When I grow up

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Today I want to share a piece that closes out my book “Coming Home.” I wrote it when I was still in my twenties in our first year back at the ranch. I was seeing this place through new eyes, realizing what time can do to us, clinging tight to the things that made me as I was discovering them again.

Those gray hairs I talk about are pushing through strong and I realize in the re-reading, I didn’t define what “grown up” actually means. Is it now? Is it ever?

I grab my flannel and go look for crocuses.

This week on the podcast I sit down with my oldest daughter, Edie, to talk about what it means to be an adult. And why kids like the mud. And yetis. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.

When I grow up

When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horsehair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek and the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud tracked from boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust, because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I’m older and my memory is full, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my dad on the first warm day of spring when the sun warmed the snow enough to make small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while he rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain and that I don’t forget that next to the rosy flush in my baby’s cheeks, rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I’m old and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I’m still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am old I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and remember how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture as a young woman waiting for the horses and wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones, the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I’m old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope those things that made me—the dirt turned to mud, a good man’s laughter, the soft breath of my child asleep on my chest, the strong back of a horse, the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter—will be there to see me out, happy and softened and weathered, just like the flannel I’ll remember to leave draped over the chair…

The Girls of Spring

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This week on the podcast we catch up on getting back on the horses in the spring, my dad’s horse-whispering skills and some of our epic horse wrecks. Which brings us to wishing we didn’t know how it feels to hit the ground when we watch our girls ride the big horses by themselves. We also catch up on my Nashville plans and how Chad had to rescue me once again from the side of the road. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Today it’s raining. Not a winter rain, but a true spring rain, one that smells like dirt turning to mud, one that lingers to soak the ground, not a lick of wind, it feels warm even though it’s barely above freezing.

Last Sunday I took my daughters out to the hilltops to look for crocuses. I knew it was probably a bit too soon, but when the first calves of the season are born and the snow disappears from the high spots, it’s time to check. And we did find some, though they were still sucked up tight into their buds, not quite ready to open up to the sun. But that was good enough for us. We’ve waited all this time, we could wait one more day. These are the rituals that come with the seasons, and they take patience.

Our hike around the hilltops on that 60-degree day found us next in the barnyard to greet the horses. After winter months out to pasture and bribing them in for scratches with oats and sweet feed, it was time to put on their halters and brush off their thick coats and get reacquainted.

In these moments, it seems like last fall was a lifetime ago, back when their coats were sleek and shiny and us humans were confident on top of them. It’s been months since we last saddled up the girls’ old geldings. Seven months now that I’m counting.

Seven months is a long time in the life of these little girls. Since then, both have turned another year older, they’ve stretched out inches, they’ve built new muscles and found the answers to new questions. They were ready to see what they could do with these horses now that they were all grown up.

Seven months in old-sorrel-horse-years has made them better, more understanding, a little more gray around their muzzles, and just fine with the task of trotting and turning around the still-sorta-muddy-but-dry-enough arena.

My husband and I stood shoulder to shoulder in that dirt watching our daughters get tested for stubbornness and will by their animals. I think we both held our breath, equally excited for the months ahead and lonesome for those springs that have passed, replacing our tiny, chubby, giggling daughters being lead around the pony pens with these creatures, lanky and independent and capable enough to do it themselves.

Oh, I know from experience, there’s nothing like being a young girl out here on this ranch in the spring! Nothing. The possibilities stretch out before you like that creek full of spring runoff, winding and glimmering and equal parts rushing and patient. Everything around you is waking up, and you can go out in it because you’re a part of it, reaching your bare arms up to the sun, unfolding out of your winter bud like that crocus today.

This spring, my daughters will take to the trees behind the house without having their mother as their guide. They will find a favorite, secret spot, they will wear down their own trails. They will take their baby dolls along and pretend they are mothers out in the wilderness. They will build forts and bring picnics and pick ticks off their jeans and drag mud into the house, and the world outside these doors will turn green as their skin turns brown and their hair turns gold.

They’ll scrape their knees running too fast on the scoria road, they will slap at mosquitoes, they will fight about silly things that are their most important things, and they will come in crying.

And they will have each other and their horses and the hilltops and the budding wildflowers blooming along with them. That’s all I ever wanted.

That’s all I ever wanted to give them.

Stuck Season

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This week on the podcast we talk stuck stories and I share a rough cut of a song from the new album. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.


