Category Archives: Musings

my philosophy I suppose

The beautiful things.

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I have a good life. Not much to complain about when it comes down to it really, except for a weird tail-less cat trying to climb up my leg, not enough hours in the day, unfinished projects and cold toes.

But some days, during a break in the morning news, I cry at the Walgreens commercial.

And the commercial for a web browser that tells the story about a dad sending his daughter off to college. And then they video chat.

And anything with a cute baby or a puppy or a grampa or a soldier coming home.

And lately I cry at the weather report.

Now, don’t get all worried about me yet. I’m not sure I would be diagnosed with any emotional disorder, although Husband has diagnosed me simply “emotional.”

And he’s right.

I spend quite a bit of my life laughing though, so I figure I’m balanced.

But I admit, some days are worse than others. I admit it because I’m human and I know you’re human (unless you’re a dog and humans haven’t discovered your abilities to access the web without thumbs) and we all have days like these.

Days that send me running for the hills.

I’ve learned over the course of my nearly 30 (gasp!) years alive in this breathtaking and heartbreaking place it’s the only thing to do to recover my senses and gain my balance and center myself once more.

I remove my body from the television screen, the radio, the music, the computer and all of those heartbreaking, heartwarming and heart wrenching stories and just try to live in my own for a moment.

It hasn’t been easy to do this lately, between the life-threatening cold temperatures, scheduled meetings and darkness that falls too early in the winter, I’ve had to make a special space in my day for clarity.

It’s why I keep an extra pair of snow boots and a furry hat in my car just in case. You never know when you might have a chance to escape.

I found one yesterday afternoon. I had a few of those teary moments over coffee and the news while I moved through my morning trying to pull it together, get to the office, make it to the meeting, keep up on emails, plan for an event, meet a deadline and live comfortably in pretty work sweaters between four walls.

4:30 came around and I had a meeting at 6.

An hour and a half hours would do it.

I got in my car and pointed it toward a favorite refuge, the only other place in the world beside the ranch where I can look winter in the face and call it truly beautiful.

The Theodore Roosevelt National Park.


 I’ve taken you there before on similar weepy days in the  fall when I’m overwhelmed and worried, on summer days when I’m tan and moving to the next adventure, and winter.

I really love it in the winter.

And it never lets me down.

So in 15 minutes I was there, turning off of the highway and following the snow coated road toward the river and the buttes,


stopping to capture how the sun looks above the frozen water and if I might catch the bison grazing somewhere in the snow.

I drove slowly to admire the lighting. I rolled down my window a bit to feel the fresh, 20 degree air and pulled over where the road ends, next to a trail that can take you to the top of it all.

I checked my watch. I had 20 minutes before I needed to turn my car around and head back to my other world. I was in my town coat and dangly earrings.

I switched out my fancy boots for snow boots, covered my hair with a beanie and trudged on up there, slipping and sliding and panting because, well, I just felt like it.

I felt like climbing.

Because this is what winter looks like in the badlands.

This is what it looks like from the top of it all…






all 360 degrees of it, surrounding me and telling me it’s ok to cry.

Especially for the beautiful things.

Summer horses.

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I miss my summer horses. I miss the way their coats lather up under the saddle after an evening ride to the east pasture.

I miss the way that smells and the way it feels to see them grazing on the green grass of the season–admiration and beauty and peace and home all wrapped up in their breathing and munching, snorting and fly swatting.

I even miss those damn burs I pull out of their mangled manes every evening.

I miss my summer horses because they have turned into winter horses, wild and free in the big pastures chewing on hay bales and hiding from the wind in the coulees at night.


We don’t ride much in the winters, the ground’s too hard, the wind too bitter, the hills too slick, so we give our working animals a much needed break during the coldest months and in no time they turn into a sort of wild and wooly that always amazes me.

On the coldest days they find their way to the barnyard and I bury my face in their thick coats where they keep the summer,


feed them grain from the buckets in the tack room and watch as they argue over the first and last bites.

You have to have respect for the animals that bear the burden of this extreme weather on their backs. I know the white tale deer that bed down on frozen hillsides or in a bull berry patch, the grouse roosting in tree tops and the wild elk competing for the same domestic feed as our horses are built for endurance with instincts that save them, but I still wonder if their noses get cold.


