed “I’m alive!” and ran into the arms of my friends, the friends who make me feel more alive in their presence, more capable, more free and loved and hilarious and beautiful than I will ever feel jumping from a plane.

But  I wouldn’t have anyone else there waiting for my crazy ass to touch down. And for them I would jump out of a plane, climb a cactus, sing in an opera, climb Mt. Everest, run a marathon, swim with the sharks, dance like Lady Gaga, backflip off a cliff, and grow wings and fly…because they make me believe it’s possible.

Peace and love from the solid ground of the ranch!

*All photos from Skydive South Padre Island. Thanks for the adventure guys! And thanks for bringing us safely to earth!