And I never wanted to leave again

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My husband and I spent a brief time living in western Montana when we were first married almost twenty years ago now. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I reach back for a memory there of us and our big brown lab who was just turning from puppy to real dog, maybe sort of like our marriage. 

We chose the mountains as a challenge to pick a spot to live and that sounded adventurous before we completely settled down at the ranch. We had been married the year before and my husband needed to finish his college degree after spending as much time as a man needed as a roughneck in the oil fields. I had been touring up and down the Midwest, particularly the interstates and state highways of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. I would take my husband with me when his four days off aligned with my time on the road. Our honeymoon, for example, was spent in Redfield South Dakota, a tiny town of 2,000 just south of Aberdeen. I had been hired to perform at a company picnic and so off we went for four hundred miles, nearly running out of gas when we miscalculated the distance between towns. 

We could have been in Jamaica like normal newlyweds, but on our way home, we stayed at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo to be fancy and bought a new refrigerator and microwave at with our wedding money only to discover they were much too big to fit in the tiny ranch house where were living. So, we sold them to his parents. 

Living together as husband and wife in my grandma’s tiny house next to the red barn on the ranch where I was raised when we were so young made us feel uneasy, I think, only because we wondered if it might be too good to be true. We couldn’t possibly be here already; with jobs and bills and the brown lab puppy I bought for him for his birthday. If we stayed here for the rest of our lives, would we grow to resent it? Would we blame every mistake and wrong turn and unsettled argument on the fact that we never spread our wings too far together? What if we became unhappy? Would there be a way we dared blame it on the ranch and the small town that raised us and pulled us back? 

And so, we narrowed it down to two choices. Wynona, Minnesota because once I sang there and brought my husband along and we visited a cute coffeeshop and walked along the river and climbed to the top of a bluff and we liked how it looked like a movie scene from far away, even in the ugly and brown part of March. And then we went to Wabasha and watched the bald eagles and toured the famous restaurant and places that inspired the 90s movie Grumpy Old Men. We got a kick out of all of it. And Wynona had a college with the right program.

And so did Missoula. We hadn’t been there before, but as prairie kids we romanticized the mountains and so that’s what won. Seems like the mountains always win. Who could argue with a college credit in snowboarding and professors who wore Birkenstocks before every teenage girl in the country wore Birkenstocks. We brought our dog, and I brought my guitar and I doubt we had too much else. Maybe a bed and my mom’s old leather couch. We found a cheap place to live, and I found a job and he went to school and we looked for places to find ourselves in the mountains every night and every weekend and we wanted to love it. And maybe we did a bit. But looking back on it now it seems like we spent most of our time trying to climb out so we could see the horizon and the weather coming. So we could get away from the endless swarm of people looking to be found too. 

My favorite hiking spot was the bald face of a mountain outside of town where nothing but prairie grass grew and the trail was cut like a switchback the way the cows and deer and elk would do it at home. There were no surprises there. I could see the sky. 

I lost my first pregnancy in that little condo in Missoula. My husband had already moved back to North Dakota to take a job offer and I stayed behind with the dog and nothing but an air mattress and a suitcase left in the space. It wasn’t time for us to be parents. We were not ready. But it didn’t feel that way when I was alone and wailing. My dad came to get me, my husband couldn’t leave. I protested. I’m like that lab, when I’m hurt I want to hide out under the deck and be alone. 

And that was that. We gave it a year for the mountains to enchant us. But nothing compared to the place that loved us first. After the long trip home, I climbed to the top of my own hill. It wasn’t a mountain, but the view was better. I cried the cry of someone who had lost something. I cried the cry of relief. I cried the cry of uncertainty. I cried the cry of being loved. I cried the cry of being home. 

And I’ve cried that cry a thousand times since, but I’ve never wanted to leave again…

 

She Chose Us-Mother’s Day

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I like to imagine my mother before I knew her–before she became a mom for the first time to my big sister and wife to my father. I like to imagine her long straight hair, jeans that hugged her ballerina legs, her high heels clicking along the pavement on her way to a job she was good at, her tan skin on elegant arms that opened out wide to the world.

Because it was those open arms that brought me into my world. A world with gravel roads, cattle grazing in the yard against the backdrop of clay buttes. One I’m certain she never pictured herself in.

I like to imagine her this way, young and in love and willing to sacrifice the life between city streets, the life she was familiar with, for a man in a band with wild, black hair wearing a suit with cowboy boots and looking displaced in that city where they met–ready to bust out at the polyester seams, saddle his horse and ride out on the interstate toward home.

I like to imagine him, my father before he was my father, enamored by a woman with quiet confidence and an aversion to practical shoes. A woman who was fine on her own raising her daughter, but might be convinced, if treated with the kindness and respect that she deserved, to go with him to live in a place that require more practical shoes.