On frozen days like this I go looking for them, as if catching a glimpse of how they’re surviving this season might help shed some light on how I might do the same.

There are bison that live on the land next ours. I catch a glimpse of them when I’m on the highway, stopping to watch as the young ones run and the old ones nuzzle the ground for grass. Frost forms on their muzzles where they breathe in the cold air and on days the ice settles in on our world those creatures wear it, unassuming, as just one more layer of their being.

I wear my sweaters like the bison wear the weather. I cannot grow a wooly coat, so I wrap a scarf around my neck and lean into the cold.

I wonder if those bison miss the summer grass.

I wonder if those deer bedded down in the oaks behind this house notice the lights in the bedroom and dream of coming in from the cold.

I wonder if they know I would let them if I could. I would let them all in to warm by the fire if animals were meant for houses.

But I’ve said it before. Houses are for people and this big wide world is meant for deer in the bull berry brush, grouse in the tree tops, elk in the hay bales and horses in their wool coats waiting for a girl who’s waiting on summer to come and drop them some grain.

Sundogs and some things to warm you up.

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Good Sunday to you. I thought I’d pop in this weekend to honor the coldest day on my planet.

Yup, we are in the middle of a good old fashioned “Wind Chill Warning.” 

Check it out.


Screen shot 2013-01-20 at 9.05.00 AM

55 BELOW ZERO?!

That can’t even be real can it? I mean, once it hits a certain temperature we should just call it pain.

PAIN.


 Screen shot 2013-01-20 at 9.15.32 AM
Now I know that most people living in this world are not acquainted with a “Feels Like” forecast, but there it is up there warning us that our noses are sure to freeze instantly upon exposure, turn black and fall off if we dare to go out uncovered. The “real” temperature is probably only like -10, and, well, that’s doable I suppose.

But yesterday I  went from my house to the pickup holding on to my coffee mug and by the time I shut the door on the passenger side I had added about fifty-seven new curse words to my vocabulary, my hot coffee was iced and my fingers were blue.

So I brought the puppy in from Mom and Pops’ garage, called Little Sister, poured a glass of wine, made some soup and we played dominos.

And today it’s even colder. I’m looking out the window at the sun shining on snow banks that were melting on Wednesday now frozen solid today as that wind pushes ribbons of fresh snow along its surface like rolling smoke.

And even though I knew I’d be risking my cheeks, I had to get out there for a moment to capture it.

Because only in cold weather like this do we get a halo around the sun.


A frozen rainbow without a drop of rain.

A sun dog.

A little gift of beauty as a reward for suffering frost bite.

Take a look. That is cold.

Hair freezing cold.

Snotsicle cold.

Get in through your Carharts, jeans, long-underwear, leather boots, wool socks, cotton socks and to your pasty little toes cold.

So let’s warm up shall we?

Here’s a few options to make you feel warm and fuzzy and get you through this frozen Sunday.

First, listen to “my attempt at making winter sexy” song Winter’s Sweet and get in the mood to make this soup:

Read more about cow dogs and the new puppy in today’s column ‘Coming Home’ published every Sunday in the Fargo Fourm.

Read this blog from fellow North Dakota writer, Ryan Taylor who has compiled a series of his late mother’s columns, also titled “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” from their local newspaper in Towner, ND. Her wholesome perspective is sure to keep your mind off the weather.

Then, check out this cute illustration of the one-eyed pug from my friend Cheyanne,

A girl needs a dog
go shopping on her Etsy site, “Hang it on the line”  and let me know if you want your own “A Girl Needs a Dog”  t-shirt.

While you’re shopping, buy my album so you can learn all the words to that song! 

And if cute fuzzy puppies, music, reading, cooking and shopping don’t warm you up, just pretend you’re here in the summer.

Wishing you love and a good pair of mittens.

Your frozen friend,

Jessie

 
 
 

To be a human in winter.

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Mid January in Western North Dakota doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s indecisive. One day it’s a kind, 20 some degrees,


the next a bitter, chilling 20 below.


