The sun sets on an old day
I hit the road to see a friend
Some days I need to leave this place
so I can come home again
Coming Home: Winter blues washed away by spring melt
by Jessie Veeder
3/16/14
Fargo Forum
http://www.inforum.com
Sometimes the day is so lovely, you just have to go out in it.
Sometimes the moon shows up before the sun goes down and lines up just right in the blue sky hovering peacefully over golden grass.
Grass that was hiding under all that snow, snow that’s melting because it’s 50 degrees ABOVE zero now, so you decide to pull on your muck boots and splash around in it a little, feeling so good you don’t even mind the little hole in the right one that lets the water in to soak your socks.
It doesn’t matter. It’s summer now.
Your feet don’t get cold in the summer.
And you took your camera, because you need to document what a beautiful mess it all is when the thaw comes.
You need to photograph those tiny bubbles.
You need to capture those trees standing nice and tall and straight.
You must preserve the memory of that rushing water cutting its way through the stubborn ice in the shade of the valley.
You have to show everyone, shout it so they can hear you above the babbling streams…
“Spring is springing!”
“Spring is springing!”
“Spring is…”
Dammit dog!
If it’s peace and tranquility I’m looking for out there…well…
Happy thaw out everyone!
The temperature gauge on my pickup this morning said this.
–20
That’s negative twenty.
Twenty below zero.
Sub, sub, zero.
Two digits below zero.
And that was without the windchill factor.
Do you know what -20 feels like if you include the windchill?
Well it sure as hell doesn’t feel like Tuesday. You know, way back when I was in Florida.
You know what the temperature is in Florida today?
Shit.
How’s a person expected to survive that sort of shift in the atmosphere?
I woke up one day to 75 and sunny, got on a plane without socks and landed in a blizzardy tundra with 30 mile-per-hour gusts of blowing snow that dropped the temperature to a nice even -15 or so.
Sockless.
That’s nearly a 100 degree temperature drop in a mere 8 hours.
Do you know what 100 degrees colder than 75 and sunny feels like?
It feels like blood freezing in your veins.
It feels like icicle eyeballs.
It feels like razor sharp nipples.
It feels like burning cold skin.
It feels like every swear word you can form on your lips in the five seconds before your mouth freezes shut.
It makes you question your place in life, the level of sanity you possess to have become a person who choses to live in a place that spends a solid two to three weeks a year trying to freeze your internal organs.
No one’s lungs are freezing in Florida. I’m just saying…
Oh, I know, we’re a hardy lot of people up here. We’re sort of proud of that. We eat a lot of meat and potatoes. We put big dumplings in our soup. We roll out noodles and smother them with heavy sauces.
We deep fat fry shit.
We’ve got meat on our bones.
But there aren’t enough noodles in the world, not enough gravy, no ass big enough to protect a person from a weatherman warning that today, today friends, it’s only going to be -20, but you know what, it’s gonna feel like -45.
Henry, I love ya, but shut it.
Just. Shut. It.
Because at some point on the devil’s side of 0 degrees, it just doesn’t matter.
No.
So don’t bother with such a specific warning Henry. Just tell us to wear seven sweaters under our giant, full-body jackets that drag on the ground.
And then laugh because we all know that seven sweaters and a giant jacket ain’t helping anyone out here.
We’re all just idiots.
Freezing cold idiots.
Popsicle people walking around wearing seven sweaters while our eyelids freeze to our eyeballs when really, we should all just move to Florida.
-20.
Shit I’m cold.
There’s a moment between summer and deep autumn at the ranch that’s so good at being glorious that it actually makes us all believe we could last forever under a sky that’s bright blue and crisp and warm and just the right amount of breezy all at the same time.
We’re easily swayed to forget up here, you know, about the drama that is our seasons. I imagine it’s a coping mechanism we develop that gets the crazy stoic people here through -40 degree temperature snaps.
It’s forgetting that gets us through, but it’s remembering too. The combination is an art form.
Because at -40 degrees we remember that one-day it will be sunny and 75.
And when it’s sunny, 118 degrees and 100% humidity and there’s not a lake in sight, we remember that -40 degrees and somehow find a way to be grateful for it all.
Yes we keep taking off layers and putting them on again until we make ourselves the perfect temperature.
Funny then how we’re not really good at giving the in-between moments the credit they’re due around here. We usually grab them up and soak them in just enough to get some work done on a horse, paint the house, wash the car or get the yard cleaned up for winter.
Because we’re taught up here to use those perfect weather moments to prepare us for the not so perfect ones that are coming.
That’s why fall, though a romantic season for some, gives me a little lump in my throat that tastes a lot like dread and mild panic.
Because while the pumpkins are nice and the apple cider tastes good enough, I can’t help but think that autumn is like the nice friend who slowly walks over to your lunch table with the news that your boyfriend doesn’t want to go out with you anymore.
