Category Archives: Musings

my philosophy I suppose

And then came the sun.

Posted on by
11

This morning I woke up to another dreary, snowy, cold, white, un-springy day, a husband who couldn’t make it to work on account of a night spent puking and a pug literally hiding with his head under the covers and his ass facing the world.

I felt like doing the same thing, not puking, but, you know, just letting my ass face the world. Because, I mean, look at it…not a crocus in sight…

I was going to tell you all about it, after I took a few photos of the icicles hanging off the eaves,

the gray, dreary sky, the white flakes fluttering across bare and brown branches,

cold, leftover leaves,

big brown dog’s big brown cold nose,

and  ground just begging to warm up…

I was prepared to feel like the pug who doesn’t wake up to face the dog dish until well after the noon hour, going to absorb the sad, gray, so unspringlike day into my veins and mope a bit over peanut butter toast and coffee that just couldn’t be black enough, ignore the dishes in the sink and just say well shit, it’s snowing. It’s snowing again.

But then the sun came out.

and the gray turned to sparkle,

the bland to beautiful,

the gray to blue,

and the leftovers looked a little less lonely.

Ah, the sun.

The sun!

Look at that, the sun.

What a difference you made.



 I hope you found your sun today.

The prayer shawl.

Posted on by
16

I stood in line at the Post Office in Boomtown yesterday morning. I had been avoiding the chore for a few days, having received a note in my mailbox out here in the country letting me know that I had a package to pick up in town.

I thought it was the print cartridges I ordered or maybe some photographs. I thought it could wait.

Because standing in line at the Post Office in Boomtown is an errand that ranks right up there with attending your root cannel appointment or using that little plastic baggie to pick up the poop your dog just deposited on the walking path near the park while people drive by, watching…judging.

Anyway, welcome an extra 7,000 people into what was once a town of 1,500 three or four years ago and some services are bound to suffer.

At least we’re all in it together.

At least I get to hear some great southern accents while I chat with my fellow postal service patrons about the weather, the roads and the damn long line.

I was expecting much of the same as I pulled into the parking lot yesterday, grabbed my purse and my packages and prepared myself to wait. I was pleasantly surprised to find just a few friendly neighbors standing in line and happy at the thought that the timing for my visit just might have saved me an extra forty-five minutes.

So I stood patiently by the envelopes and boxes, checked email on my phone and ran the list of things I needed to get done today through my head:

Write column, pick up milk, hang posters, plan lunch meeting, call Little Sister back, think about dinner, update websites, I should take a walk, try to get home before dark so I can take a walk, get paint for the entryway, send in my time sheet, return emails, edit photos, craft club, oh yeah, I have craft club this week, make snack for craft club, cat food, do we need cat food?

Oh, ok, I’m up.

I handed the postal worker my envelopes and the little pink slip that told her a package had arrived for me. She disappeared in the back while I fumbled through my purse for some cash. I looked up and she handed me a large, rectangle box. Too big to be my print cartridges, not the right shape for photos.

“What did I order?” I wondered out loud as I took the package from her hands and glanced at the return address.

Arizona.

My grandparents are in Arizona. Huh. The package is from my gramma. My gram sent me something from Arizona on an ordinary Tuesday in March.

I shook it a bit, my curiosity peaked as I hurried past the line of people who had quickly congregated in a neat row behind me. I flung open the door and trudged through the melting snow to get to my car, sat down behind the wheel, threw my purse in the seat next to me and anxiously ripped open the box, pulling out a soft object wrapped in tissue paper.

Carefully I peeled back the paper to reveal soft purple yarn knitted in tight weaves and a note that read…

Dearest Jessie, 

All winter long I have pictured you sitting at home in your chair writing your column and journal and composing music. So enclosed you will find a purple shawl (a good color for you). It’s a prayer shawl. It is to keep you warm and comfortable–to make you feel good deep inside as well as on the outside. 

It is made with love and some mistakes! As I did the knitting my thoughts were about you, Jessie, our wonderful, talented granddaughter.

All my love, 

Gramma G

Tears sprung to my eyes right there in that busy, slushy parking lot in Boomtown as cars pulled in and out, people rushed to appointments, to the grocery store, to meetings, to school and to pick up their children from daycare on time. My grandmother’s handwriting expressing her thoughts about me on a  note card embellished with golden butterflies made me think of her sitting by the window, her knitting needles on her lap and the warm Arizona sun shining on her face.

gram

I buried my face in the shawl, breathing in her smell, thinking of her thinking of me and the worry that had been lodged in the center of my guts for weeks was replaced by a very palpable feeling of calm and an overwhelming appreciation and love for my Gramma who once taught me to knit and who always, always makes sure her grandchildren know she’s proud of them.