I like to picture that she pulled on her boots and listened to her new husband’s dreams of cattle and horses while she searched for work, taught dance classes in the nearby small town, had two more daughters and watched us grow and get our hands dirty and tangle our fuzzy hair in the wind. She cheered us on at small town rodeos, tended to broken arms, made makeshift habitats for pet turtles in her roasting pan, gave advice on cheerleading moves, helped with 4-H projects and bought us pretty shoes, no matter the dirt and mud we drug into the house on our boots.

And while she drove one daughter with ballerina aspirations to dance lessons 75 miles away, sent one to ride horses and sing her songs on stage and scheduled the other for basketball and volleyball camps around the state, I imagine her grabbing little pieces of her heart and handing them quietly off to her daughters…

Her pointed toes, blue eyes and beauty she slipped to her oldest in her mug filled with hot chocolate on her way out the door.

Her honesty, determination, quick wit, strength and social graces that exist within my mother flew out of her mouth and attached to her youngest daughter during an argument about boyfriends or clothes or parties with friends.

And to me, her middle daughter, the one who has been so convinced that I had nothing in common with her, she gave a gift of encouragement, belief in dreams and understanding of big emotions. But most of all her sacrifice and acceptance of a world she had to grow to understand and appreciate has been her greatest gift to me because it became my home on a landscape I will always belong to.


But for all that she’s given, through snakes and skunks making their way into her house, through thankless jobs, burned tuna casseroles, drought and dust storms, drained bank accounts and late nights waiting up and worrying, my mother has held on to the best parts of herself:

The beauty queen parts, the graceful selfless parts. The life of the party, the giver of the most thoughtful gifts. The big sister, the caring daughter, the understanding wife parts. The organized and impeccably clean and always prepared (even when 30 miles away from the nearest grocery store) parts.

The parts of her that have always known what is best for her family. 

So, yes, I like to imagine my mother before I knew her, before she was my mother. I like to imagine her with all that love to give, all that joy and all those dreams and talents with the world at her delicate fingertips.

Because of all the things and people she could have belonged to, all of the places she could have laid her heart down, she chose to lay it here.

She chose us and for that we are the luckiest.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and moms everywhere.

Spring things

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We’re in the thick of calving these days on the ranch. Little black specks on the hillsides and in the draws are arriving like little beacons of hope with the crocuses. 

For several years we have calved mostly pure black animals, but with the addition of Herford bulls in the program this year we have more black-white-face babies than we’ve had since I was a kid.

My dad, who is out in the pastures several times of day keeping an eye on things, will occasionally text me photos of the new arrivals proving that he’s as delighted as the children are about the speckled faces and, also that you can be an almost-70-year-old rancher and still be enamored with the process. He took my daughters out for a side-by-side drive through the herd and gave them an in-depth genetic lesson about color patterns and recessive genes. They catch on quickly to those sorts of things, their little minds like sponges ready to memorize. I wish I had retained that skill, mostly to remember all the names they have given the new arrivals. Because when you have black-white-faced calves instead of the standard pure black, you can suddenly tell most of the babies apart! And so, naturally, they all get names. 

And so we have “Tippy” because he has a white tipped tail. And “Goggles” because he has two black rings around his eyes. And then “Patch” and “Spot” and so on and so forth. 

This weekend we will be building a little pen close to the house, down where my failed garden used to sit under the shade of the oak and ash trees. The girls are getting a couple of goats to show at the county fair, and we know nothing about goats except what we learn when our friend Brett comes over for a beer. We’re entering into real 4-H territory these days as it’s my oldest daughter’s first year being what we call a “real 4-Her.” No more Cloverbud rainbow ribbons. We’re pulling out the big books now and learning the rules. 

For her first assignment, before the goats arrive, she and her best friend are doing a demonstration on how to make homemade Play-Dough. They’ve spent a couple days after school making their poster board and rehearsing their lines. And, thanks to her friend’s mom, they will also be dressed the same–in matching t-shirts with the signature 4-H clover. And if you know anything about 8-year-old girls you know that the matching is the most fun part.   

Anyway, I saw the run-through last night and it’s the cutest thing, honestly. Key rural kid memory-making right there. We’ll see if they maintain the same level of squirrely-ness and giggles when there’s an audience present. 

Spoiler alert, they got a purple ribbon!

After the presentation is complete Edie will then move on to the most uncharted territory of all: The Clothing Review.  And if you don’t know what the Clothing Review is, don’t worry, neither do I. But I know it involves sewing. And modeling. Two things I am not built for. 

