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I won a contest? What the heck.

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So I have spent a great deal of my life, especially in my musical career, talking to people about North Dakota. I love to tell its story to the unsuspecting who think there is nothing up here but a couple horses and some fields.

“You have running water up there?” ”

“Electricity?”

“Damn, it sure is cold up there isn’t it?”

Yes. 
Yes. 
And Yes are the answers.

But I love to find those people pleasantly surprised when they get to really hear about this place—about the badlands, the economy, the people, the beautiful weather and the fact that we may not have everything, but we know exactly who we are.

I’ve said this before, but I truly have a love affair with Western North Dakota. So when I moved back to the ranch for the second time in my life I felt like a kid again. It was like I was rediscovering this wonderland that I somehow forgot about when I was out on my own trying to discover myself.  After traveling the country singing for my supper, I saw this place with fresh eyes and for what it was to me when I was eight or nine or ten–natural, raw, adventurous, beautiful, wild, cowboy country. I immersed myself in it. And don’t plan to stop.

Because when I was seventeen I left the comfort of this little oasis with a couple songs in my pocket and a dream of an education and coming back to the ranch to make a living and start a family and write and love and live and create and sing and keep the place alive.

And now my dreams are coming true.  And I am so thankful.

Hense all the photographs, all the musings…all the plans.

And it seems like others are intrigued as well, because in my enthusiasm about my new found old life, I submitted one of my many photographs to the North Dakota Governor’s Photo Contest in an attempt to share my point of view and take a look at others’.

And I won.

I won a contest.

What the heck?

But I’m pretty damn thrilled.

And it turns out others are thrilled for me and are spreading the word.

So I’d like to give a shout out to Grand Forks, the community of my alma mater, the University of North Dakota, for giving me get the guts and brains to go out in this world and do what I want on my terms. And thanks for claiming me to this day.

Thanks Watford City for growing me up, sending me off, and taking me back. No matter what.

And thanks North Dakota for letting me love you so.

And loving me back.

Sharing a snapshot of life on the ranch
Jessie Veeder Scofield’s photo, which is part of a larger plan for the future of the family ranch, wins state contest
October 21, 2010. Grand Forks Herald

North Dakota Governor's Contest Winning Photograph

Jessie Veeder Scofield is in love with western North Dakota. It’s her home, and for years, she’s been singing and writing about it. After earning a degree at UND, touring as a musician and marrying her cowboy, she’s back on her family ranch 30 miles south of Watford City.

And she’s won the top prize in the North Dakota Governor’s Photo Contest with a picture of her cowboy husband on one of the west’s most treasured landmarks, the Maah Daah Hey Trail. A favorite of horseback riders, hikers and bicyclists, it winds 97 miles, beginning 20 miles south of Watford City, through the Badlands and gently rolling prairie, to Sully Creek State Park south of Medora, N.D.

Veeder Scofield said she snapped the photo of her husband, Chad Scofield, during a trail ride on Chad’s birthday. In the snapshot, a horse waits in the background as Chad leans against a fencepost, head down, smiling, in his cowboy hat and chaps.

“He has this natural laid-back vibe about him, and he just photographs well,” Jessie said. “I think that’s why it worked really well.”

The North Dakota Department of Tourism will take Jessie’s photo and the others from the annual contest for amateur photographers, and use them to promote North Dakota.

That is fitting because Jessie has picked up a camera in recent months to illustrate her blog, which is one way she’s promoting the establishment of a ranch vacation property on her family’s 3,000-acre ranch, homesteaded by her great-great-grandfather, Ben Veeder, in 1915.

Jessie and Chad want to make a life and a living in western North Dakota. They see the ranch and the beauty that surrounds it as their heritage and their future, she said.

“I’ve been in love with it all my life,” she said, “taking so many pictures and writing about it and singing about it. I grew up helping on the ranch, riding horses. I was lucky enough to marry someone who has the same interests.”

Jessie may be best known in the Grand Forks area as a singer/songwriter. During her years at UND, she often performed in public. She recorded her first CD, “This Road” in 2000 when she was 16. Her other recordings, “A Place to Belong” (2005) and “Jessie Veeder Live at Outlaws” (2007) are available on iTunes. (For more about her music, go to www.sonicbids.com/jessieveeder/.)

As a young girl, Jessie attended a rural school about 15 miles from her home. She went to Watford City occasionally for band practice, and that’s when she met Chad. They dated in high school, attended UND together and married in 2006.