I don’t know what comes over us when the snow melts and forms spontaneous rushing rivers in the barnyard, in the ditches, and through the trees, but I will tell you it’s not exclusive to the kids. I heard my neighbor’s grown man son took his kayak out the other day to see where the water would take him and I was immediately jealous that I hadn’t thought of it.

Yes, the first day the weather hit above 50 degrees my daughters were out chasing the runoff in their shorts and rubber boots and skinny white legs. And I was following right behind on the same mission, only in long pants because I have learned some lessons in my advanced age.

Like no matter your careful intentions on this mission, you will always wind up with the entire creek over the tops of your boots. Not a soul can help it after months and months in a deep freeze. We always go a bit too far.

And it seems the same goes with the mud. It could be. Or it could be hereditary, or it could be that I just really wanted to get closer to the first new calf of the season on our way home from celebrating Easter in town with my husband’s family. Turns out the sight of a cute calf makes you forget that just 24 hours ago that little mud puddle was a snow bank. Turns out off-roading in a SUV/Grocery Getter on the first warm day of the year with two kids and everything the Easter bunny could fit in the back is a dumb idea. I sunk into mud half up my tires immediately. It was only by pure willpower and utter embarrassment at the thought of having to call my brother-in-law to pull me out that I was able to maneuver out of that sticky situation. I counted that as a bullet dodged and moved on with my life.

The next few days were warmer yet, like 70 degrees! We hadn’t seen this since the Middle Ages! My little sister called to see if we wanted to go walk the creek bottoms and float sticks, even though our darling daughters were plumb happy with the little rivers forming puddles and running in the ditches in our yards. But the responsible adults in this relationship, that was not going to cut it. With one whiff of melting snow my sister and I were transported to our childhood, knowing the window of opportunity for this sort of dramatic landscape change around here is fleeting.

My husband was busy digging out things that had been lost in the snow banks for months and so I told him that we were going to load the girls in the pickup and head for the creek. He suggested we take the side-by-side instead so we wouldn’t get stuck. I ignored him.

And so off we went to find the creek as big as it’s ever been, rushing and flowing and cutting through ice and snow along its edges, melting and forming a new river right before our eyes. This was no stick-floating situation, we should have brought the kayak! We stood on its edges a while with our daughters, mesmerized. The we pulled them some good walking sticks and I held the big girls’ hands while we waded in a bit along it’s edges, until, inevitably, Edie got two boots full of ice cold creek and we hauled them back through the snow bank and up to the pickup to make our way back home.

It’s here my husband showed up with the four-wheeler. I dumped a gallon of water out of our daughter’s boots and we loaded our soggy selves into the pickup. From the driver’s seat I told my dearly beloved that we were heading home, put it four-wheel drive and crept toward my fate. In the rear view mirror I saw my husband on that ATV quietly watching to see how I was going to turn this big ‘ol pickup around on a skinny scoria trail surrounded by snow banks and mud and icy puddles.

And I could go into the step-by-step details here, but I think you’ve predicted it. Not only did I get stuck, I nearly landed the whole pickup in the creek. I did a number that not even my husband could undo. And the man, he didn’t even say, “I told you so” when I profusely apologized. He just poked his head in the window and replied, “We all gotta learn our lessons our own way.”

And then my sister called my brother-in-law to come with the towrope.

Oh, Happy Spring! If you need me I’ll be ignoring logic and the mud in my entryway. 

Rosie’s Spring Song

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On this week’s podcast episode I have a short visit with Rosie before preschool about her new song and why spring is her favorite season. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Rosie wrote a song about spring to sing at open mic at my mom’s coffee shop in town last week. Her first experience a few months ago singing her own song in front of a crowd gave her the confidence she needed to do it again. She’s only five, let me remind you, but no “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for her. She insisted I get out my pen and my guitar and help set her idea to music. “Spring is the best time of the year. It’s so happy and full of cheer.”

Yes girl, yes it is. The snow banks are melting and the creek is rising and the mud on our boots is sticky and tracking into the house and everything is dirty and a combination of brown and blue and gold. And so these suddenly become our favorite colors when white has been our existence for all of these long cold months.

“Easter comes by and it’s so fun. Because there are Easter egg hunts,” she sang, her little legs dangling off the chair, the microphone in both hands held up close to her mouth so we could all hear her words.