Then, just when you find peace with your wedgie-inducing long underwear, it decides to warm up  enough to melt the snow. “How nice!” you think to yourself as you get in your car to drive to town. “I think I could get used to this winter thing if it stayed like this…”

But you know better and you should have never taken off those long underwear, because as soon as you get far enough away from home that turning back wouldn’t make much of a difference, the wind picks up and drops the temperature enough to turn that once slushy highway into a long and lethal ice-skating rink where a constant stream of semis and oil tankers are your competition.

And you’re no Nancy Kerrigan.

Ah, shit. I admit, January and I are enemies. I try to stay positive, keep my guitar out and my snow-shoes and neck-warmer handy. I try to do some sledding or walking or make a snow angel or something…


but mostly I wind up in my sweatpants under the John Wayne blanket reading a book about someone near the ocean before I turn out the light for the night and prepare to tackle mid-winter in the morning.

White knuckle driving, the “arms-out, it’s icy out,” sidewalk shuffle, an intimate relationship with Henry, the morning weather man, phone calls to Pops and Momma and Husband and Little Sister and my friend down the road about whether or not to believe the storm report, feet shoved in slippers and then in boots and then in slippers and then under the covers, soup and coffee and tea and some sort of disgusting warmed up cold medicine because everyone’s sick around here….and a constant craving for pastries.

Yup, that’s January.

And although it comes every year, I’m always surprised how this month seems to suck the creative light right out of me and makes me question the practicality of packing up the pug and heading south.

But I’m not leaving.

Well, there’s the Vegas thing in February, but as of today, I’m planning on coming back. Because I’m here for the long haul, and the longest haul of them all just happens to be winter.

I was thinking this last night as I sat behind the wheel of my four-wheel-drive and turned up the volume on some melancholy music, singing along soulfully and feeling frigid and uninspired and hungry for carbohydrates. I put my foot lightly on the brake to navigate a snowy curve, when up ahead, about five mils from home along the side of the road I noticed a large, tall, dark figure moving slowly toward the white ditch.

I slowed down as a few hundred scenarios whipped through my mind as they do when you see something unexpected on a very familiar path…to big to be a deer…

A grizzly bear?

A tall, scary, insane hitchhiker?

Bigfoot?

An alien? Probably an alien.

No.

No.

No.

I pulled a little closer until the length of my headlights revealed the figure: two massive and stunning bull elk moving with ease and confidence across the road toward an oak filled coulee on the edge of the badlands.

I stopped in the middle of the road and looked around. Not much traffic meant I could relax and bask in this mysterious moment for a beat. And apparently those elk felt the same way, not the least bit intimidated by the flare of an oil well behind them casting light on their bodies and transforming them into beautiful silhouettes.

They stood still in that warm glow on a flat, snowy patch of ground and stared at the metal contraption lit up in front of them.

An alien.

I rolled down my window to hear them breathing, to hear their hooves squeak in the crust of the snow. As they moved along the highway I lightly pressed the gas pedal and moved with them, imagining I was on my way to the oak grove on the edge of the badlands, imagining my body was held up by a set of massive, hoof-clad legs.

Imagining my coat was thick and my head was held high and I could run like that.

Imagining I was one of them.

But people were made for houses I suppose. Houses and words and questions and the wisdom and thumbs to make wool caps to protect us from the cold.

And of all the qualities a glorious North Dakota elk possesses, I don’t imagine he can be inspired.

Although perhaps he is the definition of the word standing magnificently on a snowy flat, staring into my soul.

So I’ll take it. I’ll take the ice and the fur lined boots and the hot cup of coffee because being human on a cold January evening means the ability to become breathless and warmed clear through and falling in love, over and over again with our big, wide, white, frozen, wonderful world.

Winter Walking.

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4 PM. Still in town. Hurry, pack up your briefcase. It will be dark soon. Get in the car, turn on the radio and follow the trucks home.

25

45

55

65

Get to the corner. Take a right. Speed up a bit. Notice the sky turning pink. Turn up that song.

Turn left at the white fence. Follow the pavement

Slow down a bit. Check on that  tree. Smile. Still looks mysterious and beautiful tonight.

Careful on the curve. Watch for ice. Hum along now. It’s not dark yet.

