Category Archives: Photos

Photos of the Veeder Ranch

Better than television

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You know at the end of the  CBS Sunday Morning news program, after the human interest stories, the witty commentary, the pleasant conversations with Charles Osgood and his equally pleasant bow-ties? You know, after the one or two cups of coffee you consume watching celebrities and do gooders and geniuses tell their stories about how they have and are going to save the world that get you feeling all warm and fuzzy about humanity and ready to go out and maybe save the world yourself  just as soon as you have a couple waffles, a few more cups of coffee and, you know, change out of your sweatpants.

And just before you switch off the t.v. to work on completing the aforementioned tasks, that damn program puts its little feel-good cherry on top of the sun-shining through your window by leaving you with a glimpse into a wild place somewhere in this world. They just leave the camera there for a few moments as pink flamingos stand on one leg and poke their faces in the water, or penguins slide down an iceberg, or the mountains just exist on your television screen in all of their glory.

You know what I’m talking about? Do you watch the program?

You really should watch the program.

Anyway, the end of the show is always my favorite–to see a piece of the world existing in front of me uninterrupted, no effects, no music or frills or voice-over telling me what to think about it allows me to  exist, for a moment, as a pink falmingo.

Or a mountain.

It’s television at it’s best.

So in the spirit of my favorite program I leave you this Sunday evening with a glimpse of the wild that passed through the ranch yesterday evening and welcomed me home by surprise as I zoomed along the pink road, singing a Steve Earl song at the top of my lungs.

I sucked in my breath as out of the corner of my eye I spotted ten bull elk with velvet horns lingering along the skyline.  I slammed on my breaks, kicked up pink dust, rolled down my window and sat with Steve Earl in my ears, my mouth hanging open wide and pure, unbridled, spirited beasts breathing and snorting and running before my eyes and through my own wild world…

And I was an elk for a minute…

which turns out to be more glamourous than a flamingo…and, you know, quite a bit better than television.

Want to get a little closer to these beasts? Click here for another wild elk encounter.

Tiny little miracles (and some other things)

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I went out yesterday morning to feed some babies. It was the first time the sun appeared after a few days of rain and it was fresh and crisp and lovely all around.

I had a major amount of work to do in the house. Like piles of notes and phone calls to make and stories to write. That’s the thing about working from home, when you’re home, that work waves to you all uppity like from that little nook of a desk that sits in the middle of your house. You can’t escape it, you know, unless you wander off.

So I wandered, me and big brown dog. (The pug? So glad you asked. He was snoring on the couch inside, avoiding mornings like the plague is his thing.)

Then I said  to myself: “Self, you’ve got time. This is why you live here. To feed the animals and spray the weeds and unload the dishwasher and avoid the laundry and ride some horses and wander. There might be something in there that says write and be productive and make a living, but I can’t be sure right now…oh and look, how convenient, I have my camera with me! How did that happen? I think I’ll just climb up this little knob and maybe I can find something to photograph seeing as things are all showered up and sparkly.”

So sparkly.

I like sparkly.

I wasn’t expecting anything but a couple bluebells, some horse poop, maybe a dried up crocus or two and a little time to clear my head, but as soon as I hit the top of the first butte, BAM!

It’s wildflower season.


I think we’ve been over my wildflower love affair before so you will have to forgive me as I revel in my obsession and breathe in the colors I’ve been waiting for all winter, the colors I could only find briefly in the sky that touched the white buttes on clear evenings.

I love that sky and I’ll see it again someday, but you’ll have to forgive the fact that all I desire is to put my nose to the ground for a few weeks, to poke around through the tall grass, kick the mushrooms, smell those soft petals and take them home for my kitchen table.

You’ll have to forgive all the photos of flowers that will be covering these pages during this very fleeting time in this very fussy climate. Because I am simply amazed, year after year, that as soon as the ground thaws out a garden that no human person planted just appears out of all of that clay and mud and poop and rocks.

Forgive me, yes. Forgive my amazement and overt enthusiasm for tiny little miracles like this…

and this…

and these…

Because who wouldn’t be excited about their own personal floral shop, a small offering given to us out here for enduring all of this snow and rain.