To know that you are in someone’s thoughts, to know that you are loved this much, is a blessing I wish upon everyone.

My Gramma G. has always been one of the brightest and most positive lights in my world. If I would have known her hug was waiting for me in that post office at the moment I needed it the most I would have dropped everything and run there to receive it.

I would wait in line for hours for a gift like this.

Thank you Gramma. I love it. I absolutely love it.

And I love you too.

Jessie

Restless waiting.

Posted on by
4

This is what March looks like from the inside of my house with the door open as I watch nature do her thing.

In ten to fifteen minutes the wind will really pick up, whistling through the branches of the trees and blowing that fluffy snow in white, blinding swirls.

I will think about Husband out there on the roads that were coated in rain yesterday afternoon and likely frozen solid today and I will worry until I hear the sound of his boots clump up the steps and the creak of the door as it swings open.

Home, safe and sound in the middle of a full-blown March blizzard.

Oh, we get one or two in this month that promises spring pretty soon, but not quite yet.

Kids all across the state are celebrating the first snow day of the winter by bundling up to head outside and build forts and fling snowballs or snuggling in their jammies under a blanket with popcorn and a movie.

Teachers are taking this free day to catch up on paperwork, housework or finish that book they haven’t had time to start, dads and moms are shoveling sidewalks and driveways, college students are drinking beer or playing video games, grampas are watching the radar, ranchers with cattle under their care are worrying about calving and throwing an extra straw bale out on the snowy ground and the southerners up here for work are wondering what the hell they’ve gotten themselves into.

Me? Well, I’m in my long underwear staring out the window at the way the snow swirls and drifts and makes the walls of this house moan a bit. The snow is melting from my boots and making puddles on the warm floor in the entryway and the dogs are snoring on their spots, a result of our morning trek outside to admire the way the snow had settled on the trees overnight.

That was before the wind picked up and shook it off.

That was before Husband was home safe and sound.

That was before I ate a sandwich and wrote a song I think I might have written before and thanked the heavens from where this snow was falling that I didn’t have to be anywhere but home.

Because an hour ago I was making my way to the top of the hill to see what the overnight snow had done to yesterday’s brown landscape. The dogs reached the summit before me, their ears blowing in the wind and their eyes squinting against the snowflakes landing on their eyelashes with growing force.

I knelt down to snap a photo of a frozen, sleepy flower and headed for the shelter of the oaks.

No matter the wind and the weather those trees are a haven and a sort of quiet mystery to me. I know that’s where the horses are, somewhere in this pasture huddled together in the oak groves. I know that’s where the deer bed and the elk hide and the squirrels and grouse and maybe even the mountain lions go to wait out the weather.

To wait  for spring.

And I know I won’t see them today, the blizzard growing more severe and the dogs more obnoxious and curious as they snort and roll and climb in and out of the banks.

This time of year I get restless. This time of year I get worried that I won’t have another great idea, that my skin will never be brown again, that I won’t ever warm up.

Last night I declared these worries out loud to Husband who lay next to me in bed, relaxed and assured and breathing softly in the dark.

In the quiet calm of a Sunday night, a night working on brewing a storm that would keep us tucked in our houses the next day, I said, “What if I never write another song? What if all of my ideas are used up? What if I’m not good enough to keep up with the plans I have? What if I get sad and stay sad? I can’t be sad. I don’t have time to be sad.”

He was silent for the moment after the words I chose, the ones that went… “I wish you understood…” and then he said, “You can be sad. And you can do nothing. Sometimes you need to do nothing. And then, you need to get up, go outside and live a life that gives you something to write about.”

So I went out in the storm today, not because I don’t know what it feels like, but because I wanted to feel it again. Because I wanted to be reminded.

And I wanted to be cold and out of breath and far away from the house and the work and the worry and sheltered by nothing but the heavy branches of the oaks.

I wanted to be quiet and let nature–uncontrollable, unpredictable, fascinatingly, frustratingly, beautifully unyielding nature–do her thing while the rest of the world made snowmen and banana bread, mopped floors and read newspapers, navigated snowy roads, called friends, made plans and wrote novels.

And I, like the deer bedded down and undetectable, did nothing but wait.

Snow on the backs of horses.

Posted on by
5

This is what it looks like when you put a house cat out in the snow for the first time in its life.

Coincidently this is also the face that was staring back at her after I peeled her out of my arms like a piece of velcro with really strong legs ..and then again off my head…and then again off of my boots.