Turn left on the pink road, notice it’s plowed.


Over the cattle guard. Stop at the mailbox.

Bills and catalogs and no real letters.

There’s never real letters.

Glance in the rearview. Almost home. One more cattle guard, one more hill, one more turn. Open the door.

Kick off town boots. Strip off work pants. Toss earrings in the drawer. Find wool cap and camera.

Where are the damn dogs?

It’s getting dark.  Chase it down.

It’s getting dark. Watch it coming. Watch it turn from white to blue.

It’s getting dark. Climb. Climb. Climb.

Crunch. Crunch. Click.

Crunch. Crunch. Breathe.

Dogs pace. 100 steps to my one.

Wish I had fur today.

Wish I had four legs. Wish I could roll in the snow like that.

Wish my ears flopped.

Crunch. Crunch. Whew.

Make it to the top. Breathe. Notice the hay.


Remember how we used to pretend they were Frosted Mini-Wheats and we were shrunken people in a cereal bowl.

Sigh.

Follow the fence line. Time to cross. Don’t rip your pants girl. Easy now.


Walk in the fields, follow the horse trail. Notice the elk tracks. Think they must like Frosted Mini Wheats too.

Crunch. Crunch.

It’s so quiet.

Crunch. Crunch. Except for that wind.

Pull up scarf.

Pull down wool cap.

Lean into the weather. Walk on now. Keep walking. Hit the prairie trail. Follow it through the fence. Stop.

Hands on hips.

Look to the north.

Look at those buttes. Love them in white.

Love them against that pink sky.

Love this place.

Love this wind.

Love this damn cold and these damn dogs.

Love this snow.

Wish I had four legs. Wish I had paws.

Wish I had fur.

Wish I could stay out here all night.

How to warm up.

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It’s no secret, winters in North Dakota are long and cold. We always know they’re coming, but still they surprise us as we lean into November with brave faces and feed our bodies with soup and turkey and hot dishes (that’s Lutheran for casserole). We wait for the snow as we prepare our Thanksgiving meals and watch it fall as we wrap up presents, bring in Christmas trees, snuggle our families and ring in the New Year with champaign and a bit of dread, not necessarily about the year ahead, but the month we’re staring down.

No, the initial blast of holiday cheer can’t trick North Dakotans into thinking that winter is a party.

Oh no.

No.

Because we still have January. And January is just the beginning really, marching in on us promising unpredictable, below zero temperatures, blinding blizzards, snow drifts, icy roads, and then usually a nice little thaw to tease us before it starts all over again.

January scares me. It always has. And I know it’s coming, I do, but for some reason I find myself worrying that I might not come out of the deep freeze with the rest of the furry animals tucked away tight for the winter.

I worry I’ll start eating hot dishes (Lutheran for casserole) and never stop.

I worry I’ll grow too comfortable with the extra padding on my rear-end and the bulky sweaters and the scarves that hug me and hide me from the elements and I will decide not to emerge with the warm sun.

I worry I might just turn into a hibernating bear-like creature who never shaves her legs or takes off her beanie and walks all hunched over and shivery if she ever decides to move at all.

This kind of paranoia is not healthy. Fear is not a good place to be. So this January, instead of bidding farewell to the holidays, packing out the gigantic Christmas tree and pulling on the wool socks with no intentions of removal, we decided to keep the party going.

We decided to leave the Christmas tree up. We decided to buy more groceries, turn on the oven, pull out the crock pots and paper plates and keep on eating.

We decided to dig out the schnapps.

And the snow pants.

We decided to call our friends and neighbors to see if they’d like to join us as we flung our bodies down the giant hill outside our window.

We decided to clear off the stock dam and turn it into a curling rink.

We decided to use icicles as stir sticks,

drink hot chocolate, sit close together on the couch,

play some games, tell some stories and sing a little.

I decided to make a chocolate cake.

From scratch.

We decided to build a fire and stand around it and then head inside to eat some more.

We decided to laugh in winter’s face.

Take that winter.

And that.

And this.

And this.

And that.

And…

Ummm…

Well…

ooooo…

I think winter won there.

But I’m not scared anymore.