Because I have experience in the horse show, and I have wood-burned and latch-hooked and picked and identified every wildflower on the ranch in the name of a 4-H ribbon. I even completed an entire information board about beaver habitat that won me a trophy and sat in the office of soil conservation for a bit. But I have never touched a needle and thread without it making me want to bang my head against the wall. It’s only natural then that I gave birth to an aspiring fashion designer. So we’re making an outfit. From scratch, like we’re in Project Runway or Little House on the Prairie, depending on how it all turns out. And when I say “we” I mean Edie and her Nana Karen, who I cornered on Easter at the ranch, right before she was walking out the door. I had Edie ask her, “can you help me sew a skirt for 4-H?” And I’m so glad I was there to see the reaction on my mother-in-law’s face because it was clear that sewing a skirt with her granddaughter was absolutely the very thing she wanted to do most in the whole world.

“We could do a top too!” she responded immediately before declaring that she’s bringing over a sewing machine. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to give it to you!” 

If you need us, we’ll be at the fabric store. And the feed store. And calling Brett with goat questions. And up in the calving pasture naming new babies. A text just came through from my dad, we had a red one this morning and he is glorious. Wonder what they’ll name him? 

Interview on Equestrian Legacy Radio’s Campfire Cafe

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I had the pleasure of visiting with Gary and Mary Kaye Holt on the EQUESTRIAN LEGACY RADIO NETWORK about music and songwriting and ranch life. I met Mary Kaye when I shared the stage with her at Art of the Cowgirl and have become a fan. Loved talking shop with her.

Very grateful for the visit.

Listen here:

Who I am here (in this small town diner)

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When my husband and I take road trips together we have an unspoken rule that has developed over the years that we continue to abide by: when it’s time to eat, and if we have the time, we search for a local diner. Or the local diner, depending on what size of town we’re passing through.

It’s my informed opinion as a road warrior that nearly every small town, if they’re lucky, has one they’ve held on to through the ebbs and flows of economic booms and busts. Not necessarily the tiny towns, but the small ones. If you’ve spent any time on the highways and county roads in America, you’ll know the difference. And then you’ll also know that sometimes they’re attached to truck stops on the edge of town or along the interstate or major highways, but a lot of times you’ll find that diner serving country fried steak and BLTs downtown tucked among two bars and renovated buildings standing shoulder to shoulder that used to be theaters and Five and Dime stores back when they were new.

Throughout my twenty-plus years on the road as a musician, I have made small towns my preferred stop. Because I like the way the storefronts line up. I like those old diners. I like the flower shops and drive-throughs that have been painted and repainted and still have the best burgers. I like the quiet little rivers that run through them or the surprise fishing pond I might find. I liked the almost antique playground equipment and the walking paths and the old men who meet for coffee at the Cenex Station.

Each small town manages to be uniquely its own flavor while simultaneously reminding me of the last one I visited, or the one I grew up in—houses repainted standing behind tall and neatly placed trees, fresh pavement outside the old Tastee-Freeze or, if they’re fancy and the economy’s good, kids riding their bikes to the new Dairy Queen, or swimming pool or school.

If I have time when I’m on my own, I like to drive through the residential streets and admire the freshly cut lawns and imagine what my life would be like if I lived there by a small lake in Minnesota, or the one in the middle of a field in Nebraska or in the heat at the edge of Texas. There’s a weird sort of wistfulness that happens when you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar but familiar town so far from home. You catch yourself thinking for a moment that you could stay there and become a whole new person in a place that will wonder where you came from. I think that feeling is where songs come from sometimes, the wondering what it could be, or who these people are inside those houses with the paint sort of peeling.

But when I’m with my husband we contemplate this together while I navigate him to the Mable’s Café or the truck stop diner that someone recommended on our way through Montana. If it’s breakfast time I will order a caramel roll as big as the plate and the server will bring it out with my coffee. “It’s her appetizer,” my husband will explain as he orders chicken fried steak and I get my eggs over easy with hash browns. I like my coffee out of their heavy brown ceramic cups. I like their paper placemats. I like the caddy of jelly packets and the sugar dispenser and the plastic water cups and the pie menu sketched in a waitress’s handwriting even though I never get the pie. I like how all of this is generally the same as the old Chuck Wagon Café that used to be on the corner of Main Street in my hometown when I was growing up. I like how it’s the same at the Little Missouri Grill today, the busiest restaurant in Boomtown. I went there three times last week because it’s always the right place to go with the girls when we have time to kill between school and soccer practice and they feel like a pancake at 4:30 pm. And it’s also the perfect place to go when your in-laws are in town to watch their granddaughter play soccer on Saturday morning and they feel like a hot cup of coffee and I feel like a burger and fries and the girls get the nuggets because is it lunch yet? And then, it’s the perfect place to go with your husband after a late night dancing and the kids are with those grandparents and we have a moment to just be the two of us in a diner. Well, the two of us and the relatives and neighbors that I inevitably run into because it’s there favorite place too.