We’re in a fight, but don’t feel bad for her, the weather is warming up and I think it’s time she gets acclimated to this wild place.

Yes, tomorrow it will be March and my longing for green grass, crocuses and creek beds overflowing with melted snow will summon me to pull on my muck boots and go exploring for the slightest change in scenery.

It will be March tomorrow, and I feel the chilled surrender that January brings start to break up and separate inside of me, even as I stand under a gray sky that blends into the horizon as if it weren’t a sky at all but a continuation of the snowy landscape…below us, above us…surrounding us.

Flakes fell from that sky yesterday afternoon, big and soft and gentle they drifted down to the icy earth and summoned me from behind my windows to come outside and stick out my tongue.

When the snow falls like this, not sideways or blowing or whipping at our faces, but peaceful and steady and quiet, it’s a small gift. I feel like I’m tucked into the mountains instead of exposed and vulnerable on the prairie. I feel like, even in the final days before March, that someone has shaken the snow globe just the right amount to calm me down and get me out of my head.

When the snow falls like this I go look for the horses. I want to see what those flakes look like as they settle on their warm backs, on their soft muzzles and furry ears. I trudge to the barnyard or to the fields and wait for them to spot me, watching as they move toward that figure in a knit cap and boots to her knees, an irregular dot on a landscape they know by heart.

I know what they want as they stick their noses in my pockets, sniff at my camera and fight for the first spot in line next to me. I know they want a scratch between their ears.

I know they want a bite of grain.

They know I can get it for them.

Our horses in the winter take on a completely different persona. The extra layer of fur they grow to protect them from the weather makes them appear less regal and more approachable.

Softer.

I like to take off my mitten and run my fingers through that wool, rubbing them down to the skin underneath where they keep the smell of clover and the warmth of the afternoon sun. I like to put my face up to their velvet noses and look into those eyes and wonder if they miss the green grass as much as I do.

On this snowy, gray, almost March afternoon the horses are my closest link to an inevitable summer that doesn’t seem so inevitable under this knit hat, under this colorless sky.

I lead them to the grain bin and open the door, shoveling out scoops of grain onto the frozen ground. They argue over whose pile is whose, nipping a bit and moving from spot to spot like a living carrousel. I talk to the them, “whoah boys, easy” and walk away from the herd with an extra scoop for the new bay, his head bobbing and snorting behind me.

In a month or so the ground will thaw and the fur on the back of these animals will let loose and shake off, revealing the slick and silky coat of chestnut, white, deep brown, gold and black underneath. We will brush them off, untangle their manes, check their feet and climb on their backs and those four legs will carry us over the hills and down in the draws and to the fields where we will watch for elk or deer or stray cattle as the sun sinks below the horizon.

I move my hand across the bay’s back, clearing away the snowflakes that have settled in his long hair and I rest my cheek there, breathing in the scent of hay and dust and warmer days.

He’s settled into chewing now, his head low and hovering above the pile of grain I placed before him. He’s calm and steady so I can linger there for a moment and wonder if he tastes summer in the grain the same way I smell it in his skin.

My farewell to winter is long, lingering and ceremonious.

But it has begun. At last, it has begun.

To sing about it.

Posted on by
5

Well, I made it back to the ranch and have found myself a moment to kick my feet up in the chair and warm up near the stream of sunshine pouring through the windows of our house on this beautiful almost-March morning.

Last week was a doozy that started with a flight out of Boomtown to Vegas to help my momma pick out some pretty things for her store. I had a couple mini-heatattacks during the two days filled with nothing but shopping, but I came out O.K. despite my run-in with these beauties…

and an entire Vegas-Sized convention center filled with nothing but shoes.

I could have spent the week there trying on all of the Luccheses and Ariat and Corrals and working out a second mortgage to afford a few pairs, but I needed some money to get back to North Dakota for the concerts I had scheduled across the state.

Now let me tell you, there are few things that give me more joy than music and beautiful boots, so I was off to a great start as I stepped off that plane from Vegas. The cold air bit at my exposed fingers as I ran to my car, praying that it would start so I could get home in time to load up my guitar and head out the door again.

Because I booked February up pretty tight, playing music almost every weekend and trying to keep up with work and dinner in between. When I do this to myself a few little bobbles are inevitable–like locking my momma’s keys in her car and losing my debit card–but I have become pretty good at brushing them off and finding quick solutions (like calling Pops or Husband to rescue me), because I am a woman of very many mistakes.