She grew up performing with her father, rancher Gene Veeder, a folk singer. By the time she was 10, she was playing the guitar and doing some soloing. At UND, she took marketing and public relations classes, and kept singing, getting picked up by a music agent in Nashville, Tenn., and touring colleges all over the Midwest. After graduation in 2005 with a communications degree through the honors program, she toured full time. Chad finished his psychology degree at University of Montana.

After their marriage, they lived at the ranch, technically anyway. She spent most of her time touring and Chad worked in the oilfields. Jessie said she loved being on the road and met many great people there.

“But it was one of those gigs where you could have gone on and on with that lifestyle for a good number of years, and it’s hard to make a living like that,” she said. “There were other things that I wanted to do as well, more than be on the road by myself all the time.”

She and her father still perform from time to time, including at Medora, but her focus is on the family ranch. After living in Dickinson, N.D., for a time, she and Chad are living in a little house her grandfather built, about a mile down the road from her parents,

Watford City is a growing community with lots of opportunity, she said.

“A lot of my girlfriends are moving back and starting their families, so it’s a great time to come back,” she said.

She’s taking a lot of photos these days for the website and blog about the ranch vacation property, which she envisions with cabins for visitors, offering riding, hiking and biking trails. She hopes to use music, hers and others, as another way to draw visitors. But what she’s put online already is drawing a lot of interest, she said.

“With that blog, I started documenting a lot of our lifestyle and what is around me. It really got me into photography again. I’ve had interest from people all over the world. They’re really following what we’re doing and interested in it, which is really encouraging,” she said.

Veeder Scofield said she hopes to have a visitor cabin open on the ranch by next summer, depending on how things go.

“We’re just happy to be living in the place we’re living and I just like to celebrate it and sing about it, and I’m glad other people like it as well,” she said.

Reach Tobin at (701) 780-1134; (800) 477-6572, ext. 134; or send e-mail to ptobin@gfherald.com.

Link to the above article: Grand Forks Herald Article

Link to my hometown newspaper: McKenzie County Farmer

Discover my great state: North Dakota Tourism

Love Ya!

A cup of coffee and a change of weather.

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Ok, ok. I had my little hissy fit yesterday, you know, about summer leaving. I have always be proud of the fact that I accept change, welcome it with open arms, persuade it to occur really more often than I should…but I admit, I always have a hard time letting go of the sunshine season.

But let’s move on. Because (after the snow melted) it is truly spectacular out here. Maybe I have a super hero nose (it is rather large), but I think each season has its own distinct scent…I swear I can smell the fall coming in the musty, damp waft of leaves falling to the earth and turning to dirt. When I step outside today, even after a raging, uncharacteristic thunderstorm this early morning, I breathe in the crisp air and it is like this world that surrounds me has cleaned up and started over once again.  I suck in and feel the cool wind on my face and I am taken back to the first day of school, football games in town in my new jacket, chasing cattle to the reservation line and spitting plum pits at my little sister as she kicks her pony along.

What is it about us North Dakotans and our obsession with the weather? I ask this all the time. I walked into the local Cenex in town yesterday, the one that used to be a little diner called the “Chuckwagon” when I was growing up, and there sat my Great Uncle sipping coffee with his boys, talking about the crops and the cattle and kids these days and, of course, the weather.

Cue another flashback and ode to old times: because there he was, my Great Uncle, a few years older, with less mud on his boots from having moved into town years ago. He was sitting in the same building with the same group of men with whom, at well past 70, he has had coffee with nearly all his adult life.  And as he talks crops and takes a dip of Copenhagen and laughs, just as he always has, while offering me a pinch, around him the world is changing.

His once regular table where he would order the pie of the day is now a “Hot Stuff Pizza.” And instead of sitting down next to him for my own slice  (or chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles,) like I would have done 20 years ago when I came to town with my gramma, I said a quick hello, gave them a smile and ordered my coffee on the run.

coffee

And outside the window in this once sleepy town the high-school kids are driving up and down main street, just like they always have, but this time with fast, flashy cars and cell phones, weaving in and out of the constant wave of truck traffic that has swept in with the second coming of oil to this area. An industry my uncle has watched boom and bust and boom again outside this very same window.

Across the street, he has seen his favorite hardware store change hands, close down, open up again and get a face-lift. He has enjoyed his last movie for a nickel and then waited years and years until he could see one again on Main Street…for $6.99.

He’s watched as the storeowners have wrapped gifts for his wife in dozens of different boutiques, in the same three buildings, and has purchased new-to-him pickups to take him to and from his farmstead thirty miles away. He has watched his children play sports and move out and have children of their own, who he has watched sing in the school concert, ride horses, get their first big buck, and their first job and move on and out and back to this once sleepy town.

