Picture this: Four little girls, ages eight, seven, six and almost five walking down a lighted sidewalk. The seven-year-old is in a long tulle baby blue gown and a plastic princess crown. The eight-year-old has chosen wide-leg teenager jeans and a cute top. The two youngest are in sequins and black leather jackets, except one jacket is fancier than the other because it has rainbow sparkle fringe and that makes the other one jealous, of course. But her birthday is coming up, so she puts in a request. The seven and eight-year-old are in sparkly boots, the almost-five-year-old is in sparkly Mary-Jane shoes that are two sizes too big. The seven-year-old princess is in pink combat boots…

“Ohh, myyy, gawwwd,” the women standing outside the door gush. “I love your boots! You girls are adorable!” 

All four girls smile shy-like and fluff up a little as their moms and gramma tell them to gather up now, let’s all get a picture. Smile! This is a big moment, your first concert!

This was our little parade, a spectacle I didn’t realize we’d create until I saw the fruits of our plan to attend the Carly Pearce concert at the 4-Bears Event Center last weekend with my daughters, two nieces, my sister and mom. We had been singing along to Carly’s music on the rides to and from school for at least a month solid and given the venue was only forty miles from the ranch I thought this was a perfect opportunity for a girl’s night! We could be there and home in bed by ten, especially since the concert started at 6 pm! 

Going to concerts with my family has given me some of my favorite memories, and so I pulled out all the stops for these girls to make it a true concert-going-experience. I transformed my living room and kitchen into a spa, complete with a charcuterie board and orange pop in fancy glasses. With my little sister on the curling iron, me at the nail station and my oldest charged with making sure the outfits were on point, we got to work on our looks. And because my husband knows the consequences of low blood sugar in the women of my family, he got to work rolling out pizza dough and making sure everyone ate at least one piece. Add a little pink sparkly lipstick and a swoop of mascara on each of us and we were off, all seven of us in my SUV, radio up, chattering and singing along. 

Now, a girl can learn a lot of life lessons from her first concert. Turns out, she can also learn some from her thirty-third. Like, read the ticket carefully so you’re not an hour and forty-five minutes early with four kids under the age of ten at a casino in the middle of rural western North Dakota. Turns out the doors opened at six and Carly Pearce wasn’t the first headliner in the history of the world to start her concert early. No wonder we got a good parking spot, albeit with one of my tires on the curb. After I shook off the panic, I figured everyone probably had to go potty and that would probably take four to five business days, which it did, and so did the concessions and finding our seats and waiting the half hour for our star to take the stage.

But when she did, oh my gosh, was it loud. Because in my attempt to make this the most magical experience as possible, I failed to remember how big and booming the speakers are when you’re sitting thirty feet from them and you’re a small human.

No worries! My sister brought earplugs for those who wanted them. It was time to sing along. Which I did enthusiastically while simultaneously staring at my daughters trying to take in all their excitement and cuteness, which embarrassed my oldest, of course, because she was sure everyone could hear me. I brushed off her shushing and reluctantly toned it down.

Three to five songs in and the almost-five-year-old realized sequins were itchy and that her mom didn’t pack her an alternate outfit in the tiny purse she was allowed to bring. To avoid a meltdown, it seemed like a good time for another potty break, quick, before they played our favorite song. Cue another sparkly parade to the bathroom and more “oh fer cutes,” along the way. And then cue the only track my youngest cared about muffling through the bathroom stalls. “Never take a pee break!” Rosie shouted as we all ran down the hallway to get back to the floor before she wrapped up the last chorus. But lucky for Rosie, I knew the next step, and it was staying down on that floor for a dance party. It was only during the last three songs that the almost-five-year-old learned her lesson about choosing the proper concert-going footwear, which, in her defense, I don’t think any woman has ever really abided by. Those two-sizes-too-big-Mary-Janes were over. Except she didn’t want to take them off. And she didn’t want to be held. And she didn’t want to be put down. But lucky for her, she had an older cousin who learned girlfriend-concert-code quickly and offered to trade shoes so they could keep dancing. 

My mom, who’s no dummy, went to the concessions for hot dogs.

Crisis averted. 

And, turns out, good things come to those who shake it and shake it off when a tour manager handed the girls four autographed photos. Elated, Edie held it to her chest, “We’re so lucky.” 

The last song played, and the girls learned about an encore as we clapped and shouted. The lights came up and we sang and skipped all the way to the car, our feet suddenly painless, our dresses less itchy.

We buckled up and gramma handed out hot dogs. I turned up the music and we learned the other best part about concert-going is the concert recap. My headlights bounced off the buttes of the badlands and one by one each little girl dropped off to sleep, leaning on one another in little heaps of glitter and tulle and lipstick. 