“Wait until I tell your girls that you had your caramel roll before your meal,” she stops to poke fun.

“It’s her appetizer!” my husband laughs.

And I may never know who I would be behind those manicured lawns in a small town surrounded by Nebraska corn fields, but I know who I am here, opening tiny cream packets into black coffee sitting across from my husband and his chicken fried steak at the diner. And I like it. I like it here.

When my husband and I take road trips together we have an unspoken rule that has developed over the years that we continue to abide by: when it’s time to eat, and if we have the time, we search for a local diner. Or the local diner, depending on what size of town we’re passing through.

It’s my informed opinion as a road warrior that nearly every small town, if they’re lucky, has one they’ve held on to through the ebbs and flows of economic booms and busts. Not necessarily the tiny towns, but the small ones. If you’ve spent any time on the highways and county roads in America, you’ll know the difference. And then you’ll also know that sometimes they’re attached to truck stops on the edge of town or along the interstate or major highways, but a lot of times you’ll find that diner serving country fried steak and BLTs downtown tucked among two bars and renovated buildings standing shoulder to shoulder that used to be theaters and Five and Dime stores back when they were new.

Throughout my twenty-plus years on the road as a musician, I have made small towns my preferred stop. Because I like the way the storefronts line up. I like those old diners. I like the flower shops and drive-throughs that have been painted and repainted and still have the best burgers. I like the quiet little rivers that run through them or the surprise fishing pond I might find. I liked the almost antique playground equipment and the walking paths and the old men who meet for coffee at the Cenex Station.

Each small town manages to be uniquely its own flavor while simultaneously reminding me of the last one I visited, or the one I grew up in—houses repainted standing behind tall and neatly placed trees, fresh pavement outside the old Tastee-Freeze or, if they’re fancy and the economy’s good, kids riding their bikes to the new Dairy Queen, or swimming pool or school.

If I have time when I’m on my own, I like to drive through the residential streets and admire the freshly cut lawns and imagine what my life would be like if I lived there by a small lake in Minnesota, or the one in the middle of a field in Nebraska or in the heat at the edge of Texas. There’s a weird sort of wistfulness that happens when you find yourself alone in an unfamiliar but familiar town so far from home. You catch yourself thinking for a moment that you could stay there and become a whole new person in a place that will wonder where you came from. I think that feeling is where songs come from sometimes, the wondering what it could be, or who these people are inside those houses with the paint sort of peeling.

“Wait until I tell your girls that you had your caramel roll before your meal,” she stops to poke fun.

But when I’m with my husband we contemplate this together while I navigate him to the Mable’s Café or the truck stop diner that someone recommended on our way through Montana. If it’s breakfast time I will order a caramel roll as big as the plate and the server will bring it out with my coffee. “It’s her appetizer,” my husband will explain as he orders chicken fried steak and I get my eggs over easy with hash browns. I like my coffee out of their heavy brown ceramic cups. I like their paper placemats. I like the caddy of jelly packets and the sugar dispenser and the plastic water cups and the pie menu sketched in a waitress’s handwriting even though I never get the pie. I like how all of this is generally the same as the old Chuck Wagon Café that used to be on the corner of Main Street in my hometown when I was growing up. I like how it’s the same at the Little Missouri Grill today, the busiest restaurant in Boomtown. I went there three times last week because it’s always the right place to go with the girls when we have time to kill between school and soccer practice and they feel like a pancake at 4:30 pm. And it’s also the perfect place to go when your in-laws are in town to watch their granddaughter play soccer on Saturday morning and they feel like a hot cup of coffee and I feel like a burger and fries and the girls get the nuggets because is it lunch yet? And then, it’s the perfect place to go with your husband after a late night dancing and the kids are with those grandparents and we have a moment to just be the two of us in a diner. Well, the two of us and the relatives and neighbors that I inevitably run into because it’s there favorite place too.

“It’s her appetizer!” my husband laughs.

And I may never know who I would be behind those manicured lawns in a small town surrounded by Nebraska corn fields, but I know who I am here, opening tiny cream packets into black coffee sitting across from my husband and his chicken fried steak at the diner. And I like it. I like it here.

Here to have tea

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I am behind on my column posts and the only excuse I have is that I dropped my computer in Arizona and that created a certain chain of events that have made things like posting here annoying but mostly work has been relentlessly busy in the way that has been good but also all-consuming to the point where I’m starting to miss the part where I actually climb a hilltop and find perspective every once in a while.

Good thing coaching a 4-year-old soccer team also gives me some of that.❤️🥰

And also, opportunities like the one I wrote about a few weeks ago in this column.