And my boyfriend is summer. And when he’s gone, I’m stuck with the long and drawn out void that is winter–with a little splash of Christmas, a hint of a sledding party and a couple shots of schnapps to get me through the break-up.
Hear what I’m saying?
But the change is beautiful. I can’t help but marvel at it really, no matter its underlying plot to dry up the leaves and strip them from their branches and jump start my craving for carbohydrates and heavy whipping cream in everything.
So I decided to give it the credit it was due yesterday and I took a break from the office chair intent on marveling at some leaves, collecting some acorns and walking the trails the cattle and deer had cut through the trees during the heat of summer.
I will never call this moment a season, it’s too fleeting and foreboding for that, but I will reach out and touch those golden leaves and call it a sort of magic.
The kind that only nature can perform, not only on those leaves, but on the hair on a horse’s back, the fat on the calf, the trickling creek bed, the tall dry grasses, used up flowers and a woman like me.
Yes, I’m turning too. My skin is lightening. My hunger unsuppressed. My eyelids heavy when the sun sinks below the hill much earlier than my bedtime.
My pants a little tighter with the promise of colder weather.
Ok. I’ve been reminded. Summer–a month of electric thunderstorms and endless days, sunshine that heats up my skin and makes me feel young and in love with a world that can be so colorful– is over.
And so I’m thankful for the moment in these trees to be reminded that I have a little time yet, but I best be gathering those acorns.
And pulling on my layers.
There’s not much I don’t like about July in North Dakota. It’s like 1,000 degrees out today, and I’m still gonna say it.
Because there’s a breeze. There’s always a breeze.
If I could hold on to this month for another I would. I would take the horseflies if it meant another thirty days of thundershowers in the evening…
Wild sunflowers in the road ditches…
Haybales lined up nice and neat in the fields…
Chasing cattle in the cool draws…
and windows open at night.
I’d take the pissed off squirrel chattering in the tree by my head if it meant I could sleep with the cool breeze tickling the curtains for another few days.
It’s kind of a funny way to wake up.
Kind of like I’m sleeping in a tree house.
Which is a pretty perfect place to be in July.
It’s summer now and the days are long, the sun moving slowly across the sky and hanging at the edge of the earth for stretched out moments, giving us a chance to put our hands on our hips and say “what a perfect night.”
It’s summer now and before dark officially falls we ride to the hill tops and then down through the cool draws where the shade and the grass and the creek bed always keep a cool spot for us.
Because it’s summer now and things are warming up. The leaves are out and so are the wildflowers, stretching and blooming and taking in the fleeting weather.
It’s summer now and the cows are home…
and so is Husband, home before the sun sets. Home to get on a horse and find Pops and ride fence lines.
It’s summer now and the dogs’ tongues hang out while they make their way to the spot of shade on the gravel where the truck is parked. They are panting. They are smiling. They just got in from a swim.
Because it’s summer now and the water where the slick-backed horses drink, twitching and swiping their tails at flies, is warm and rippling behind the oars of the water bugs, the paddle of duck’s feet, the leap of a frog and the dunk of a beaver’s escape.
It’s summer now and we keep the windows open so even when we’re inside we’re not really inside.
We can’t be inside.
Because it’s summer now and there’s work to be done. We say this as we stand leaning up against a fence post, thinking maybe if we finish the chores we could squeeze in time for fishing.
Because it’s summer and we heard they’re biting.
Yes, it’s summer and we should mow the grass before the clouds bring the thunderstorm that will wake us in the early morning hours of the next day. And it’s summer so we will lay there with the windows open listening to it roll and crack, feeling how the electricity makes our hearts thump and the air damp on our skin. Maybe we will sleep again, maybe we’ll rise to stand by the window and watch the lightening strike and wonder where this beautiful and mysterious season comes from.
And why, like the storm, it’s always just passing through.
It’s another rainy, windy afternoon at the ranch. It seems like once the sky decided to open up it just can’t stop. It feels like March when the sky wouldn’t stop snowing. It feels like this spring has been finicky and harsh and extreme and it has enjoyed every minute it has kept me waiting.
Waiting for the snow to stop.
Waiting for the sun to shine.
Waiting for the rain to come.
Waiting for it to stop raining.
Waiting on the sun to shine.
I know there will be a time this summer where the dust will blow again and we will pray for a bit of relief from the heat and the dry, but where I come from there is not a balance.
There is only extreme.
Extremely cold.
Extremely windy.
Extremely hot.
Extremely green.
Extremely wet.
Extremely dry.
Extremely perfectly beautiful.
Some days I feel like the weather. These days especially. The windows have been streaked with rain for a few weeks and I have been suffering from a weird sort of lingering head cold that refuses to break up and leave like the damn rain.