Rosie’s my hero. It’s possible I’ve said this before, but in case I haven’t, I am saying it again. She has been since I met her. Her very existence was improbable given the fact that I struggled for so long to keep a pregnancy. We had our first daughter and thought that might be it for us, but we tried again anyway thinking it could possibly take another ten years. But Rosie was ready to be born and so she didn’t make us wait. She came to us quick and easy at the height of one of the most difficult times my family has endured, my dad clinging to life in a hospital bed in Minnesota and his future so unsure. We gave his name to her, Rosalee Gene, because the belief that he would ever meet her was nothing but a faint light. She was a sweet distraction, a quiet force for hope that can come even in the most desperate and dark moments. She made no fuss about it. She just breathed and sucked and pooped and lived and as she grew my dad grew stronger and here we are with both of them at the ranch waiting for the snow to melt off and the baby calves to be born. Spring is hope and renewal and so it reminds me of my second daughter, singing so confidently this song about her favorite season.

“Outside the window spring is here. Bunnies and chicks and baby deer.”

The elk take a stroll through our horse pasture

Lately there has been so much tragedy exploding from the news feed, and our small communities here in western North Dakota have not been immune to it. Renewal and hope aren’t easy words to sit with when loss and uncertainty sit heavy in your guts. But time continues to change the season. Time continues to move, eventually bringing with it a thaw. The water breaks free under the ice and rushes the draws.

In a week or so we will have baby calves on the ground, still wet out of the womb. In a few more the bravest flowers and buds will start to emerge at the coaxing of a warm sun. The pair of geese will return to the stock dam outside our house. The wild plum blossoms will dot the brush with vivid green and we will climb to the top of a hill to find a dry spot and lay down in it, knowing well that it could storm again the next day, burying the ground and the new buds and babies in the chill of a white blanket. But it will be hard to imagine it then with the warm spring sun on our bare arms. If you’ve forgotten what hope is, nature can remind you.

“A big blue sky and bumblebees. Tweet-ely birds and green green trees,” Rosie sings into the microphone to a small crowd of community members gathering for coffee. They tap their feet and hum the tune on their drive home…

Darling we haven’t gone dancing…

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Listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your content!

Last weekend, the girls decided that my husband and I needed a makeover. This happens occasionally. They take it upon themselves to fix our hair, put makeup on me, paint my nails, and dig in our closet to pick out our clothes.

I always like to see the outfits they come up with. Usually it’s a combination of whatever animal print I have within arm’s reach, a flowy skirt that twirls, a jacket, and some high heels. Nothing ever matches. Their dad doesn’t have many fancy options to choose from because once I thought it was a good idea to throw all of his neckties in the washing machine and, as you can imagine, none of them survived, so I always come out as the most overdressed of the two of us.

Anyway, once they get us all dolled up, the next step is, naturally, to clear out a spot in the living room so we can dance while they watch. They give us orders on how we should hold one another and how he should dip me, and this all lasts about three minutes before they run to their rooms and pull out their most frilly dresses and sparkly shoes so they can join the show.

So, once again, this was our Sunday morning routine, the same as it has gone multiple times before. We two-stepped across the crooked rug in my snakeskin booties and twirly skirt with my arm around the guy I’ve been dancing with since seventh-grade jitterbug lessons in gym class.

As we worked the rust off our best spider move, my oldest daughter came rushing up between us, hugging our legs, a smile from ear to ear, overcome with emotion. She was having the most wholesome, adorable, whole-hearted reaction to this moment she helped curate, and it caught me off guard in the most lovely way. To see her parents dancing, holding on to one another, laughing at our clumsy attempt at a dip, letting go a bit in the routine of dishes and schedules and work made her whole little being light up.

There’s an old Ian Tyson song that my dad sings with the band called “Own Hearts Delight.” The lyrics are full of nostalgia the way some of the best songs are.

The chorus goes: “Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now. It’s been so long since we’ve twirled around the dance floor, I’ve almost forgotten how. So gas up the pickup and I’ll get the babies, they can stay with the neighbors tonight. And if the band at the bar’s playing waltzes and shuffles, I’m gonna dance ‘til my own heart’s delight.”

Long before I was married, I used to listen to him sing this song. Even as a kid, I understood the ache that sat within its lines.