I just forgot for a moment what it is that really gets us through life in one piece. And it’s not just the special occasions that are put on a calendar reminding us to love one another, to be thankful and to celebrate.

No, it’s the every day and the way we chose to live it.




It’s the phone calls that we make that turn into plans to sit next to one another and eat dip and chocolate cake. It’s the way we bundle up against the cold and scream as we push each other down hills, remembering what it’s like to forget everything but the world you just climbed to the top of and flew down.






It’s remembering that sometimes we need someone to pull us up there.

It’s clearing a space for games and music.

It’s the invitation into one another’s homes, into our lives, to sleep on the couch or on the air mattress in the next bedroom and wake up for bacon and coffee and a recap of how someone nearly killed the pug in a sledding rollover.

Because we are made for so many things–work and worry, fear and bravery, singing and listening. Our lungs are made for breathing, yes, but they also work for screaming as snow sprays you in the face while you fly 25 miles per hour down a hill in a sled with your father and your friend.

How else would you find out a brain freeze can start on the outside of your head?

And our fingers are made for working and typing and pointing out things that are wrong with the world, but they also fit really nicely in mittens, as you pull each other up.

I mean, sure, it’s damn cold out there, but our legs are made for walking, hiking, climbing, jumping and standing on the top of things, we might as well use them properly.

See that’s the thing about us northerners. It’s not that we have found a spot in our hearts for the blinding snows of winters, the icy wind or temperatures that dip so far below zero that I don’t even want to mention it. It’s not that we ever get used to the deep freeze.

It’s just that we know, in the deepest of winters, on the coldest of January days, what to do to warm up.








Note: Only four sleds and two skinny little butts were injured in the making of this blog post. 

Next Year.

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It’s been a hell of a year at the Veeder Ranch and it looks like it’s going to go out with quite the chill in the air. I’ll tell you in advance, if you can’t find me after midnight tonight it’s because I’ll be laying face down in a carpeted corner somewhere, exhausted and finally giving in after a wonderful week spent wrapping and unwrapping, decorating and celebrating, laughing and baking and eating everything, driving and visiting friends, singing for my supper and trying every holiday cocktail concoction possible.

Staring down a new year has always been bittersweet for me. I get a little panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s directly correlated to the tasks I thought I might get done and the potential of a brand new chance to get things right.

See I try to be a person who looks back only occasionally to catch a good memory, remember a lesson learned or laugh at something that was damn hilarious.

I’ve been known to leave the awkward, tough and uncomfortable situations that occurred throughout my life in the dust where I think they belong, but the anticipation of January 1st always has me looking back on the little things that I could have done better; like taking deep breaths whenever I found my husband on a tall ladder,

the pug packing his nap-sack for another runaway attempt,

or the cat dangling painfully from the tips of my fingers. 

Deep breaths.

It works on the little things and it worked as we could do nothing but watch the volunteer firefighters try to save the little farmhouse we called home this summer.

Breathing, sometimes in this life that’s all we can do.

Sometimes that’s all I want to do as I sit on the hilltops on the back of my horse and watch as the wind bends the grasses, rustles the trees and tangles my hair, but in all of the moments I’ve set up for myself throughout the year sometimes breathing is the hardest.

And the most important thing.

This year I wrote it all down.

This year I sang it out loud and sent it out into the world.

This year I cried a little and sucked it up.

This year I was scared. Really nervous. This year I did it anyway.

This year I made dessert for breakfast, mistakes that looked like reasons and music that sounded a little more like me.

This year I rode a little harder I think. I drank too much coffee and too much tequila, ate too much pasta and maybe didn’t make as much time for that breathing thing as I should have.

Or sit-ups.

But I laughed. A lot. I got my oxygen that way I think. I laughed hard as I rode off into the sunset on a horse working his hardest to get rid of me.

I laughed as we stuck it out. I laughed as I forgot to put it in drive while pushing the gas pedal and wondering why the hell I wasn’t moving.

I laughed as our whole life was strung out on the lawn outside of my parents house. I laughed at the idea that we had all of this stuff, all of this space and no place to put it.