Gifts like the smell of sweet peas on your kitchen table that make a deadline a little more attainable, something that the dried up Glade plugin that has been sitting in my outlet for months has never fully achieved.

So thank you for taking this little wander with me. I tell ya there is a lot more where that came from, but I’ll try to restrain myself  to ensure that you get some of the other exciting news from the ranch. Important things like:

  • it’s wood-tick season
  • the pug currently still has all of his limbs in spite of his love for picking on things bigger and far more dangerous than him
  • Cowboy has been grilling the most delicious cuts of beef and venison, reminding me every day that I made the right choice in husband (even if he doesn’t do the dishes)
  • it has been too wet to get the cows home and
  • I am making to do lists for little sister to ignore when she comes to live at the ranch for the summer.

Oh, and I’m playing music with pops tomorrow evening in Medora at the Roughriders Hotel–Theodore’s Dining Room. I will also be on Prairie Public Radio today at 3:00 (CT) to talk about being a part of Dakota Air: The Radio Show  at the Burning Hills Amphitheater coming up on June 4th. Due to flooding in the Medora area, this show has been rescheduled for September 17th! But I’ll still be chatting on the radio, so catch it if you can online or on your dial. They’ll be playing some of my tunes and I’ll be talking about new music, old music and what’s to come.

More details on my upcoming appearances:

Thanks for all your support. Here, I picked these for you:

Hope to see you out west soon!

I picked myself some flowers and I’m ok.

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I’ve been away for a few days visiting with people about what makes their communities unique, the challenges they face, the best restaurants, who its people are and what the future might look like.

I have connected with some great ideas, some pertinent issues and some major rain storms. And the miles in between have helped me reflect on what it means to be out here on the ranch, the responsibility of it all and the importance of telling our story, each one of us, in our own way.

My head is full, my timeline crunched, my chest tight with deadlines and pressure to do the right thing, to say the right thing…

to be the best possible version of myself, knowing it is simply impossible to be her at all times.

The miles do that to me. The being away gets me all riled up and flustered and hopped up on margaritas and fast food …excited and stressed about possibilities and getting my butt back home to get things done.

I wind up…and up…and up in the spaces and pavement between here and there, the small towns and gas stations and hotels and little sister’s apartment, anxious about timing and getting to where I’m going and making the best use of my precious time away…making good time on the way back.

But I have a ritual when I hit the pink road in the spring and summer months that involves rolling down the windows and sucking in the air, taking notice of how things have changed, even in a mere five days.

Then I pick myself a wildflower bouquet…

recognize and accept my age inappropriate obsession with blue nailpolish…

and remind myself that no matter the expectations and the questions I simply cannot answer right now, the grass keeps growing, the sky keeps pouring, the horses keep grazing and the bluebells keep blooming.

Whether I’m here or not.

No matter what.

And damn, I’m glad I’m here.

Growing up North Dakotan

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This Sunday I will be in Fargo participating in a panel discussion for the Why Radio Show.

The subject?

Growing up North Dakotan.

I will take a seat next to individuals who have a handle on their identities, who may have wandered, explored their world and asked the questions that need to be asked. And one of those questions is “What does it really mean to be North Dakotan?”

As a woman whose heart has been planted solid here, but whose feet and mind have wandered with music and education and the winding road, I have been asked this question in many forms. It’s like asking what it means to you to hold your last name, or wear your grandmother’s ring, or to lay down next to the man you love every night.

How do you answer it?

Not everyone can speak about it. Not everyone can explain.

Not everyone needs to.

I was talking to my good friend  on the phone yesterday afternoon. As I stood right in the middle of our home state she was in Oregon, a place on the map she picked with her husband. She had been there for nearly three months after years of college and graduate school they were looking for adventure, new opportunities, valuable experience before they settled into their lives. She is loving the ocean and the coffee shops and the eclectic culture. She loves the rain and the flowers and the new scenery and the people.