But now that the whirlwind has settled for a bit and the pug has moved from the top of my unpacked suitcase…

to the couch beside me, I don’t know exactly where to start except to ask you this: Have you ever found yourself standing in a moment that has come together so sweetly, a moment so undeniably and perfectly comfortable, so surprisingly you, that you can do nothing but close your eyes and thank the stars above that you chose to step out that day instead of staying nestled under your covers safe and sound?

I hope you have.

I hope you’ve found yourself in one of those breaths where the things you’ve worked for have proven worth it.

I have been a singer my entire life. I’ve sat around campfires and on flatbed trailers in the middle of small town streets. I have climbed crow’s nests to belt the National Anthem out to bleachers and arenas full of cowboys and I have sat behind my guitar to serenade couples saying their vows and families saying goodbye. I have played to crowds from three and three hundred. I have played by heart and forgotten words. I’ve stomped my feet and swayed back and forth in smokey bars and competed with the latte machine in small coffeehouses. I sit alone in my bedroom on hot summer nights and cold, dark winter mornings and I sing.

I have never loved anything the way I love hearing the words I’ve strung together come out of my mouth and into the air, sometimes unexpectedly and sometimes just the way I meant.

And nothing has ever made me so nervous, so frustrated, so calm, so inspired and uninspired, so sleepless or relaxed, so conflicted or comfortable or scared or absolutely and utterly, undeniably happy.

That’s the thing about music, you just never know. And the choice to put it out there in the world makes it even more unpredictable, it leaves you wondering who is listening, who might understand, who might hate it, who might love it too and who might just want to sing along…

Last Thursday I loaded up  my guitar and headed to the big town to meet up with some musicians at the studio and practice for the CD release party I had scheduled at a theater the next evening. I brought along Pops and Adam and we were going to work out my tunes with a fiddle player, a steel guitar player and a drummer. I had never met the fiddle player or the drummer and the guitar player and I had been working out details over the phone and email for a few weeks. I didn’t know these men and I didn’t know what to expect, except that somehow we had one evening to get it together in time to play for the few ears I hoped were making plans to attend the next night.

In these unpredictable moments I wonder why I didn’t just pick a career that might have me home eating hot dish on a Thursday night.

But my worry melted away faster than it had creeped in on me as these men trickled into the studio, making small talk while unloading their instruments and arranging themselves in a circle.

The drummer counted off the beat to the first song, the bass line fell in easy as the fiddle sweetly moved in with the line of the steel, leading me in to the words of the first verse of a song these men had clearly listened to closely.

My songs were songs they knew.

And I knew then that it didn’t matter if the only people who walked through the doors of that theater the next night were the members of this little band we threw together, although I felt it would be a shame if there weren’t more ears there to listen to the sweet sounds of that fiddle.

Because just as these men took the task seriously it was clear we all shared a little something in common. It was clear that they weren’t sitting behind those instruments after a long day of work on a Thursday night with a woman they had never met because she was going to pay them good money to be there.

No.

They knew better. They know the business.

They were there with me because they love to play. And man, are they talented.

Man, was I lucky.

Man, did we have fun.

And man, did that theater fill up the next night.

I mean, to the brim! People were coming in from all walks of life to have a drink and listen to what we had up our sleeves. There were farmers and bankers and mothers and aspiring drummers, my best friends, people who knew my parents, people who were related to us, to our neighbors, to our neighbor’s neighbors.There were classmates and old roommates and my best friends’ mothers. There were people who I’ve never met, young girls with their own copy of the album who wanted to be singers some day, other musicians, dads dancing with their daughters and people who wanted to talk about the pug.

There’s always people who want to talk about the pug.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude that this group of people decided to spend their Friday night with me and the talented men playing their hearts out in the spaces that needed them in the songs.

There was so much joy in that room and on that stage, and because it is North Dakota, there were so many connections, so many stories that we could all relate to–the red dirt roads, the smell of clover on a hot summer morning, the warm glow of the yard light next to the barn and the unwavering respect for the place that grew us up and sent us out into the world as we looked back over our shoulders for the right time to return.

Music has given me so many gifts. It has taught me to stand up straight, to be honest, to work a little harder, to stay calm, to reach out, to be brave and, most importantly, to listen.

And I could have listened to the beat of that drum, the lonesome sound of that steel guitar, the steady thump of that bass, the sound of my father’s voice and that fiddle backing me long into the night and on until the sun came up. But I didn’t want to let those people sitting patiently in their seats, along the steps on the floor or standing along the back of the room by the door out into the night without knowing them and why they came.

I wanted to shake every one of their hands and give them hugs and thank them for coming. I wanted to invite them over for coffee this spring and to sit on my deck and drink margaritas this summer.