I laughed at the annoying things–the twisted ankles, the slippery roads, the runaway dogs and messes I never get around to cleaning up–I laughed because we were all still alive and loving each other, knowing that those things are a long way from our hearts.

Because this year I helped build us a house,  jumped out of a damn plane, landed safely on the ground and ate the best fish taco I’ve ever had in my life next to the best friends they make.

This year the ranch, my home got, clean, fresh, bought and paid for water, I got a newspaper column, finished that album,
kept some promises and saw my world from the clouds.

This year I loved as much as I possibly could.

And next year I intend on opening that heart up even more.

I do.

Next year I will learn all of the words to Rocky Top. I’ll get practicing tomorrow.

Next year I will master meal planning, organization and the mandolin.

Next year I will play the harmonica on my new deck next to my garden busy growing tomatoes and basil and pumpkins I think.

Next year I will be 30.

 

Next year I’ll be ok with that.

Next year I’ll do sit-ups. And maybe some lunges.

Next year I’ll bake more bread, visit more friends, spend more time listening and saying the things that need to be said.

Next year I’ll walk to more hilltops just to sit for a while.

Next year I’ll drink too much coffee and red wine. Next year I’ll still love peanut butter

I’ll still love this.

And I’ll still love him.

I’ll always love him.

And at the end of any day, at the end of any year, that’s the most important thing anyway, no matter who’s climbing ladders, what catches fire or how many wild dreams (or wild dogs) we are chasing.

Thanks for hanging in there with us. Cheers to an adventure filled 2013.

And cheers to more laughter.

So many gifts.

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Last Christmas Husband and I were planning the arrival of our new home. Husband worked during the coldest weeks of the year alongside his dad, Pops and our neighbor hammering nails with gloved hands, storing the air-compressor inside the heated truck so it wouldn’t freeze, climbing ladders and creating the walls to a foundation that our house was scheduled to sit on as soon as it arrived from Wisconsin.

I remember wondering what it would look like, having only seen what was to be our forever home in my head or on a blue print. I remember worrying that we wouldn’t meet our deadline, wondering how a house can possibly travel all of those miles and wind up in a place along a gravel road where a house has never been before and offering the guys a couple shots of Peppermint Schnapps as a celebration that the first step was done.

It was cold and frosty and the deadline was approaching with each passing moment, but right on schedule our house came rolling slowly down the freshly laid road and we could do nothing more but stand out of the way and watch as the crane lifted it and placed it on the concrete and wooden walls that were so carefully constructed during the depth of winter and into some long nights.

I will never forget what it felt like witnessing our home arrive out of thin air. Husband and I watched in silence with our hands in our pockets before admitting we were chilled to the bones and moving into the heated pickup where we did more of the silence thing, more of the watching. And although we knew when the roof was on and the men were gone there would be more work to be done, we were choked up at the sight of the start of it all.

That was one year ago. It was our sixth Christmas together as husband and wife and we were watching our dreams come true.

One year and I’ll have to say, nail by nail, scary ladder project by scary ladder project, and day by day it has been a test of our skills and our patience and a wonderful hand-made spectacle to watch it all slowly come together.

Two weeks ago they came to pour concrete in that basement.

Last week Husband built us some stairs.

This week we will put rock on our fireplace…

and last weekend we brought our Christmas tree home.

I have to tell you when we made plans for this house we thought out our specific needs. We wanted a lofted bedroom, an open floor plan, a giant mud room and a hardwood floor.

And we wanted to create a perfect space for a big and beautiful Christmas tree.

Oh, we still have so much to do, and realistically we should have been doing it. We should have been wiring that basement, putting doors on the closets or picking out carpet for our master bedroom. I should have been wiping saw dust off of things or washing our socks, but after our breakfast was cleaned up and all our coffee was gone on Saturday morning, my husband and I looked at each other, pulled on our Carharts and went out to find the tree we’ve had in mind since the beginning of it all.

I don’t know how to explain the magic I feel every winter I’m lucky enough to trudge behind that man in the snow on a hunt for our tree. It’s like the world goes calm and quiet, the wind stops blowing and my toes and fingers warm up.

It’s my favorite moment of the season, finding myself alone out here on the snowy acres my family has kept for almost a hundred years alongside a man I have known since we were children, searching for a little piece of our world we can bring inside and give a new life.