HERE TO HAVE TEA

Recently I spoke and sang at a local women’s event in my hometown. It was a tea party and the room was full of ladies dressed in their best seated around sweetly decorated table settings. I stood on the stage in front of them and imagined how much needed to be arranged and rearranged on their schedules to get them in these seats on a Saturday morning. The sitters or the kid’s sports runners. The newborn baby holders so she could get a shower in. The grammas leaving early for the grandkid’s birthday party they wouldn’t miss for the world. And so I said it out loud into the microphone. I said that I understand how much is going on in their lives and the schedules each one of those women had going on in the back of their minds.

 

I had just dropped my oldest daughter off at soccer camp on the way to the event and we almost didn’t make it to town because I forgot to fill up with gas on my way home from a late event the night before. Miraculously Jesus took the actual wheel and I made it the thirty miles without the assistance of a gas can. And while I sat and enjoyed my tiny sandwiches and tarts and coffee I was checking the clock to make sure I could get out of there in time to get back home and change clothes, grab a bite to eat and bring the girls back to town for a rodeo I was working.

 

My low-on-gas Chevy might have been a metaphor for my life at the moment. Also, the pile of laundry I was trying to tackle in between, and the fact that I realized for the past two-weeks I have been using dishwashing tablets instead of proper detergent in the washing machine. I suppose that’s what I get for buying the fancy, no plastic, good for the environment product with the tiny label that keeps popping up in my feed, beckoning me to be a better person the same way all the creams and exercise programs are trying to convince me my skin’s not smooth enough and I’m not lifting weights enough for my age because I’m not lifting any weights because I can’t even remember to get gas for crying out loud. 

Needless to say, I think I needed this little two-hour women’s tea as much as anyone in the room.  And, as the hired-speaker, if they were looking to me for inspiration on how to balance it all, how to make it all work together and not wake up at 2 am worrying, that’s not what I brought with me. It’s never what I bring with me. 

A bag of lettuce from my little sister’s and the bag with my daughter’s peep she’s supposed to be treating like a baby but keeps leaving in her aunt’s minivan? That I’ll bring with me…


I did, however, bring with me reminders of why living with gratitude tucked quietly in our pockets can help when we feel like we’re drowning. And probably that explains the tears that kept welling up in my eyes as I looked out at that community of women, some my dear friends, some my relatives and some I had yet to meet. I needed to hear own my words the same way I was asking them to hear the story about my dad and how he used to take us along to work cattle when we were kids, and no matter the rush we were in, he always stopped and got off his horse to pick up a fallen feather to put in our hats. With us along, he never passed up an opportunity to pick a ripe raspberry or point out a deer or pick the first crocus of spring. I know now, as an adult raising young kids in the middle of my life in the middle of a family ranch, how busy he was.  I didn’t realize then how easy it would have been for him to rush past all of the special things on the way to get work done. 

But instead, he picked up the feather. 

A picture of the first crocus my dad sent me last week, still doing the noticing for me into my adulthood
And a picture of our first calf he sent the day before

Scheduling time on a Saturday to have tea and tiny sandwiches was that feather for so many of these women in that room. Turns out, they were way ahead of me.

And I might forget the gas, and I might not take the time to read the labels, and I might have found Rosie’s lost earring by stepping on it, post up, with my bare foot last night, but I’m trying hard not to miss the tiny things that make all of this worth it. Because we are not here getting older and more wrinkly in the name of the freshest laundry. We’re here to notice that bald eagle sitting in the dead old tree every morning on our way to school. We’re here to hear the song our seven-year-old is writing in her new notebook.  We’re here to sit in a room together and talk and listen. We’re here to cry a little bit because it’s hard and we all know it but also because it’s beautiful too. 

We’re here to have tea.

America in one room

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Recently our high school student council members held their third Community Cultural Fair alongside parent-teacher conferences. The large field house typically used for open gym and youth volleyball and basketball practices was lined with tables and décor from over twenty different countries that are represented in our community. And behind those tables stood students and community members serving samples of food from their respective cultures. For months the students and their advisers have been gathering cooking supplies and ingredients and making kitchen schedules so they would be ready to serve the hundreds of community members who would show up, some right on the dot, to make sure they were in time to sample everything from Italy’s tiramisu to the Philippines’ famous egg rolls and everything Gloria cooks from Ghana.

And it’s here I’ll confess that for the past few weeks I’ve been feeling a little burned out and uneasy. Between a confusing a volatile news cycle and a packed schedule of events that kept me working long hours, to managing that annoying chronic pain that tends to flare up in the most inconvenient times to helping our daughters navigate the not-so-fun parts of friendships and girlhood, I found myself questioning, as we all do sometimes, if the good parts truly outweigh the hard parts. 

This can be a slippery slope to walk down. You dip one toe into the well of overwhelm and it’s pretty easy to drop right in over your head. Lately, I feel like I’m floating with one semi-deflated water wing that refuses to give up and I’m pretty sure there are plenty of us who could use an air pump or a life vest right now. 