I was raised by two people who worked two or three jobs each while raising kids and cattle. My dad was always the singer in the band, so I rarely caught them dancing, and never in the living room. But those quiet evenings at home in the winter while I sat on the floor doing my 4-H latch-hooking project, or at the kitchen table working on a math problem, I would see my mom swing her legs over my dad’s lap as they sat on the couch together, him reading the paper or a book and her surfing the channels, and I would feel safe.

Before our daughters were born, my husband and I used to spend our evenings both tucked together under a blanket in our oversized chair. Then my belly started to grow bigger, and then there were three of us, and then there were four of us, and our arms became busy, our nights occupied by crying babies, then kids with the sniffles and teeth brushing and “Just one more book before bed, please.” I’ve only just recently remembered that ritual of ours. We’ve long gotten rid of that big old armchair.

Lately, my daughters have become increasingly interested in marriage and coupling up. It’s a natural curiosity, I suppose, to try to understand what love is, what it might look like, what it might feel like, and if it might be something for them someday. There was a time when my oldest was around 2 or 3 when she thought dancing meant marriage. Marriage was dancing together. I didn’t hurry to correct her.

“Darling, we haven’t gone dancing, for such a long time now …” The words couldn’t echo more true for us these days. I guess we have our daughters to thank for the reminder.

Prairie People Hit the Beach

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Do you know what it takes to get out of the great white north in March?

Ask anyone who tried it the past couple weeks of spring break and they will tell you it was an act of God. Some of them never made it out.

Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts!

We were the lucky ones (cue dramatic music). Because for some reason our tactic of driving more north to Canada to catch a flight to Mexico actually worked. I mean, the flight was delayed ten hours, but the promise a 100 degree temperature change and unlimited access to tequila kept our spirits up. And also, not one soul left behind in North Dakota will tolerate any complaints about a March trip to Mexico in the middle of the blizzard, so I wouldn’t dare. Didn’t even want to send a picture of me blinding the country with my neon winter white ranch kid legs blazing in the sun. My plan was to just slip quietly away with my husband and my sunscreen and giant hat to pretend for a week that the only care we have in the world is how many more chips and guacamole we could possibly eat before it was time to eat an actual meal.

Traded our wool caps for vacation hats

I turn 40 this year. My husband had his turn in September. Mexico with friends was a gift we gave ourselves for making it this far. And now I’m scheming on what excuse I can come up with to do the same thing next year. Although maybe the only excuse a person needs to get away from it all is that, in the end, it makes you more tolerable to the people who have to live with you.

I will also take a moment here to plead my case for a week’s paid vacation in a tropical place for every person who has had to endure this forty-five month North Dakota winter. I don’t know who is going to pay for it, but I’m sure we can work it out in a bake sale or something…

So that’s where we’ve been, my husband and I. We left our kids behind with the in-laws to do things kids do with grandparents—bake cookies, eat cookies, bake cupcakes, eat cupcakes, snuggle, watch movies, swim in the big community pool and, apparently, partake in major shopping sprees. When they Facetimed us to model their new outfits, with a margarita in my hand and my feet in the pool it was hard to tell among us who was having more fun–and I threw my body down a 98 foot waterslide. In hindsight, the waterslide was a terrible idea, but I’ll never admit it, not to my kids anyway.

Oh, vacation life! Where nobody knows you except the yahoos you brought with you and so somehow you can convince yourself that you are the person who thinks 98-foot waterslides are fun and not just an un-prescribed enema/neti pot treatment.

In Mexico, it could not be clearer that the lot of us were northern folk. With one half of our crew of 14 residing in Canada and the other from North Dakota, our combined complexions lounging in the pool could likely be seen from space. And if that didn’t give it away, one of us puking on the 20-minute ferry ride to the island probably did. We are prairie people. The only waves we have up here are made of grain.

But in Mexico, we’re different. In Mexico, I scuba dive.

Yup. Just give me a 20-minute lesson on land and I’m expert enough to put my face underwater and not panic. And by not panicking I mean managing only to do the one thing required of me to not die while scuba diving and that is to breathe. Need me to actually swim, or push that button that releases air to send me up or down, or look at fish or pose for a picture or not float to the surface and need to be pulled back down? Can’t do it. Working on breathing here.

Oh, if just breathing were the only task. That’s the power of vacation mode.

If you need me I’m back home now, eating noodle soup, re-acclimating to my natural habitat and making plans for the bake sale.