I wanted to tell them all how much it meant to me that they came.

And I wanted to hear their voices.

So I sang Red River Valley and they sang along and I will never forget the sound of our voices together in the middle of the prairie on a chilly winter night.

And the next night I sang those songs again, standing next to Pops and another talented guitar player as the wind whipped through the narrow streets of downtown Fargo and the crowd swayed and tapped their toes.

There are so many things in this life that I love: pretty boots and pretty horses, my family, crocuses on the hilltop in the spring and the way the sun rises and shines through the windows of a house my husband is building for us.

I know I would love these things even if I never sang another song about it, but to be able to sing it out loud to ears that want to hear, not just the beautiful things, but the things that scare us and make us braver, hoping that maybe someone out there might not feel so alone, that’s my life’s sweetest gift.

Thank you for coming to hear me play. Thank you for playing along. Thank you for reading. Thank you for telling me your stories.

Thank you for listening.

www.jessieveedermusic.com 
www.facebook.com/jessieveedermusic

Click here to watch a short KX News segment on the concert in Mandan.

Not so sparkly love.

Posted on by
7

There’s something about existing in nothing but white and brown for months on end that makes people around here head out to search for some color.

Some of them book a flight to Jamaica for sandy beaches, blue water and umbrella drinks, some head for the mountains so they might see the same white at a different height and some just step outside to see if the sunset is up for putting on a show tonight.

I think that’s why they put a holiday like Valentines Day in the middle of February, because we all need a little warming up by now, a little snuggle and a little smell of a rose to remind us that they are blooming somewhere.

Last night I played music for people out on dates at a fancy restaurant in the middle of the badlands. I sat at the front of the room and tried to pull out as many love songs as I could muster, wondering while I was singing Elvis’s “Fools Rush In” why I have a closet full of earth tones and black. I wondered why the only colorful thing I own is the pair red boots I wore with my wedding dress.

And my guitar strap with the little red birds.

I was glad I was wearing both as I finished up…”and I can’t help, falling in love with you…” and watched a couple hold hands and eat little pieces of lobster and steak off one another’s plates in a sea of men and women in their best clothes, dressed up right for a Thursday night.

I wished I had a sparkly pink shirt like the young woman toasting a glass of champagne with her husband or boyfriend at the table in front of me.

The night before I had warned Husband not to worry about Valentines Day this year.

“I won’t be home until well after midnight,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

And he said “Ok.”

And that was fine. I’m not a fan of chocolate and where Husband works, there’s not a floral shop for miles. My Valentines Day gift to him was to let him off the hook.

His gift to me was his yearly rant about the holiday and why we have to designate a day to remember we love each other when he remembers he loves me everyday.

I know it’s coming, his little rant. And I know it will be followed directly by the “flowers are so predictable” speech.  I smile and remember the time he left a rose in my locker on a Valentines Day in 9th grade and I’m happy for the memory.

And happy for all the Valentines Days I’ve been able to share with with a cute and thoughtful boy who turned out to be a man who makes the coffee nice and strong, searches for his clothes in the early hours of the morning with a headlamp so he doesn’t wake me, knows his way around a kitchen, unclogs the clogs, fixes broken things and promises he will be there tonight when I sing again, no matter the hours and miles he has to put in at work today.

And I think that’s pretty nice, those little promises to make life a little nicer for one another.

It’s not always that way. Sometimes you just have to make a comment about the dirty dishes that have been piled up in the sink for days because of the silent protest you’ve made not to touch them just to see how long it will take for him to get fed up and put a few in the dishwasher already.

Sometimes you have to say something about the way his feet smell when he takes off his work boots because you fear the hidden toxins coming off of the green steam is killing the cat.

And sometimes he just has to ask what the hell is going on with your hair, because really, what the hell is going on with your hair.

But when you come in after midnight because you’ve been out singing to pretty people eating cheesecake and toasting to love to find the lights on and that smelly-footed man waiting up for you in the kitchen just to say hello and goodnight, somehow those dirty dishes don’t seem to catch your eye.

And it doesn’t matter that you’re not wearing that sparkly pink shirt you should have in your closet but you don’t.

Because in the glow of the kitchen light in the middle of a February night that was coating the world with snow and promising more white and cold, a stubborn, thoughtful, groggy man reminds you that love is never off the hook.

Especially on Valentines Day.

Some things I know for sure.

Posted on by
11

Sometimes life is just so unexpected, like the thirteenth rock flying into my windshield on my way home from town.