I’ve been working hard to ignore it, to say the rain will clear and I will feel better, but today I submitted. I stayed home under a blanket to watch it fall.
I’ll feel better tomorrow.
Head cold or no head cold, it seems I’m always so affected by the seasons and how they change, like the weather and my mood hold hands to greet the day accordingly.
Which makes me wonder how annoyingly bright-sided I’d be if I lived in the sunny, 70 degree climate of southern California.
It sounds nice right now, the sun.
But I think the constant change of seasons help me and what my husband refers to as my “restless spirit.” He says it’s hard for me to sit in one place. It’s hard for me to be comfortable in routine.
He says it’s good for me to have all this space to wander out here.
Maybe he’s right and maybe it’s hard to understand how a girl can be so rooted and so restless.
But it’s no worry to me really. I know where I belong out here, changing with the weather.
Evolving with the season.
There’s been an invasion on the homestead. It’s horrifying. It’s disgusting and it happens every spring, sneaking up on us, crawling up our legs, surprising us in the shower, torturing our dogs, waking us up in the night, sending small children screaming, strong women shrieking and grown men shivering in their works books.
Oh, I know it’s coming. I should be prepared. But I’m so excited about blue skies and sunshiny things that I forget about the inevitable creepy, crawly, disgusting, critters lurking in the tall grass where I’m busy frolicking.
I forget about it until I come home in the evening, refreshed and sunburned with just the right amount of dirt under my fingernails and I sit down on the couch, kick up my feet, take a deep breath, maybe close my eyes for a moment and then I feel it–that tingling sneaking along my sock line, moving past my leg hair.
Is it my leg hair? Geesh, when’s the last time I shaved?
I scratch at it.
Yup. Just leg hair.
So I lean back again, grab the remote and turn on “Wheel of Fortune.”
I take a guess at the puzzle.
I nail it.
I slap my neck.
Man. I’m itchy.
Must be the fresh grass.
Must be the dried on sweat.
Must be the leg…
Arughhhh, what’s with this shit?!
What. Is. Crawling. On. Me. Oh. My. Gawd. It’s. A. Tick.
A tick.
A TICK!
A TTTIIIICCCCCKKKKKAAAA!!!
I scream and run to the toilet, where I flush the little bastard into oblivion with a satisfaction I shouldn’t be so proud of, but I am.
Because I hate them.
I. Hate. Ticks.
And there is no photo because I am not going to glamorize them in any way, even if it’s for scientific purposes.
So here’s another photo of their habitat.
Rest assured, they are there. You just can’t see them.
Because they’re sneaky like that.
And they are also the only mortal enemy I have out here in paradise, even though I know that rationally the mountain lion sneaking in the trees is probably a bit more of a threat to me and my life.
And, oh, I hate cockle burs too.
And mosquitoes.
But not as much as I hate ticks.
Once, I had one stuck to my head when I went to get my hair done. I was just trying to be fancy. I even took a shower after my ride through the coulee. I swear I scrubbed my head good, but somehow the little bastard got by. Somehow I didn’t notice when his fangs stuck to my head and the evil insect began feasting on my precious blood.
I need that blood.
Especially that blood so close to my brain.
And so close to the poor pretty hairstylist who stopped dead in her tracks when she came upon the tiny beast embedded in my scalp.
Tick. Damn you tick. That was embarrassing.
You embarrassed me.
I hate you.
I hate how you stick in my bellybutton.
I hate how you stick in my armpit.
I hate how you get really big and disgusting, like thirty times your rightful size, and you dangle off my lab’s ear.
I hate how you get stuck a little too close to the pug’s butt and then I have to deal with that.
I hate that I have to deal with that.
I hate that no matter how much money I spend on veterinarian recommended tick repellent it doesn’t phase you one bit.
Because we live in the woods.
And you’re my pesky neighbor. You and all thirty seven bazillion of your disgusting relatives and friends.
And you’re thirsty, apparently.
Thirsty enough to find your way to my bed at night, forcing me to unknowingly sleep-slap my own face, waking me up from a dream about Ryan Reynolds.
Tick. I hate you tick.
But you won’t ruin my summer. I will continue to yank you off of my body and the body of those I love and fling you back out into oblivion without the one and only appendage you need to successfully ruin my life.
Your head.
That’s right.
You went for mine, now I’m coming for yours.
You better watch your back, tick, because Lord knows I’m watching mine.