When ranch kids hit the big town

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Rosie and Edie on the set of “Don’t let the pigeon ride the bus”

We’re back at the ranch after week in Mexico and I’m working on getting acclimated to my natural habitat. The shock of 85 degrees to -4 has yet to wear out, even though I’ve eaten knoephla soup for supper two days in a row. Oh, how quickly I can become a beach person.

Anyway, because of our hiatus, I’m a little behind on sharing the weekly column and podcast. Chad and I plan to sit down and record a bit tonight.

The weekend before we left on vacation we took the girls to the big town across the state to visit friends and take them to a theater production. I don’t know why I decided this was something we had to do, but it turned out it was something we had to do. Sometimes you just need to make plans to break out of the ordinary routine and give your kids some new experiences. Especially on the edge of an eternal winter.

Anyway, this column is a reflection on what it means to take our little ranch girls to the big town. Turns out it’s a lot of time on the escalator.

The dangers of taking the country kid to town

We spent last weekend in the big town. I decided to make a singing trip a family trip all the way across the state, which happened to be right on the heels of one major winter storm and at the helm of another because it’s March and that’s what March does up north. And the cows aren’t having calves yet, so we took the chance to get away.

Also, lately the girls have been asking when we can go to the beach, and the closest we can get right now is meeting friends at a hotel pool in Fargo where there was 47 feet of snow piling up outside and more promised for Sunday.

And they were thrilled about it. Truly. Isn’t that the best thing about kids? It takes such simple efforts to make them happy. A promise of ice cream. Pizza for supper. A quarter in the gumball machine. Going up and down the escalator 55 times.

Seriously. I think the level of excitement about the escalator is the reddest of flags when identifying a rural/country kid in the big town. We also rode the store’s Ferris Wheel, but the escalator won in popularity. Rosie rode it so many times that her big sister Edie started to be seriously concerned about the rules. Could she get kicked out for shenanigans like this? Are you allowed to go up and then immediately down? Is there a limit on escalator rides? Does she know she’s starting to get embarrassing?

So went all of Edie’s 7-year-old concerns about her little sister’s lack of decorum in public. It’s like the big sister took a trip to civilization and realized that, perhaps, her little sister wasn’t equipped for these types of outings considering she wasn’t yet civilized herself.

So we took them to the roller-skating rink. Because etiquette goes out the window when you’re fighting for your life with eight tiny wheels strapped to your feet. And in case you’re wondering, country kids don’t know how to roller-skate due to the lack of available paved surfaces.

My kids took to the wood floor with all the confidence and grace of baby zoo giraffes on a frozen lake while their professional Rollerblading town friend and my husband spent the majority of the two-hour rink time holding hands and elbows and dragging our daughters back up on their wobbly, wheeled feet.

Which reminded me of the only time I ever roller-skated in my life down at my cousins’ ranch on the South Dakota border. Between the four of us, we had one pair of real, leather roller-skates with the orange wheels. They were at least four sizes too big, but it didn’t matter. We would take turns, two at a time, gliding around in circles on one skate on the small slab of concrete outside of their garage, skinning our bare knees there as we developed confidence entirely too quickly for the make-shift sport.

Needless to say, I didn’t step foot in a roller-skate that day. At this age, I have to seriously consider the repercussions of breaking a hip.

But my girls? After two Slurpies, three pieces of pizza, and five games of skee ball on the way out the door, they deemed themselves experts and have decided they’d like to live in Fargo now. Where they have roller rinks.

And Target.

Oh, yeah, Edie decided she’d really just like to live in Target, and now I’m wondering how I’ve failed as a ranch mom, because surely now they’re going to leave me for the big cities with roller rinks and escalators, and I’m going to have to follow them and live in an RV in the local KOA to have a proper relationship with my grandkids.

Anyyywaaayyy …

My activity of choice for the weekend was less physical and more theater.

Edie’s been reading “The Pigeon Series” books by Mo Willems, and my cousin (the one with the roller-skates) just happened to be directing the play “Don’t Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus” that weekend. So we went, and it was adorable, and now Edie wants to live in Target and be an actress, and Rosie is so brave she goes down hotel pool waterslides backwards and headfirst even though Edie tells her it’s explicitly, most likely against the rules, and so now they’re both surely going to leave me for the warmer weather and waterslides in LA.