Those uncertainties make me nervous–I come up with worst case scenarios. Like now, for example. I got home from work this evening to say hello to Husband who also just got home from work only to turn around and walk out the door to go back to work again. I don’t think it was an emergency, but it was something important that sent him out there in the dark on the same scary road that throws rocks at windshields unexpectedly.

I worry.

internet issues

So now I’m sitting here with the cat on my lap and the pug at my feet breaking all of the rules about pets on the furniture while I come up with a list of things I know for certain to help deal with that nagging little feeling of terror that at a moment it can all fall apart.

And that other worry about the aliens.

So here it is, my list of ten or eleven or twelve or however many things that I know for sure on a perfectly calm Thursday night in February.

  1. I will always worryHorse
  2. The pug, when left unattended and to his own devices, will always shit on the floor. Sometimes he will puke, but always he will shit.
  3. I could eat guacamole with every meal. I should have guacamole with every meal. Avocados are a vegetable.  It can’t possibly be a bad choice.(No photo available because I ate all the guacamole)
  4. A climb to a good hilltop cures me. Every time, it cures me.
  5. Spring will come. Spring always comes.
  6. I love him. I love him. I love him.

  7. It’s not the singing, it’s not the words, the guitar, the harmonies or the harmonica. It’s everything. Music. It’s just everything.

  8. One day I will have pigs, I don’t care what you say.(no photo available because I don’t have a pig. Yet.) 
  9. If you call me I will have to call you back, because I never put the phone back on the hook, therefore I can never find the phone when you call. It’s a sick cycle that I am unable to break.(no photo available because I can’t find the damn phone. Again.)
  10. This cat is crazy.
  11.  This puppy is cute.
  12. So is this kid.
  13. I am grateful every day to call this home.
  14. It will probably, most definitely, very likely, I mean, I’m pretty sure, almost positive  everything’s gonna turn out alright in the end.

Now you know what I know, what do you know for sure? Let it fly party people, I promise it will make you feel better.

Farmers at the Super Bowl.

Posted on by
23

So you watched the Super Bowl. You saw the game, you saw Beyonce shake it, you saw the lights go out and, among the flashy messages, the advertisements for M&Ms and beer and phones and underwear and cologne, you saw this:

Another ad for another product, yes. But one that had a message attached to it that has sent my world into a humming since it aired.

Now it’s possible you missed it. It’s possible you didn’t hear it tucked in there among the baby Clydesdale and the elderly escaping the nursing home for a night at Taco Bell.  It didn’t make the top ten commercials and didn’t get nearly as much buzz in other parts of the country, but it sure is buzzing here.

I don’t usually comment on pop culture or what ‘s happening on T.V. or in sports here because I’ve made it my mission to talk about different things: the way the sun shines on the back of a horse, how the wind blows snow across the prairie and what it’s like to be a woman connected to a place, but as a girl who grew up feeding cattle alongside her father in the coldest winter nights, someone who watched him doctor horses, bring new-born and frozen calves into the basement of the house and nurse them back to life, as a former FFA president and the 4th generation on my family’s ranch, I have to talk about this.

I have to tell you why people like me have been so inclined to share this advertisement, to watch it over and over again, to shout its praises from the rooftops and, well, post it on every social media networking site they can link up to out here in the boonies.

Because finally, among the hype of sports, the glitzy glam of pop culture, the humor and the ruckus and the fight to be the winner, right there in the most prime real-estate of prime-time television someone out there felt it might be important enough to slow it down and tell our story.

Now, I wasn’t at every Super Bowl party in middle America during the 2.5 minutes Paul Harvey’s message was pumped into millions of homes across the country, but I was at one, and as soon as that familiar voice spoke the first word, the room fell silent.

We held our breath in that moment we were certain we were looking at an image from our backyards: a black baldie cow near a barbed wire fence in a barren, snow-covered prairie.

We were quiet because we saw our church standing tall and worn beside a country road,

we saw our grandfather with callused hands and a face wrinkled and weathered from the long days spent in the elements.

We shushed our voices and choked back a tear for the colt our father couldn’t save, laughed a little because we’ve ridden a horse using a head stall made out of hay wire and smiled at the memory of our father’s stopping the tractor to move a nest of newborn rabbits out of harm’s way.

We saw ourselves standing in those fields, our grandmother’s eyes under that hat, our mother holding our hand, our father holding on hope.

We saw our children in the steady cadence of comforting words and a familiar voice that we’ve heard coming through the static on our old tractor radio for years.

The rest of the story.

Our story.