Which brings me back to the Cultural Fair.  I don’t think anyone in that room would disagree when I say the event was that life vest. I stood on the stage in the middle of the room ready to introduce the MHA Nation Cultural Dancers and on every side of me were people I knew and loved and people I have never met, all ages, all backgrounds, some whose grandparents homesteaded this place and some who just took a new job here yesterday. At any given moment you could walk by a booth and hear members of our community speaking Spanish or Italian or catch a student on Facetime speaking German, showing their parents across the ocean what they’re up to tonight in their exchange program. 

I called the dancers up on stage and they took it from there, welcoming and thanking everyone, introducing the Prairie Chicken Dance and then the Fancy Dance and then the Grass Dance and how Native Americans used to dance to stomp down the tall grass in order to flatten a spot for their teepees. You can only imagine a world like this in history books and movies now, unless you get the privilege of hearing that history flow through the drum beats of men in Nike sneakers and hoodies, or watch it move through the body of a twelve year old boy in traditional dress and moccasins, lifting and sweeping his legs over the imagined grass on the center of the stage. 

“We invite all of you to dance with us now,” our host’s voice boomed from the speakers. He stood by his grandson who wore a matching headdress, leggings and colors. I grabbed my daughters’ hands and we took him up on his offer. The six-year-old dressed in her pretty fancy dance shawl grabbed my hand and along with a dozen or so others from the crowd, more joining as the drums started,  we formed a circle and walked to the beat of the drum.

I don’t know what we think we want America to be if we don’t think it’s this. And I know it’s complicated and I know it’s nuanced and I know it’s political and I’m not as naïve as I used to be, fortunately and unfortunately. And I know one cultural fair in the middle of nowhere North Dakota isn’t going to fix what we all seem to think is broken in wildly different ways. 

But from 4-7 pm central time on March 25, 2025 during Watford City High School’s parent teacher conferences I felt like we had it right. And it was simple. Shaking hands. Saying hello. Asking “What’s this now? What is it made of?” and then bringing it back to our tables and trying it and saying “It’s too spicy for me, but it’s good.” Or “This reminds me of the pudding my grandma used to make.” Or, “You have to go check out Brazil’s cake.” 

And there’s so much more to say here, but, well, I just wish all of American could have been in that room. 

Sand in the laundry room

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There’s ocean sand on the floor of my landlocked North Dakota home and seashells in a plastic cup on my kitchen counter. The smell of sunscreen and the ocean lingers in my laundry room as I let our vacation clothes pile up for a few more days, beach wear underneath dusty Carhartts underneath button-up shirts underneath spaghetti-sauced sweatshirts.

My 7-year-old has a little tan line on her shoulders, her skin kissed by a more tropical sun. Her sister is scratching at her flushed and flaky cheeks from a much harsher reaction to the same sun and surf.

“Once that saltwater hits, it’s gonna be a wake-up call,” my husband remarked as we boarded our connecting flight from Atlanta to Panama City. 

Our daughters looked small and spindly under the weight of their bulky backpacks stuffed with books and markers, blankets and sizable stuffed animals that I realized were the completely wrong choice of companions for the trip. In their short lives, our daughters had yet to see the ocean, but that night they would have their chance under a darkening sky and a strong wind. 

Dressed in their sweatshirts and long pants after a steady Florida rain, we would take them across the street and across the boardwalk and onto the white sandy beach, where they kicked off their sandals and ran toward the big waves of the Gulf of Mexico.

What a gift to be a kid with the chance to encounter the ocean for the first time. Its vastness and noise, its dangerous playfulness. Its relentlessness. Its saltiness.

It was too cold to swim, but after about five minutes of playing tag with the waves, our northern daughters pushed it far enough to be completely soaked by the chilly water. Of course. Just the day before I caught these two up to their knees in a sorta-still-frozen culvert puddle back home in our yard with their cousins, the chilly ocean was no match for them. 

We’d been talking about our family trip to Florida every below-zero day on our way to school for the past month, and here they were, on the cusp of a week that would be filled with more wave chasing, pool swimming, roller skating, dolphin spotting, seashell picking, ice cream eating, beach baseball playing and more pool swimming than their little bodies could handle.

My mom booked this Panama City Beach house for our extended family vacation around the time she decided to close her retail store. I think it was a little bit of certain sunshine she could look forward to in a future that felt uncertain after that big change. And isn’t that one of the best gifts a getaway does for us? It becomes a beacon of hope among what can sometimes feel like a daily drudge.