I remember every Christmas tree we’ve had together. I remember the first year’s drive out into the east pasture with a pickup and a small puppy. I remember how my new husband drug it up the hill with a rope. I remember the sun going down and the tires spinning as we backed up off the hill and got stuck.

I remember the puppy puke and the laughter and thinking about the long, dark walk home.

I remember getting unstuck and falling in love again as we pulled that oversized tree through the door of our tiny house and found a spot for it. I remember how it smelled.

Fast forward to the second Christmas spent tucked between mountains in eastern Montana, so far away from the familiar but together in a small apartment on the edge of town. There was no extra money that year and no Christmas tree, just a pretty centerpiece sitting on our table as a reminder of the season before we packed up and headed toward home for the holiday.

The third tree was purchased in the dark in a parking lot in a town a little closer to home and brought back to a house we were tearing apart and putting back together, the first house we purchased together. The tree had long pine needles and it didn’t smell like cedar or anything really. There was a fight about candy canes and tinsel and I cried while I put up the lights. I was unhappy, I think…or lonesome or out of place and something about that tree reminded me. There was no tree in that house the next year and after that I vowed I would never cry over Christmas again.

And I never did. We pointed our car north toward the ranch and moved back into that little house where we brought our first cedar tree in from the cold and promised one another that each Christmas we would do the same, no matter what.

We put lights on one more cedar in that little house while we planned for our future. We bundled up against the elements and fulfilled our promise to one another, speaking quietly into the hills that hold us all so close together.

I want to stand on top of those hills and scream that I take none of this for granted.

I want to open my arms and praise this life and the family who helped build it.

I want to say it out loud as if saying it will protect me from all there is that could lift this feeling of peace from my heart and set it adrift.

But for today, for this Christmas season, I will hold that feeling close. I will sit beneathe the cedar tree standing ten feet tall under the roof of our new forever home, its branches heavy with bulbs and lights and Christmas spirit, and I will breathe in its scent be grateful for today, for this life while I’m here.

Because we are not promised anything on this earth but a chance.

And I have been given so many gifts.

What we’re made for.

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I don’t think we’re meant to sit on chairs all day.

I don’t think we’re meant for these screens and these lights and the noise that comes from all of it.  Sometimes it’s so much, we’re told too much. We know too much. We see it all, but we don’t see what’s right in front of us.

Beside us.

I’ve been working a lot lately. It’s a busy time for me and I feel incredibly blessed or lucky or whatever it is that helps get us to the places we’re going. My head is spinning with to-do lists that get me through the day and a few steps closer to some of my goals. My house is a mess, my desk unrecognizable as a piece of furniture  and most days I add more to that list than I check off.

I’m happy and exhausted and it’s December and I haven’t even thought about Christmas.

I love Christmas.

But I’m a human. And as a human I want things. I don’t know where it started or how to stop it, but don’t try to argue with me, I know it’s true for you too. If it’s not a physical luxury, it is the luxury of time. If it’s not time, we want more love or more quiet, more food to put on the table, more money to buy us nice things, more children to teach, more land to cultivate, more music to hear and mores space for dancing.

I try not to think about the things I want. I try to focus on what I have while I run frantically from one appointment I set up for myself to the next.

And then I wonder what the hell I’m doing when the only thing I really want is to sit under the tree by the dam and watch the water freeze over.

I was tired today and disappointed in myself because I have let slip the one thing I promised I wouldn’t let slip when I moved back here–my connection to the sky.

So I stood up from my twelve-hour computer perch this afternoon, oblivious to the fact that I’d had enough until I looked out the window at the sun turning the sky pink and realized I hadn’t looked outside since it made its first appearance this morning.

Suddenly I was struck with the urge to go chase that sunset down, to catch it and hold it and marvel at it before it sunk below the horizon, as if it were the last sunset on earth.

I don’t know what got into me. For two weeks I’ve been on an agenda that had nothing to do with the sun.

Perhaps I was lonesome for it.

So I pulled on my muck boots and my winter coat, grabbed my camera and raced down the steps and up to the hill.