Some days I feel like we’re moving further and further from our connection to the land and the understanding of the dirt from which that potato was plowed. Farmers, ranchers and agriculturalists are not known to stand at the pulpit and tell their stories to the masses. No. Many spend long days working alone in the combine, on the back of a horse checking cattle or working fencing pliers in the deep brush.We share our stories by living them alongside our elders, hoping to learn something, dreaming that one day we might be fortunate enough to try our hand at tending the land.

I know my grandfather’s story. I see the old equipment that couldn’t be repaired breaking the wind from the hilltops on this place. I find little pieces of wire, old engines, scraps of leather, worn coveralls and other little pieces of a life spent scraping and saving and getting by in the old out buildings, in the 100 year old barn, in the fences that need to be repaired. My father keeps the same collection, adding to it at will in case he might need to patch something up.

I know my father’ s story. I know that on Sunday mornings he will knock on the door of my house like he does every weekend for a cup of coffee and a chat between chores.  I know he will take off his boots, un-do his silk scarf and leave his wool cap on his head. I know he will keep his Carhart jacket on because he won’t stay long, just long enough to wonder out loud what might be wrong with the old tractor this time and discuss some plans about buying cattle, fixing the corrals in the spring and making things work better out here.

I know that tractor’s story. It’s been on this place for decades, bought used when my father left for college in the 70s. I know the only thing wrong with that tractor is that you can’t stop time, and we could not afford to buy a new one.

Each day my father has been the caretaker of the family’s ranch it has been an adventure to get that tractor up and running.

Every day it has been worth it.

Somewhere along the line a company like Dodge took notice of the kinds of people buying those trucks they were selling, not for the paint job or the heated seat, but for the horsepower and the muscle that it takes to haul a trailer full of bulls to the sale barn, a couple of priceless horses and a teenage daughter to her first high school rodeo, or through a snowy trail as your grandfather scoops grain for the cattle in the winter.

Somewhere in their marketing plan Dodge thought it  might be a good idea to mention those farmers and ranchers out there throwing bales and feeding the country, because quite frankly, they have helped keep them in business.

So they declared it the “Year of the Farmer” and are working their marketing plan so that spreading the word means supporting the FFA.

That moment a company like Dodge took to tell our story while they had the world’s attention gave us–the farmers, the ranchers, the corn growers, bottle feeders, chicken-coop cleaners, post-hole-diggers, pig-sloppers, 5 a.m. cow milkers, –a little reminder that ours might not be a glamorous story, but it is one worth living.


Click here to watch an interview with the Montana ranchers featured in the commercial.

Winter crazy.

Posted on by
7


I know I’ve been talking about the weather a lot lately, trudging through the snow, climbing to the top of it, bundling up and taking it on by looking for the beauty in 30 below.

Well, we’re at the end of January now so I would like to take this opportunity, in the midst of another dangerous wind-chill advisory, to say ‘good riddance’ to the hardest and most brutal month of the year up here in the great white north.

Yup, that’s a little negative sign right there next to the 20. This is before the windchill. But hey, the sun is shining so what the hell, let’s just call it a beautiful day.

I think we made it through just fine admiring the sundogs,

and the fluffy puppy,

eating egg rolls, throwing sledding parties

and climbing the frosted badlands.

But I feel now it’s time to confess the fact that all of those things did their best to distract me from going crazy in this cooped up state, but they did not succeed entirely.

No.

I am afraid I might have hung on to a bit of that inevitable winter insanity.

But please, don’t judge me. Let me remind you that I’m still a woman living in an unfinished house, sharing my winter space with a good number of power tools and using a shop vac to complete the majority of my cleaning. And in a situation like this, unexpected additions to the decor and atmosphere pop up unexpectedly.

I mean, you try staying sane when you can be jolted from your sleep at any given moment by the excruciating and terrifying gun-shot like sound of the air-compressor shaking the house as it recharges in the loft.

You try remembering to unplug that thing when the only time it makes itself apparent is at 2 am! The dogs wake up and start a barking frenzy right before one of them pukes on the floor. The cats in the basement cling to the ceiling and you shake your husband, telling him that this time, you’re sure it’s a robber.

Or an alien.

You try keeping your cool as your knight in shining armor rolls over and falls back to sleep.

I mean, I always swear I”ll unplug that thing first thing in the morning. But in the morning all I can think of is coffee, and so the cycle continues as I make my way from the coffee pot my favorite chair, but not before I trip over that stack of cedar my husband decided to place in my path, sending me flailing forward as my coffee splays across the floor and I invent thirty-seven new curse words.