And he takes that pickup to coffee every morning.

Old Truck

Yes, this is dramatic stuff, this cycle of life. Watching my uncle smile the same smile behind modern glasses in his remodeled and repurposed coffee joint, I think I am beginning to understand what it is about the weather…

…Imagine your lives here, in the middle of the mid-west, where one day it is sunny and the crops are thriving and the next day a hail storm wipes your heart and work out in a blink as you stand helplessly looking out your back screen door, powerless to change the outcome. Imagine standing in water up to your waist, carrying calves through a flash flood to dry ground, giving all of your energy and passion to save your animals. Or, after a severe spring storm, taking a newborn calf into your basement and warming it by the fire to save the fragile life. Imagine the most beautifully, unexpected spring day where you skip work to go fishing. Imagine losing someone you love on the road in the grip of an ice storm. Imagine waiting for the rain to stop to get your crop out before the snow flies…and the rain just turns to flurries…

And all the while, with each coming fall, your children are one year older, one year away from starting a new life…and with each drop of a leaf, gust of wind, and change of season, one more laugh line appears, one more year of work and sacrifice and special movie dates in town is gone.

So weather–this is how we talk about life here. This is how we talk about the hard stuff, the new stuff, the stuff that makes us crazy and lonesome and completely and utterly blissful. The stuff that puts the gray in our hair and the wedding dress on our daughters and the grandchildren in our arms. The stuff that makes us lose and gain and lose again…

Because nothing stays the same, nothing is for sure here, nothing is certain….nothing…

Except a good cup of coffee and a change of weather…

Summer Leaves

Winter Branches

Listen to Heroes Proved, a song I wrote about change in the rural lifestyle.

Our wild backyard (no mowing necessary)

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I have a pretty awesome backyard. It won’t make Better Homes and Gardens and no one will be calling me up for tips on how to get my grass so green or my flower garden so colorful and free of weeds. There will never be a plan to install a water feature with those fancy fish or a walking path made of perfectly smooth river stones. There will be cow poop and there will never be a white picket fence.

But your backyard might have one. Your yard may have the neighbors swooning and strolling by slowly as they walk their lap dogs or bike ride with their children. It might be the perfect spot for a BBQ complete with margaritas and a big umbrella over your table. You probably grow the most pristine daisies along your immaculately placed paving stones. Better Homes and Gardens is more than likely dialing your number right now.

And that’s pretty awesome too.

I do enjoy a good yard, no matter the condition, especially in the summer. So this weekend I ventured out a bit from the red gravel road to take in some of the big back yard that we all share, and it turned out that our lawn, the one we co-own, hadn’t been mowed either, so I didn’t feel so bad about mine.

For those of you who live in North Dakota, you have probably heard of the Maah Daah Hey Trail. If you haven’t, well I’m going to tell you about it, because it is where I tested my cowgirl, girl scout, Pilates, camp cook, photographer and reptile handler skills this Labor Day weekend. (Because we don’t get enough “middle of nowhere” out here in my little house in the hills the other five days of the week.)

In a nutshell, the Maah Daah Hey is a 125-mile multi-use trail, which stretches throughout public land in the Badlands of North Dakota from the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Watford City to the South Unit near Medora. This well-groomed, well-marked, gorgeous trail sweeps in and out of the clay buttes, winding across the valleys, crossing rivers and streams, cutting up the sides of steep cliffs and meandering through the trees. Even experienced in pieces (which is what we did for two days) this trail is not for wusses.

We chose to take the trail the good old-fashioned way, via the back of a trusty horse. Just a side note here to those wild men and women who think that taking a pedal bike out for a stroll through this rugged, unforgiving, majestic country is a good idea—may sweet Jesus be with you.

Anyway, the public has been enjoying this trail officially since 1995, but its name is taken from the Mandan Indian phrase meaning “an area that has been or will be around for a long time.” Which is fitting, because it has been said that this trail actually has been around for hundreds of years, serving as a trade route for the American Indians. So the Maah Daah Hey, I think, is and has been a true gift to those of us who wish to experience and exist in an untamed, unsettled, wild as the wind adventure out in the backcountry where it is not uncommon to ride for a day and not see another human soul (but a couple that belong to beasts).

And for those of you who prefer not to venture out of the fence and mowed lawn, it sure photographs nice and looks lovely hanging above a mantle in a pretty frame.