But you know what she said to me between breaths about her plans and her new apartment and the photography show she is putting together?

She is missing something.

“I miss that prairie. I want to lay in my grass and smell my lilacs and plant my garden and breathe in that sky. I miss my home.”

Home.

Her home.

Who are these people who hold the scent of the dirt, the push of the wind, the endless winters, the wheat fields, the small town in such regard?

Who tends their grandmother’s garden, brings in the baby calves into the basement in the dead of a blizzard? Who works the teller line and serves your morning coffee? Who has owned the Implement Dealership for years?

And who roams all over the world for years on end, traveling over seas to live and work in foreign languages, who are leaders of cities and  major corporations? Who serves in the military,  climbs mountains and rafts raging rivers only to find themselves pulled back again, to be haunted by the memories of sunsets and 4th of July Celebrations no matter how how far they have traveled or how long they’ve been gone.

Who is North Dakota?

We are rural route roads, beat-up mailboxes and dusty school bus seats. We are rides in the combine, summer sausage sandwiches, a thermos of coffee washed down with warm lemonade and  faces black with dirt after a hot August day.

Two miles to a gravel road on the edge of town and we are freedom, our father’s truck, twelve years old behind the steering wheel.

We are first loves and last loves and forever loves found on those backroads at night, on front porches, in the backseats of cars and under a blanket shared in the stands at a football game.

We are the stars that light up the endless sky at night, family farms, four generations of the same recipe on Christmas Eve.

The barnyard light.

We are white wood prairie churches, our mother’s voice quietly singing the hymns, jello with suspended vegetables and mayonnaise casseroles waiting for us in the basement when the service is through.

We are wet clay caked to cowboy boots, the black soil of the valley, the stoplight in town.

High heels and business suits, running shoes and hoping things will stay the same…knowing that they need to change.

Number crunchers, songs that must be sung, books that must be written.

Snake bitten.

We scream for sun and pray for rain and push the river from our doors. We’ve been here before.

Chokecherry jam, misquote bites, country fairs, one station on the radio, too young for our first beer, FFA and 4-H steers. Too young to leave here.

We are race car tracks and power lines, hockey rinks and barbed fence wire.

Drilling rigs and endless fields of wheat…September heat.

We are bicycle tires in the middle of Main Street, fireworks in May, popsicles and swimming pools and a stop at the Tastee Freeze please. Rodeos and American Legion, football heroes, lead singers in the band, the ferris wheel in town.

Pow wows, three legged races, familiar faces, dances in the street.

Fishing in the creek.

We are “Pete’s kid,” “Edie’s granddaughter,” and  “Your mother wants you home right away!”

We are pushed to go and pulled to stay, we are leaving this place as soon as we’re grown.

And we are the sky we can’t explain, predictably unpredictable, colorful and full of rage and gentle hope that it’s all ok.

We’re the wind, relentless.

The snow, endless.

Sharp and hard and steadfast and certain like the winter and the change in weather.

We are the dirt under our nails, our wind tangled hair, the cattails and bluebells and big white tail deer.

We are all of these things that make up a home, but home is not ours to take.

It is in us and we have been claimed.

Join me for:

“Growing Up North Dakotan”

A panel discussion featuring Joshua Boschee, Kathryn Joyce, Jessie Veeder Scofield, and others. Moderated by WHY? host Jack Russell Weinstein

Prairie Public Television Studio
5-7 pm
207 5th Street North
Fargo, ND
Facebook Event 

The event is free. Come be a part of the audience, ask questions, make comments, and engage philosophically with this most important issue.

If you can’t be in Fargo, please share with me here how North Dakota has claimed you.

A promise of summer

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It’s been raining at the ranch for the last few days.

Raining, and thundering, and pouring and flooding and rushing the creekbeds.

And smelling so sweet.

So although I’m an outspoken fan of the sun, I know this is necessary. I know this is what spring does.

So I say bring it on. Let the heavens pour down and wash that winter away. Wash it clean and squeaky. We’ve been frozen and thirsty and our hair needs washing…

the worms need air…

the lilacs need watering…

the horses need waking up.