And those words are in addition to the ones I invented yesterday when I tripped over that same stack of wood three times.

I’m serious. It blends in. I get comfortable in my environment and I don ‘t find it necessary to look down.  It’s a defect that I blame for the multiple times I’ve stepped the wrong way off of our front step and into the pit that will become our garage in the spring.

These types of outcomes are precisely the reason I’ve  never been a furniture rearranging kind of person. Because I strongly believe that if you put something in its place, it should stay there.

Forever.

My life, limbs and coffee, depend on it.

coffee

Anyway, I am blaming those miseries on my husband. But I will tell you, I’ve created plenty of my own this winter, starting with allowing our one and only barn cat to take up residence in our basement. I mean, it’s so damn cold out there and now that we’re not in the barnyard I felt she needed to be close by, you know, to take the pressure off of the dogs to keep wild cat occupied while keeping her diet in check by batting her away with a vengeance if she dares get too close to the food.

I’ve been questioning this arrangement, but it seems it’s too late. Last weekend I attempted to put that barn cat outside to enjoy the 40 degree day and before I even opened the door she managed to claw her way out of my grip and up to my shoulder before flinging her body off the top of my head and running for cover.

And so I’ve been warned. There’s no way in hell that cat is every leaving my basement–rain, snow, forty below or 80 above.

Shit.

Allowing another animal into this house is not the weirdest mistake I’ve made this winter. No. A few days ago in my attempt to reach Husband I dialed the wrong number and asked a complete stranger if he planned to come home tonight. The man on the other end of the line sounded a lot like my husband, and, well, I didn’t appreciate his tone.

Turns out he didn’t appreciate mine either.

And then there was that time my car was making weird noises as I drove through the neighboring town, forcing me to pull over in the parking lot of Runnings where it became evident that when I put the thing in park it was going to ignore me and just kept rolling…and when I put it in reverse it sounded like it was going to blow up.

So I sat there with my foot on the brake for a half an hour while I waited for a tow truck to bring me to the mechanic and for Pops to come and save me and take me grocery shopping before bringing me 60 miles back home. I waited, car-less through the holiday season, only to get a call informing me they couldn’t find anything wrong with the vehicle, except, well, you know the thirty-seven rock chips in the windshield.

Yup, that really happened. It was an annoying Christmas miracle and I have spent every day since driving that car just waiting for it to blow up or something.

Oh, I know we all have little mishaps and results of poor judgement in our lives, I just think the annoyance is multiplied out here by the fact that we’re also cooped up and freezing. So I guess I decided to share them so we could laugh about while we dream about summer.

But I’ll I make sure to roll my eyes first.

And sometimes I might hollar “Really?! Really!” so don’t be alarmed.

Happy last day of January. I hope you made it through with your sanity.

If you need me, I’ll be looking for mine…

Goodbye Summer

Seeing it all.

Posted on by
6

We’re finding our way to the end of January, and around these parts that’s a huge relief.  I’ve been keeping busy playing music, writing and eating carbohydrates, and after a Friday evening spent singing to a full house, I was thawing out and happy with the way life gives you gifts, like 40 degrees on a January weekend.

Funny how a little warm up can turn an attitude around. Suddenly I was in love with winter again and while Husband worked on hammering and nailing and putting up walls in our master bedroom, I worked on ways I could sneak out the door unnoticed.

Because I decided it was of utmost importance that I load up little Juno and give her a tour of her new home turf.

Because we needed to check on things, ensure the gears were grinding right, the snowbanks weren’t too deep and the view was still as beautiful.

We needed to make sure those weird clouds weren’t storm clouds above us.

We needed to introduce her to the horses.

We needed to play…

and run…

And do whatever Tucker was doing here…





That looked like fun.

See, around here, if we chose to look, we can see things like this every day.

And although winter gets long, it’s one of those seasons that changes the landscape constantly. And so I suppose I’ve made it my mission here to keep tabs on the way the horses grow beards to ward off the chill…

The way the clouds roll and shift and change directions and colors…

How the light hits the grass and makes it sparkle…

How the horses settle lethargically into a pile of grain…

and how their noses feel under our hands.

I watch it all because I don’t want to miss it.

Because I like the way a puppy kiss looks.


And the sound of snow melting under a blue sky.

And the tree rows planted all those years ago? I like that they’re scraggly but standing still under a slow to rise winter sun.


I like the idea that this all will be green again, but first it has to be blue and white and brown.

I like that I’m here for all of that changing.

And I like the feeling, that like Juno, I’m hearing it all, seeing it all, discovering it all for the first time…on a 40 degree weekend at the end of January.