But first we had to get back to the ranch, which was completely impossible on Sunday because when you live in North Dakota, you shouldn’t go anywhere but Jamaica in March. And so we were forced to spend one more evening in the oasis of the hotel pool. As I drove us white-knuckled back west for five hours on icy and drifty roads, I wondered if maybe my girls were on to something. I mean, escalators are pretty fun.

But then, so are baby calves.

See you at the beach.

The dangerous life of a handyman’s wife

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On the podcast I pop in quick to give an update as we get ready to go on vacation!

I am the wife of a handyman.  Because of him we live by the mantra: “If you want something done and still want to be able to afford to buy Cheerios, we do it ourselves.” I came to terms with this concept early in our marriage when we were young and naïve and took on the complete strip-down of a shag carpet, hot-tub-in-the-living-room remodel that brought a 1974 Brady Bunch house up to the times of hardwood flooring and no hot tubs in the living room. Seven thousand hours of staining and varnishing and stripping and sheet rocking, a few dozen arguments and one head stuck in a ladder later I began to fully understand what it truly meant. Wife of a handyman=this is your life, forever and ever amen.

Here we are, ten years ago when the shell of our house arrived. So young. So naive.

Fast-forward twelve years and here we are, proving that I was right. We’re still working on our house. Because just when it starts looking like it’s going to be finished, I come up with an idea for an addition or a remodel. I guess that’s what happens when your tool-belt-wearing man can make anything happen, you start to feel empowered with your vision.

Anyway, lately he’s been empowering me by requesting I help him put rocks on the new fireplace in our new living room, to which I say: it could be worse. I could be trembling on an eight-foot ladder on top of ten-foot high homemade scaffolding with my arms above my head because we decided that 20-foot ceilings were a good idea without considering that one of us is deathly afraid of heights.

Plummeting to a bone-crushing, bloody, mangled death is what I pictured every time I walked across that homemade scaffolding, boards creaking in my attempt to bring a nail-gun to my dearly beloved who thought positioning his ladder on the tippy-toe edge of the ledge, standing at the very top rung and then leaning out into the abyss of death that is now our living room was an acceptable risk to take in the name of homebuilding. The urge to scream “screw the board, save yourselves!” and run to lay on solid ground is a hereditary condition spawned from my prairie dwelling ancestors who passed up the terrifying mountains to come live in houses with one floor, low ceilings and basements.

My dad has the condition too, and so that’s why this memory of recruiting him to help install a wooden beam on our tall ceiling is etched in my brain. I suggested calling the National Guard, but my husband just told me to go get my dad. And the task I approached him with was one straight out of his nightmares: Stand on this tall ladder on this shaky scaffolding and hold this 15 foot beam up to the top of the 20 foot ceiling while my husband climbs and dangles and runs and jumps and back flips with nail-gun in hand to get the thing to hold.

My job? Same thing, only with trembling, holding my breath and throwing up a bit of my morning eggs.

And so there we stood, my dad and I, conjuring up worst-case scenarios as Ninja Bob Villa went from one near death position to the next. Dad told me not to watch as my husband stretched his ladder across the stairway and stood with nothing but a thin board between him and a fifteen-foot fall.

So I didn’t watch. And neither did Dad.

I remember us working hard to hold it together. The two of us only hollering “be careful up there!” and “don’t fall!” like fifty-five times during the course of fifteen minutes. But just as we thought we were out of the woods, everybody’s head in tact, my husband climbed down from the ladder and put his hands on his hips.

“Looks good,” he said.

“YES! IT DOES. GOOD WORK,” shrieked Dad and I.

“I just need to nail one more spot,” my husband said scratching his head. “I wonder how the hell I’m going to get to it?”

We followed his eyes to where they rested on a piece of the beam that towered past the edge of the scaffolding, too high for a regular ladder, un-reachable unless you had wings.

Dad used our best material to try and convince my husband that a nail in that particular location was not necessary. We suggested putting more nails in other places to make up for it. But my husband wouldn’t have it and before we knew it he had his ladder on the ledge of the scaffolding, his feet on the top rung, his back bent at a 90-degree angle out over the staircase with a nail gun in his hand reaching for the ceiling.

And that’s where we both lost it.

I whimpered and squeezed back tears as I white knuckled the ladder. And while I was saying fifty prayers to Jesus, Dad threw down his tools and grabbed on to his son-in-law’s belt buckle as my husband leaned further back over the abyss.