And in North Dakota, January and February can definitely feel like that drudge. So finally getting to come together, my sisters and their families and my mom and dad, to shed our winter skin, hang out by a pool, make plans, eat too much, and snuggle up on a big couch all worn out and sun-kissed (or burned) at the end of the day is a gift we were so lucky to receive before spring turns into calving season and calving season turns into haying and construction season and 4-H and softball and all the great and busy things about summer in North Dakota.

And Florida … it was great. The sunshine and the pool and the big dinners and the dolphin island catamaran cruise and the beach and the waves that sent our spindly girls rolling, throwing sand down their shorts and yes, that pesky saltwater into their eyes. But when we asked them what their favorite part of the whole trip was, you know what they said? Playing baseball on the beach.

Which, I have to say, didn’t surprise me knowing kids in general. The idea that they had a chance to hit a little soccer ball with a stick with the attention of all their uncles and teenage cousin and their moms and grandma cheering them on from the lawn chair? That’s all a kid can ask for, honestly. 

So, if you’re thinking a getaway that requires airfare just isn’t in the cards, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be. Maybe the only cost of taking a meaningful family break is your time and undivided attention.

And I guarantee the memories will linger longer than the sand we’ll be sweeping off the laundry room floor.

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To be wild with us…

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When I was a little girl, my favorite book of all time was “My Side of the Mountain.” It’s a classic, about a boy who finds himself living away from home in the wilderness of the mountains inside of a giant hollowed out tree. I can’t remember the exact story now or why he was alone out there, funny how those details escape me no matter how many times I went over the pages and marked my favorite parts. The parts where there were diagrams of how to build a fire with no supplies and something about a windmill and making a spear for fishing.

I still have the book buried somewhere deep in the rubble of the basement. It was one I could not give up to charity or to my younger sister. It’s sitting there among the books about horses and misfit dogs, prairie children and my other favorite, “Misty from Chincateague,” about two siblings who save money to save a rescued wild horse from an island.

I wanted to be these kids. I wanted to be the free-spirited girl who broke the free-spirited horse. I wanted to break the rules. I wanted to tame a wolf puppy, train a wild falcon to hunt, catch fish with a spear I sharpened out of a tree branch and exist in a faraway time where those things were necessary for survival.

Forget microwave popcorn and video games, I wanted adventure!

I’m sure I wasn’t unlike most kids at 9 or 10 or 11 years old. At that age most of us were lost in some sort of fantasy with little more confidence than we had experience at the real world. So I’d like to think that it wasn’t that unusual that as a kid who already lived about as far out in the middle of nowhere as anyone could live, I had convinced myself that I could survive out in the wilderness alone. Without a house. Or a toilet. Or my mom’s cheeseburger chowder.

In the evenings I would step off the bus from a day at country school, grab a snack, and head out up the creek behind our house. For months I would work on building what I called “secret forts” all along the creek that winds through our ranch. Looking back on it now, these forts weren’t that secret at all, in fact, you could probably see one from the kitchen window, but I was deep in my own imagination as much as I was in the oaks and brush that grew along the bank. I would identify just the right tree and use it as a frame to create a sort of tent-like structure out of fallen logs. And then I would begin the tedious process of locating and dragging fallen branches out of their place under overgrown vegetation and fallen leaves back to my tree to hoist them up to rest next to the last one I had managed to maneuver. And when it was complete I would lay down inside of it. And under the flawed “shelter” of fifty logs leaning on a tree and plan my next move. I would need a door. Yes. I could make it the way I imagined Huck Finn made his raft. I would need some rope. And a knife. I wonder if dad had an extra knife in his dresser drawer. I need some sort of blanket. Oh, and a fire. Of course!

I would be scouring the creek bottom for granite rocks to arrange in a fire circle when the sun sink down below the banks and I would decide I wasn’t quite ready to spend the night. Besides, I forgot to bring a snack and the wild raspberries weren’t quite ripe yet. Taking one last look at my creation and deciding to reevaluate the next afternoon, I would turn my back to it and follow the cow trail back toward the house where my little sister was likely lurking in the shadows, having found my path again, begging me to let her help next time. Begging me to let her in the fort as the sun gave off its last light and we argued and grappled until we could smell dad’s steaks on the grill or mom’s soup on the stove.

This was my daily ritual for months and one of my signature childhood memories. Eventually I gave in and helped my little sister build her own fort. A much smaller fort. Across the creek. Out of site. I thought I wanted to be alone out there, left to my own survival skills, but it turned out that having company was a nice addition, no matter how stubborn and annoyingly curious that company might be. So we built a tin-can telephone that stretched from my fort to hers and brought down old chair cushions from the shed, searched for wild berries, tried to catch frogs and minnows in the beaver dam and spent our evenings planning our next move: spending the night.