Rain sky. Cry it out. Turn the brown neon and make the flowers hunch over under the weight of your necessary presence.

I don’t mind. Really. I will stand in it all day.

I’ll splash in your puddles, let it soak in my skin, slide down the clay buttes, jump over the rushing streams. Because I forgot what this feels like, being soaked to the core and warm in spite of it.

I forgot what it looks like when the lighting breaks apart the sky. 

I forgot how the thunder shakes the foundation of this little house, how it startles me from sleep and fills my heart with a rush of loneliness, a reminder that the night carries on while I’m sleeping.

I forgot how clean it smells, how green the grass can be, how many colors are in a rainbow.

So go on. Rain.

Rain all you want.

Rain forever on this hard ground and turn this pink road red..

This brown ground green

Let your drops encourage the fragile stuff, the quiet beauty that has been sleeping for so long to wake up and show her face to the sky.

I’ll be there waiting to gasp over it, to gush and smile and stick my nose in the sweet scents and return home to track your mud into my house where the soup is on.
Rain. Rain. Rain. You tap at my windows…
and promise me summer.

How do the crocuses know?

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It’s official.

Deep breath in and out.

Whew.

After a winter that dug its frozen fingers in, ate us out of house and home, turned our skin pasty and soft and all in all outstayed his welcome, peaking up from the once frozen ground is the first genuine promise of warmer days to come.

And when I say genuine I mean it, because this little signal that comes to us quietly on the hilltops has never failed to lift the dreary spirits of country people in the northern states.

Yes, the crocuses are here.

And if there was anything I needed to do upon returning to the ranch yesterday evening after a lovely day with family sitting out in the 60 degree sunshine–if there were chores or phone calls or words that needed to be said to you about Easter and family and the sweet memories this holiday stirs inside of me, all of that was trumped by husband’s and my deep desire to fling open the doors of the car, pull off our town clothes, change into our muck boots and climb the hills to find springtime treasures.

For anyone who grew up in a northern state or in the countryside where your world turns white for months you will understand this. You will understand what the crocus means to us here in rural North Dakota.

You will understand the sweet smell of dirt that accompanies the search and anticipation of spotting that first vivid purple petal emerging from the cold, damp, brown earth. And if you have patiently watched the snow drifts disappear and reappear outside your front porch as the months drag on, you will not laugh when I say at that moment you feel as though you have never seen a purple that deep, a petal as soft, a color so vibrant. Beauty has arrived.

And if you are from the prairie you will smile as you think of that first breeze catching your hair and the sunshine warming your shoulders as you fling off your spring jacket,  let the warm soak in your skin and fall down to your knees to inspect the new arrival.

You will understand how, at that moment, you are eight years old again and you have your grandmother’s hand and you can hear her voice through the breeze. You can hear her exclaim “Oh, now look at that…” as your eyes move from the first flower and across the hill to notice that there are purple dots are everywhere. Scattered.

And if your world has been white and you have been restless you will appreciate the challenge you face just then where your enthusiasm for the change of season begs you to grab the flowers up, collect them for your pockets, pluck them for your basket or your bucket and bring them home to proudly display on windowsills and kitchen tables and countertops.

But instead you pause as your fingers run over the fuzz of the fragile flowers that reach for the sky in groups, holding hands with a promise to face this uncertain sky together.

Yes, if you are from the windswept buttes, the wheat fields, the quiet streams that cut through small cow pastures you will nod your head when I tell you that yesterday, when I finally found what I was after, I made sure I only picked one crocus from each group, careful to not leave any alone out there, certain not to pluck the hilltop clean of this precious flower that enters this world so confident, the first bud of prairie spring…

because life is short and a little piece of me felt like, for all this flower has given me, there should be some left out there to live it.

Yes, if you are from the once frozen Dakotas, you will nod your head because you have done the same thing and returned to your home with a modest bundle of furry purple flowers, shaking off the tiny bugs that have made their home inside the petals before setting the bouquet on your table with pride.