Hate,
Your mortal enemy
This world is full of wild and thirsty things
skin and bones and muscles
feathers on black wings
soft petals on pink flowers
and stem and branch and leaf
waiting on the cool rain
waiting for the greenThis world is full of a sneaking kind of gold
you can find it on horizons
can’t be bought or held or sold
and only in the morning
or at the perfect time of night
welcoming a new day
setting up the light
This world is filled with the most peculiar sounds croaks and sighs and wails
and squeaks coming from the ground
and up above a whistle
and from the hills a lonesome cry
and I wonder if the calling
is hellos or sad goodbyes
This world is full of wonder and moments to be brave
and moments to remember
why we’re here and why we came
and moments to be thirsty
and moments to behold
and moments just to listen
to all the life outside our door
Summer is looming and North Dakotans everywhere are tuning up their tillers and mowers, digging out lawn chairs, filling coolers, firing up grills, fixing fences, plotting out garden space, cutting up watermelon and making plans to take advantage of our favorite season as we monitor the growth of green grass and the buds on the trees…
Yes, summer is coming and summer is short. We all know it. We know only have three whole sunshiny months to cram in as many sunshiny activities as possible. It’s a frantic thought, but a fun frantic thought, one that includes fishing, lake swimming, fireworks, deck sitting, margaritas, fresh garden tomatoes and getting some chores done while working on our tans.
And I know I’m not the only one who has a summer list floating around in my head, one that has been discussed all winter as a sort of spirit lifting promise to myself:
“This summer we’ll work on getting the boat fixed.”
“This summer I’ll wear that dress.”
“This summer I’ll be in shape. Like Jillian Michaels shape. Might even start on that marathon thing I’ve been talking about. What? I haven’t mentioned the marathon?”
“This summer I’m planting pumpkins.”
“This summer I think I’ll get a few pigs. Yeah. No big deal. Bacon. You like bacon right? Yeah. I think I’ll raise some bacon this summer.”
“This summer we’ll get the deck built and the garage up and the fences fixed and the barn redone and the old garage tore down and the junk pile cleaned up…”
Wait…that’s not where I wanted this to go.
No. No. North Dakotans get the month of May to do the dreaming, and that’s really my point here. We get May to make plans. And while the leaves on the trees work on budding, the wildflowers make their way out of the dirt, the sun works on warming the horses’ backs and the wind takes away their wooly coats we buy brats to cook on the grill, grab a beer, pull our short shorts out of the back of the closet and blind the world with our pale legs while we say “gosh, it’s so nice out. It’s so beautiful. Summer’s coming, I mean, look at that, it’s already 55 degrees!”
And we sit like that, in a sort of beer and sun induced summer illusion where woodticks don’t exist, and neither does that fencing project, every day is 70 + degrees, we don’t have a tiling project and we have all the time in the world to plan our fishing trip.
And refine our summer list.
So here’s mine:
1) Wear colors. Every color. On my toenails. On my fingernails. Around my neck. On my head. Enough with the black. It’s summer. Wear orange or something.
2) And while I’m at it I’m gonna wear my swimming suit, my whole collection accumulated over years of the sort of wishful thinking you experience while sitting on the couch with a bag of chips in the middle of a blizzard thumbing through the Victoria’s Secret catalog . Because really, I don’t get to wear them too often, you know, with all the snow and that whole delusional thing. But screw it, I think I’ll wear the shit out of them this summer: while I’m digging in the garden, chasing cows, searching for wildflowers, feeding those pigs, cutting up limes for my margarita and reading my magazines on the deck…shit…
3) We’ve got to build that deck.
But once that deck is built, I have plans to:
4) Make dinner a picnic. If the sun is shining and the wind isn’t threatening to blow away my burgers, I am going to eat my meals outside under the big blue sky.
Because everyone knows food tastes better this way. And so do margaritas.
5) Did I mention margaritas? Yeah. Margaritas.
6) Oh, and we have kayaks. Remember? They’re just sitting in that old garage we need to tear down. This summer I’m using those kayaks. I don’t care if it’s on the dam outside our house, I’m kayaking. I am.
7) But if I happen to make it to a lake with that kayak, I am not wading in like a wussy. I am going to jump in with enthusiasm, screaming at the top of my lungs. This summer I will do this every time I’m given the chance.
8) I will also keep a fresh bouquet of wildflowers on my table at all times. Currently in season: The crocus
9) And I will sleep with my bedroom windows open so I can fall asleep to the croaking of the frogs
10) And I will sweat. It will be hot and I will sweat and I won’t apologize for it. Because sweating is better than freezing. At least if you ask me. Little Sister might disagree.
So yes, I will welcome the sweat as I’m
11) Riding my favorite bay horse through pastures of sweet clover
12) Helping Pops and Husband dig post holes
13) Climbing to the hill tops to catch thunderheads rolling through a pink sunset
14) Following a deer trail through the thick trees to a juneberry, chokecherry or raspberry bush
15) Planting corn and peas and tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots and beans and radishes and pumpkins, watering them, weeding them, picking them and serving them up fresh and delicious with a margarita on my deck in my bright orange swimming suit after a long day of kayaking under the big, blue, beautiful summer sky we’ve all been dreaming of.
So what’s on your summer list?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 