But we never did it. We never spent the night. Summer gave way to fall, and the leaves fell and covered the floor of our paradise. We would pull on our beanies, mittens and boots and trudge down the freezing creek to clear out the fire ring we weren’t yet brave enough to use. And then the cold set in and the snow came, and the neighbor girls called us to go sledding and our dream of being wilderness women collected snow and waited on a warmer season.

I can’t help but think about those girls on days like these when the warmer weather finally gives in and releases the snow to flow as wild water in the draws and you can smell the dirt again at long last. I get a call from my little sister. She’s driving our daughters home from town. “Can I steal your girls and bring them to the crick? The water is running, I want to take them to follow it.”

Ten-year-old me would be happy to know it, our little sister still just over the hill, a tin-can telephone call away, still following that crick and begging to be wild with us…


How we survive the deep freeze

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Full disclosure, I am posting this from my perch for the week in Arizona, where I am performing and hanging out in the Author’s Tent at the Art of the Cowgirl event in Wickenburg. And since this week’s column is all about getting ourselves out of the deep freeze that was -40 a week ago, the temperature shift I experienced upon landing and walking out to my rental car yesterday damn near sent me into shock. Like, my body was suddenly 125 degrees warmer than last Monday. What a time to be alive!

Anyway, I’m beyond excited to be included in Art of the Cowgirl and am looking forward to performing and meeting these wonderful women, horsewomen, authors, entertainers and guests all gathering in the name of some of the best things. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi! Here’s my schedule.

Anyway, back to the great white north, which is melting now. The girls are thrilled to be following the creek rushing as the thaw hit. One more month and there will be baby calves and crocuses and it can’t come soon enough!

How we survive the deep freeze

By the time you read this we will have pulled ourselves out of the deep freeze that lingered over us in North Dakota in February. This morning, at 8 am, the temperature on my SUV read -35. On Monday it ready -40.

I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen -40 in my life up here, but that seemed like a perfect time for our furnace to go out. So it did.

When it’s this cold, things just break. Sometimes that also includes our spirits, which seem to be dangling by a thread lately. But I tell you, my kids, they’re really trying.

On our drive to school, I heard my oldest explaining how much of a relief it’s going to be when it hits 20 degrees on Friday. Her cousin wasn’t convinced and so she reassured. “Twenty degrees? That not even chilly. That’s pretty much, like, warm. Probably won’t even need your hat.” Considering it will be a sixty-degree temperature shift, these kids up here will be coming to school in shorts.

Edie gave Rosie a spa day. Self care is important when the cold is trying to kill you.

Because they haven’t had recess in weeks, the busses aren’t running properly, water pipes freeze and tractors refuse to start. We drove by the cows and horses this morning and they’re covered in frost, sparkling and chewing and laying in the hay, surrounded by the turkeys and pheasants picking at the leftover cake. Edie thought we should build them a big dome to keep them warm, but they seemed ok laying in the morning sun. They were bred to be this hearty, as long as my dad comes every day to feed that hay and cake in a protected spot out of the wind and break the ice on the water tanks. It seems contradictory, but when snow sits on the backs of the cows, that’s a good indication that they’re retaining thier body heat, well insulated against the cold weather.

The same goes for horses and the wild animals too, like that young, orphaned deer that dad says comes in to feed with the herd almost every day.

This place seems to hold plenty of little secrets like that on survival and adaptation, in particular. That little deer, when he lost his herd, he found a new one. Those turkeys have been storing up fat all year for these cold temperatures, fluffing up their feathers to create air pockets that trap the heat and roosting in the thick and protected brush at night. The pheasants have been saving too and find shelter in the thick grass and cattails in the draws.

It’s hard to believe in a month or so the crocuses will poke their heads out to the sun, growing best in rocky soil, using the warmth from nearby stones to thrive in the early chill of spring.

I think in the deep freeze of winter is when us humans need to take a cue from these animals and lean on our ancestral instincts the most. Even with the most modern amenities and the many ways we work and entertain one another, amid a deep freeze like this, we need to simply be together. We may not technically need this coping skill to keep one another warm (unless you’re like us and your furnace fails you) but just as importantly we need to remind each other of the promise of spring.

“Remember when it was 100 degrees are our air conditioning went out and we had company coming?” I ask my husband as he tinkered with wiring in the furnace room. 

I don’t know if that was as helpful as Rosie planning our trip to Florida.

“We’re going to have to dig our shorts out of the bottom of the drawers!” she exclaimed bundled in the back of the car with a blanket tucked up under her chin.

“And we’ll go to the beach. I’ve never been to the beach!” Edie added.

“Yeah!” my niece chimed in. “It’s going to be so fun. And so warm!!”

Look at us, just like the crocuses, using the warmth of our surroundings to pull us through. Look at us, just like that little deer, relying on our heard. Look at us, like the wild birds, fluffing our feathers, pulling through…