This is the ritual, these are the emotions conveyed by such a small and simple gift from nature. And we repeat this ceremony year after year, our excitement builds, our childhood reinvented, our hope for a new season renewed.

We anticipate, we make time, we know it’s coming every year…

But how do the crocuses know?

How do they know the ground is ready and the sky won’t forsake them?

How do they know that momma’s desperately need flowers just as much as papas desperately need to pick them for her?

How do they know when children need a treasure hunt and grammas need to lead the way?

How do they know just when to make a quiet and brilliant entrance to come and finish thawing us out?

How do they know just exactly when we need them?

Spring’s cast of characters

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Oh the coyotes have been howling, like really wailing, outside the farmstead lately and things are waking up around here as the sun shines and rain falls, helping wash the snow away.

And this morning there isn’t a trace of wind, everything’s still and things are waking up…

Well some are easier to rise than others…

Yawn.

Oh, I know in some places, in most places, the blossoms are opening up, green grass is poking through the ground and people are having coffee on their front porch without their wool mittens. But like the bay horse sleeping in the food pile up there, North Dakota is sleeping in. But that’s ok. Coming in slow helps me notice and appreciate each little change, each member of the cast of spring characters…

The geese are passing over, honking their hellos…

and if they’re brave and remembered their Muck Boots they touch down and stay for a bit. These are beautiful, elegant creatures…

Much like their cousin, the Turkey, who have been sneaking around the place lately. Always walking away, blending in with the brown grass because they’re shy like that.

Turkey butts.

Speaking of butts…

My view on my road walk if I’m not keeping my eyes peeled for something better.

Butt…(hehe) you’ve got to love my enthusiastic walking partners itching to shed their winter coats and do some rolling in the mud and slop.

I look up and in the air the crows flap and shriek and perch. I always wonder how they know when to come home…

…and how we’ve lived without them darting through our lives and swooping overhead all these months.

And I’m like a kid in a candy store out here in the spring air, keeping a watch out for the first colors, the first crocus poking through the ground. Ahhh, the crocus, my second favorite thing about spring.

My first?

Babies.

The kind born in the hay…

And the adorable, human kind wearing headbands and tiny hats entered in pageants put on by my small town for the enjoyment of the obsessed baby squeezer, kisser, snuggler and squealer like me.

My friend’s baby E. I can’t stand it, I just want to squish her cheeks.

And now cue the montage of my nephew, Little Man dressed in his pageant best:

Can you say “sweater vest?”

What about “Chillin’ with my ladies?”

Ahh, be still my beating heart and silence my baby talk, you’ve got to love a community that holds their baby population in high regard…

and gives them sashes and a spot on the front page of the weekly paper:

Spring’s here and life’s good in western North Dakota.

Bring on the sun, we’ve been (impatiently) waiting for you…

and we’ll take what we can get.

Please get here soon…

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Crawl in slow
the warmth
the sun

ice to slush
water to dust

my skepticism into trust

that you are on your way
and somewhere under white
and gray
flowers hold on tight
and wait to bloom

please get here soon

please get here soon

North Dakota

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I see you through cracked windshields
my dark sunglasses and
prairie grasses
trees that cannot hold their leaves
and drifts that will not stay…

dirt roads that carry on that way.

You wave to me
through barbed fence wire
old tractor tires
and houses with nobody home
things that could not be repaired…

things that were left sitting there.

We stretch along horizon lines
and dip below the buttes
your mud stuck to my boots
a piece of you you’re pleased to share
a piece I’m pleased to take from you…

your sky an ever changing hue.

And you see me through rearview mirrors
windows down and open doors
places I have gone before
my headlights through the dust I stir
how quick I am to roam….

you rise up to meet me home.

The colors of the season…

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Not a palm tree...

My mom and pops went to Jamaica for a week.

While they were basking in the rays of 80+ degree weather, jumping from cliffs, swimming with the fishies and enjoying one or two cocktails while floating in a pool, husband and I had everything under control back here at the ranch.