“Son, if you fall it would be sure death,” my dad declared.

“And if either of you tell anyone that I grabbed your belt, I’ll kill you both…”

So there’s that story. Now if you need me, I’ll be hiding from both my husband and my dad.

Stay handy!
Jessie

The Legend of Poker Jim

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Poker Jim Cemetery photo by Michelle Benson Brown

There’s a legendary story that has been passed around these badlands for several generations. Many North Dakotan’s who follow oral history or who are interested in the lore of the region may have heard it in one form or another, tales like these tend to linger. And this one has been told and retold since 1894 when a dead cowboy fell from the rafters of an old blacksmithing shop and into the middle of a poker game, sending cards and unsuspecting cowboys flying.

It’s the story of Poker Jim, a cowboy who worked for Pierre Wibaux’s large W-Bar outfit. Poker Jim’s real name has not been passed along in the retelling of the story, but his love for gambling and whiskey colors his character in the recounting of his untimely death in a blizzard on a 65 mile ride from the Hay Draw line camp along the north bank of the Little Missouri River to fetch supplies in Glendive, Mont. after provisions at the camp had run low.  When he didn’t make it back after several weeks, the men from the line camp found him near a large rock, frozen to death after what seemed like an attempt to build a fire. Because the ground was too frozen for a proper burial, the cowboys decided to store his body in the rafters of the blacksmithing shop until spring, but failed to tell the new crew in a personnel change. And so the new crew was unaware when they gathered for a poker game, lit a fire and started passing the bottle around, that Poker Jim’s body was above them, thawing out with each passing minute, waiting to make a grand entrance into the game.

The drama, theatrics and characters in this story have held in my gut as ripe for a song for years. It has everything a proper folk song needs—originating among the people of our region through generations and existing in several versions—all it needs now is a rhyme and a tune.

Anyway, maybe it’s the long winter or the recent gathering of cowboy poets that inspired me, but yesterday I sat down with a mission to make Poker Jim’s story into a song. I think he deserves it, after all these years of entertaining us around campfires and potluck suppers. I plan to record this in the spring and will likely share a sneak peek in a few places soon. But until then, enjoy it here in poem form or listen to the rough cut of the song, understanding that in the proper retelling of a story like this, there’s a certain amount of exaggeration and liberties taken while working to stay true to the heart of it.

On the podcast I sit down with my husband to talk about Poker Jim and other legendary tales from our community,  including the last lynching in North Dakota and a tale of a young woman who sacrificed her life to save her siblings from a winter storm. Listen here or where you get your podcasts  

The Legend of Poker Jim

Way down in the badlands
Before the land was tamed
Ran a band of cowboys
And the cowboys ran the game

In line camps and shacks
And old the blacksmithing shop
After long days on the trail
They’d gather up to take their shot

So sit down I’ll tell a story
A legendary one
‘Bout how a hard gambling cowboy
in death he had his fun

It’s true, you won’t believe it
But I tell you that it is
The way my grandpa told it
And his grandpa’s daddy did

They’d say the Dead Man’s Hand
Is the Dead Man’s Hand
Place your bet on the cowboy
But the dealer’s always the land

On the W Bar Ranch
He earned $25 a month
The rest he made on cards
Or lost drinking too damn much

You’d never dream a greener summer
Or a sun that beat as hot
It could make a man forget
Just what the winters brought

And what it brought was cold
And months of drifting snow
In the Hay Draw by the river
Supplies were running low

So Jim, he saddled up
And headed three days for the town
Stopping along the trail
To drink some whiskey down

They say the Dead Man’s Hand
Is the Dead Man’s Hand
Place your bet on the cowboy
But the dealer’s always the land

Just up from Smith Creek
They found him frozen to a rock
They took his body to the rafters
Of the old Blacksmithing shop

When the ground was warm
They planned to lay the man to rest
But failed to tell the crew
Coming new in from the west

And those boys they dealt the cards
Just like the boys before
They lit themselves a fire
Blind to what was in store

Because up above their heads
That stiff body took to thaw
And dropped heavy on the table
In the heat of Five-Card Draw

They say the Dead Man’s Hand
Is the Dead Man’s Hand
Place your bet on the cowboy
But the dealer’s always the land

Now way down in the badlands
These days the land is claimed
And up along the ridgeline
The rock it bears his name

But through the years it’s told
This part remains the same
Not even death could take
Poker Jim out of the game

A cemetery is named for Poker Jim in the badlands over looking the Little Missouri River, years after his death, friends of his moved part of the rock where he was found up to his grave to mark it.