The sunset out here can be breathtaking when it feels like it. And the beauty is that it doesn’t last long. If you watch closely, turning your head to take it all in, you will see it move and swell and change like a painting, colors splashed across the sky in hues that don’t exist anywhere else in the world but up above.

Sometimes I try to be so many things that I feel like I can’t do my best at anything.

Sometimes I think I might do it on purpose.

But the sun is the sun and it was made to move across the sky.

And I don’t know much about much tonight, but I know I was not made to sit in chairs all day.

Coffee shops and city streets.

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I’m in the big town today. I left the buttes of western North Dakota yesterday morning with half of the countryside stuck on the tires and body of my car. I watched the road stretch out in front of me from behind my cracked windshield and my world flatten out and disappear in my rearview mirror.

I headed east via the backroads, stopping only to drop off a photograph, get an oil change and, well, wash my damn car already. I figured it would be worth the effort now. Because today there’s not a scoria road in site, which means my car will remain clean for approximately 3.5 days before I head back west after my CD release concert on Saturday.

I spent this morning remembering how to use street signs instead of landmarks to navigate while I made my way downtown for a couple of radio interviews. Since then I’ve been wandering in and out of stores and coffee shops, browsing trinkets and clothes, people watching and latte sipping, procrastinating the list every country girl makes when she gets a chance to spend a weekend in the big town and thinking about Christmas presents.

Because I love the ranch. I love the stars at night and the way the sun rises through my big windows while I sit on my overstuffed chair and wait for an idea to come. I love the way the grass grows tall and unkempt, the barbed wire fences, the mud on my boots and the horses grazing in the pastures. I love the quiet and the familiarity and the loneliness of it all.

But today I’m writing to you from behind the window of a coffee shop in Fargo, North Dakota. Outside cars roll by, couples hunker down against the cold, the store fronts twinkle with garland and Christmas lights and men in business suits and hair-gel carry briefcases as they swing open the glass doors of tall buildings, looking like a completely different species than the men in our oil patch, on our ranches and in our tractors.

I watch the city bustle on the brink of another holiday with a familiar fondness I feel each time I visit cities like these across the country and I understand what it is that has me looking forward to these visits.

Because with all of that space around me, all of the familiarity that comes with living as an adult where you were born, working where you went to school and knowing how the road winds, how the dust blows, what winter smells like as it comes in with the wind and what time the coffee’s on at home, it is nice to be surrounded for a while by a place in constant motion.

It’s nice to go unnoticed as I stop in to grab a bite to eat, slowly turning through the pages of the paper where my column appears every Sunday, my face next a headline that tells a little story about the ranch and life on the other side of the state. I laugh a little at the thought of my weekly visits to this town, put down the paper and think that it’s nice to actually be here.

It’s nice to go unnoticed as I weave in and out of stores, touching the soft fabrics of clothing hanging in cute boutiques and I like how my boots look on the pavement.

I like the old buildings bordering the one-way downtown streets.

I like the alleys.

We don’t have alleys.

I like the street lights and stop lights and rooftop fences. I like the pigeons and the glass doors, the  pretty women in pea coats and heels and the walls full of beautiful shoes.

I like the well groomed couples in SUVs. I like to imagine them going home to perfectly shoveled walkways and a Christmas tree sparkling in their picture window facing out on a quiet loop of a neighborhood.

I like how there’s a place for coffee on every corner and I don’t have to brew it.

The same goes with bagels and burgers and muffins and beer.

I want to buy every pretty thing in the windows and every book in the bookstore. I want to take the art back to the ranch and hang it on my walls. I want to eat at every restaurant and drink every cocktail and listen to the music in the bars at night. I want to walk through the streets, sing my songs and get this city stuck to the bottom of my boots, having my fill before I head back home.

Because sometimes I get lonesome for places like Fargo, places that could so easily be home to a girl who knows she belongs in the hills, but just needs the lights of the big town to remind her.


I‘ll be playing at Studio 222 in Downtown Fargo, ND on Saturday at 7:00 pm.
CD signing at Zandbroz downtown on Saturday from 12-2 pm
Click here for a chance to win exclusive tickets to the concert.
Contest ends tonight at midnight