Well everything except the severe winter weather advisory that led to a 24 hour power outage which resulted in the mis-fire of mom and pops’ furnace when the electricity was finally restored.  And it just so happens that husband’s favorite pastime is fixing things (he has to do it a lot considering the walking disaster he married) but after one to two hours standing in front of the mysterious mechanism, scratching his head, tinkering with wires and searching for that elusive reset button while standing inside a house that was reaching thirty degrees, even Mr.Fixit husband and his electrician father on the other end of the phone line were utterly defeated by the thing.

Not ocean waves

So husband moved on to the next conundrum: removing porcupine quills from the snout of their dog left in our care. And I went for the space heaters and the phone to call the furnace guy.

And then we sat in their hot tub and drank their wine and called them names behind their backs.

But all’s well that ends well. Especially when you find that hidden furnace button, save the dog and throw away the empty wine bottles in time for your parents to come home with tanned skin, beaded hair and a new accent.

Ya Mon

And so we went over to their house on Monday evening to eat steak dinner and hear their stories and look at their pictures and see that video of the cliff jump.

And now I’m colder than ever.

Remember when it looked like this around here?

Remember when these things grew out of the ground, looking all colorful and happy and bright?

Remember when I could open the windows and let the breeze blow through the house while I milled around in my short shorts and tank top?

Remember when I slid down the clay butte in my pajamas in the middle of the night and scraped up my ass and my hands and my feet, but at least I didn’t get frost bite?

The evidence

The evidence...

Waaaahhhhh…hurry up summer!

Don’t get me wrong, no matter the season I am so inspired by this land around me. It changes every day and comes up with different ways to awe me, but this last week I have been dreaming in color. The colors that I haven’t seen for a while.

Green.

Pink.

Orange.

Yellow.

Yellow Flowers

Purple.

So after sitting at my desk all day yesterday staring at the computer screen trying to complete a project while banging my head against the wall learning a new program, my eyes were squinty, my throat was dry, my hair was standing on end and I smelled like bad attitude.

Growl...

So I bundled up and went outside to take some photos. Because I have found photography has become my new therapy– it’s teaching me to look for the beauty and interest in the small, ordinary big-picture things.

I pulled on my long underwear, strapped on the old snow shoes, tied on the neckerchief and stepped outside into my wild backyard.

Maybe I’ll see those elk in the fields pops was talking about.

Maybe I’ll see a deer or a rabbit or coyote or, if I walk far enough, maybe I can catch a glimpse of those bison on the hill.

Maybe I’ll walk up to the horses. Maybe I’ll sit and listen to the wind, maybe I’ll…

…freeze to death.

Shit, it was cold.

I made it about a quarter of a mile before I really realized it and then, once decided, couldn’t run for cover soon enough. But I was determined to be inspired.

Determined.

So I started the pickup and loaded my fluffy self up in there. I was going to take a drive. I was going to find me some wildlife, some sparkle, some shine, something to lift my spirits.

I drove down the back road, radio off, peering from side to side, slowing at the corners, looking in all of the washouts and coulees where I know the deer lay, where the birds might be, where the elk might saunter through, hoping for a jack-rabbit, a cow, a neighbor, anything to cross my path…

But it seemed that it was just me out here on the empty road, in the quiet cold air, in the cab of my pickup feeling, I’ll admit, kind of alone in this season that seems to be dragging us all to our breaking point…

So I turned around to head back home in the…

white…

gray…

brown…

But just as I was giving up and resigning to the season and the endless wait for spring– getting after myself for being one of those northerners who complains about the winter weather as if I wasn’t expecting it, I was put back in my place by one thing that makes me fall in love with my world over and over again…

the one thing that never lets me down…

And as the sun moved down over the horizon, it slowly gave to me all the colors I’ve been missing, all the sparkle and shine and inspiration this pasty northern girl needed at a time like this, saving me from myself once again.

And so it will be summer again. And this…

will finally get dressed already…

But until then, I’ve got the sun and the sky. And the sky’s got my back.

Oh, I know Jamaica has the sky too, but I just think it feels and looks better out here…

…you know, where the frozen ones don’t take it for granted.