If you want more details on this story or to hear a proper retelling from an elder from McKenzie County, click here. Read the story in Prairie Public’s online archive here. It was from there, and the retellings from community members, that I got the details for this piece.

The rock marking Poker Jim’s grave. Photo by Michelle Benson Brown

Is this middle age?

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On the podcast I contemplate how this phase of life feels like February and sit down with my husband to talk all things middle age. And Chad has A LOT to say about it. And also, did you know he has “work Crocs?” This episode goes long as we get into discussing my battle with chronic pain, my recent CT scan and why it’s so important to share our stories.

February can be the longest, shortest month. It drags with it a bit of hope that once we’re through it we’ll be standing in the months that could bring us warmer weather.

My husband’s been spending every spare minute working on the addition to the house that he started before the pandemic. The way the years fly now is different then when we were younger and making plans. But we’re deep in our plans now, and sometimes they suck the days right out of us. If I knew, when we were 27 and back at the ranch that we would be 40 and still under construction on the house we imagined, I wonder what I would have said?

Probably something like, “Sounds about right.”

Because under construction is a theme in our lives that just hangs on. As soon as we’re settled a bit, we find another project to get us back there. Does that say something about us? Something that we should sit with and evaluate?

Is part of middle age wondering how exactly you got here? Is it hearing a song you used to play on repeat in his Thunderbird, driving too fast on gravel roads and being transported back there for a moment, realizing you’ll never be that magically naïve again? Is it music on the Classic Rock station or that song re-imagined acoustically by a teenage TikTok star? Is that 40? Did I spell TikTok right? Does anyone even know how to spell anymore?

Seriously, that was an early morning discussion I had with my husband while ushering the kids out the door for school. How close are we to being out of touch?

The things we said we could do, would do, can we? Did we? Are we?

I’m thinking about this today because I feel like over the course of the last couple years we’ve hit a new phase in our life. Our daughters aren’t babies anymore. Maybe that’s why. I’m finding a minute for my thoughts because they can wash their own hair and dress themselves and ask Alexa to play “The Fart Song.” And just this year three of my good friends lost a parent. And some of the relationships we stood up for, sang for, bought wedding gifts for, have ended now. We’ve moved quietly into the generation that doesn’t understand the latest fashion trends (mom jeans and dad tennis shoes anyone?). And so that means we’re officially adults. I realize that. But are we equipped? To know the rules or change the rules? To take care of things?

This is the part of the fairytale that got skipped. They never let us in on what happens after the kiss at the wedding. But we were kids, so we wouldn’t have listened anyway, about what “Happily Ever After” really looks like: 401Ks and attorneys, debt and funeral arrangements, hospital bills, annual exams and scans and therapy and broken furnaces and dishwashers that need to be replaced and school drop-off and soccer practices and elementary schoolers and teenagers under one roof and what to make for supper night after night after night.

We didn’t see this part when we were kissing in that Thunderbird. If we did, we would have sworn it all would be different for us anyway.

But it isn’t. That’s the big promise we all get. Time catches us.

But lately, when that song comes on, it makes me contemplate the romance of this phase. Disney shouldn’t have ended there, because this is the most interesting part I think. So much more at stake. So heartbreaking.

Thhe most human part is right here, in the middle of it, trying to teach our children right from wrong and good from bad when we’re all so tragically and beautifully flawed ourselves. Showing them the love thing, when maybe, some of us, weren’t really shown ourselves. Saying goodbye to the most important people in our lives. Starting over. Or hanging on and loving one another through it. Despite it. Because of it.

Learning to take care despite the assortment of roadblocks or rules put in place for us before we were old enough to understand.

But we’re old enough now. We are. We’re old enough to understand that in that Thunderbird driving too fast with the windows down, we didn’t truly know yet what love was. Or commitment. Or sacrifice. Or loss. And that all of those things come with it. But we’re in the meat of it now. The heart of it. And it’s messy. And complicated and dramatic and the longest, shortest time, like February, sitting with a hope of a thaw, a kitchen dance party, a night out, a newly tiled bathroom and a bigger closet, a morning kiss goodbye or our favorite meal to help us through.