But there is nothing like being out in it really. Nothing.

With my crew of three pretty great wilderness guys (husband, dad, father-in-law), four horses that were lucky enough to prove themselves worthy of the climb, several bottles full of water, lunches pre-packed and labeled with names (because I give the people what they want), necessities like knives, matches, band-aids and, of course, toilet paper, we hit the trail that starts at Bennett Creek Camp and ends up there again.

And in those twelve miles that took us and our necessities past unaware deer grazing in a brush patch, out in the open to spook a lone coyote in the sage, over an unsuspecting, and rather angry rattlesnake in our path, down low to photograph the purple flowers growing unpredictably out of the hard, baked clay, and up high to see it all from a distance, I couldn’t think of any place I’d rather be.

We plodded along for a few miles, snapping photos, basking in the scenery, chatting about previous rides, catching up. And then our voices silenced, our horses fell in line, and we were quiet for a while, alone with our thoughts for a few miles, bodies moving with the rhythm of the animals underneath us.

We got off to stretch our legs and walked the horses up steep cliffs, we took moments to let our mounts splash and dunk their noses in the creeks. We pushed on toward camp, letting the trail and markers guide us.

Even as I stretched my kinked back after nearly 7 hours in the saddle, my bony ass aching and my ankles stiff as we rounded the final mile back to camp, I couldn’t help but feel extremely fortunate to be breathing this wild air, without a sound or a footprint that didn’t belong there.

And my hope in the human race was restored a bit when we got back to camp to find that there was a multitude of others, in tents, in campers, in extravagant RVs, who were looking for the same connection with this land. I will admit at first I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t have the campsite to ourselves, as if we were the only ones allowed this little piece of heaven, the only ones who deserved this quiet and solitude in which I get to live every day.

But then I came to my senses. Because I have been blessed with a backyard full of these wild things. My family has lived happily without immaculate lawns and flower gardens untouched by hungry critters. We have given up late night trips to the market and the option of take out when we don’t want to cook in order to be able to exist and live in a natural and somewhat untamed environment. We sweep our floors a little more, we swat more flies, we see more mice (and an occasional raccoon may or may not have entered my parent’s home and rearranged the décor), but that is a small price to pay for the quiet simplicity of country living. We have been blessed.

So where on earth did I think the white picket fence people go to get away from it all when they don’t have a place like ours to run to? Where do they go when the constant stream of suburban life has reached its limit for the month? Where did I think the girls with horses locked in stalls go to ride like the wind? Where do the dads bring their sons to teach them to build a fire, use a pocketknife, shoot a bow? Where do the mammas take their daughters to teach them the names of the wild animals and flowers? Where do ranchers, and daughters of ranchers go to take in the beauty of a different landscape without the distraction of fences that need fixing and hay that needs moving? Where do husbands go to reconnect with their strength and hardy instincts?

There has to be places like this for us. They must exist for us to stay human.

So as we watered and fed the horses, put up our tents, grilled our pork (and the angry rattlesnake), built the campfire, cracked open a beverage and settled in for the night, I took a moment to look around at my fellow campers who drove for hundreds of miles, from Omaha, Dallas, Minneapolis, Chicago, Fargo and even just down the road from Watford City, to exist for a few days in a place that looks the same as it did when our ancestors hunted whitetail and jackrabbits for supper, drank from the river, used the strong back of a horse to get a day’s work done and walked to get somewhere (because they definitely weren’t crazy enough to try it on a bike).

And I smiled, because there we all were, looking up at the same sky glistening with the same stars that have been hanging there for a million years in a landscape that has been soaked in the swamp, beaten by the wind, cut by glaciers, baked in the sun and battered by the water to form a world that is simply marvelous really.

A marvelous, breathtaking, ruthless, wild, wonderful backyard.

Simply untamable–just like us, it turns out.

And it’s all ours neighbors! Now go out and live in it.

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In honor of the ride in beautiful country, I thought I’d share my version of a couple classics. Enjoy!  Red River Valley Medley

For more information about the Maah Daah Hey trail, or to contribute to the project, visit the Maah Daah Hey Trail Association Website at www.mdhta.com

*Oh, and a quick note about the Mountain Biking thing, for those of you who like that sort of thing 🙂 The International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) recognized the Maah Daah Hey  with their most prestigious award, the IMBA Epic Ride of 2001. In addition, a national women’s sports magazine named the Maah Daah Hey Trail among their top 18 outside sport destinations in the country. So go get ’em, I just won’t be joining you until I get that gym membership I haven’t been talking about…