I pulled into the driveway and shut off the car and under the shine of the moon four little stars were carried inside dreaming, our little parade coming to an end back where it started…

I stand on my back deck and look up at the night sky. The air is still and cool, and the stars are twinkling among the shine of the Northern Lights. It’s a welcome sight, a sort of calm before the restless night of sleep I would experience when I lay down that night beside my exhausted husband.

Just two days before, white and gray smoke billowed and bubbled and raged ominously from that same horizon to the northeast of our house, the high winds pushing a massive wildfire away and in our favor and saving us from having to worry about evacuation or trenching around our home.

Our phones buzzed, warning us that everything between mile marker 138 and 148 on Highway 22, and one mile west and east on each side needed to be evacuated. 

Our ranch is three miles west of mile marker 135.

Residents from Mandaree, the little town just seven or so miles northeast of us as the crow flies, were told to leave as rural firefighters and Black Hawk helicopters worked to save it. I could see them from my back deck, black specks moving across the sky, the thick gray plumes of smoke making those helicopters look like children’s toys. It seemed like an impossible task as the wind kicked up 70 mph gusts, snapping powerlines and wreaking havoc across the prairie.

Just an hour or so earlier that day, my friend 10 miles to the north of us looked out her kitchen window and saw smoke burning the corrals and old outbuildings of an abandoned homestead directly to the east of her. She called 911 in a panic. 

All the rural firefighters she knew, including her husband, including mine, including dozens and dozens of other friends and community members, were fighting fires five or so miles to the north of her by our church on the other side of the Blue Buttes. She hung up with dispatch and called all the neighbors she could think of who could possibly be in its path and then loaded her kids in the car and sat helplessly watching the grass and trees catch fire.

The night before, around 2 a.m., all volunteer first responders who were available in our community were called to the scene of a fire that had erupted near the town of Arnegard. During the night, the winds had picked up to 50-60 mph, and it would take three days to get that fire contained while more and more resources were deployed and more fires sparked and spread. 

That one fire was more than enough to handle, but in the next 24 hours, I heard my husband on the other end of the phone line say in his steady, stern voice: “All of western North Dakota is on fire.”

The Elkhorn fire, the Bear Den fire, the Charleson fire, the Arnegard fire, the Ray fire, the big ones … they all have names to us now, but in the heat of raging wind and black walls of smoke, to my husband and those on the front lines, it felt like everywhere they turned, there were more flames.

I looked to the north of the house, the east, the south, nearly every horizon was billowing smoke. 

“It feels like we’re surrounded here, Chad,” I told him, hoping he had more information than I did that would reassure me that our place wasn’t in danger.

“Well, you are. You are surrounded,” he replied with a reality that many many more were facing, even more dangerously than us in that very moment. 

I learned that sitting in our house with a direct line to social media reports from neighbors and emergency management offices, I might have had more information on the scope of the fires than the men and women focused on moving inch by inch in the black of the night and relentless howl of the wind, fighting for homes and land and the livelihoods that depend on it.

“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” my husband said as he drove his truck from one fire location to the next, trying to fill me in as best as he could when he could. “We can’t see anything out here, it’s like a black wall of smoke and dust. It’s absolutely out of control.”

I stood in the house, helpless and anxious. We had company from Bismarck. They had come to fill an Elk tag, but our fun weekend turned on a dime and we were left to distract one another, to feed one another, and to analyze and speculate and wait for the clock to hit 10 p.m. when the weather report promised a calmer wind.

My dad took to the hills to watch for any signs of new flames close to us. I watched my phone for any more updates. I called and texted neighbors. I worried about them. And then I worried about us. And then I worried about my husband and everyone out there in an unprecedented situation, doing the best they could against Mother Nature, who turns from companion to rival at the suck of a breath.

The winds did die down around 10 p.m., and it was close to 1 in the morning when my husband called and said he was headed home for now. My dad came off the hilltop. We all looked at my soot-covered, exhausted husband and waited for what he wanted to tell us.

The next day and the day after that, he was out again, mopping up flare-ups, assessing the damage, fixing the trucks, checking in. Some men have barely left the fire sites, too nervous to look away as the repercussions of a wind shift could put their houses in danger.

As I write this, some big flames are still raging in the badlands at the Elkhorn fire, putting ranches at risk and the National Guard to work. The Bear Den fire is contained but still burning. The wind shifts and dry conditions keep the first responders and ranchers watching the hot spots and continuing to put out flames. The helicopters land and take off and scoop water from Lake Sakakawea. The planes dump.

All across western North Dakota, a person will tell you their own story about these fires for years to come. Two men who lost their lives won’t get the chance. At least four homes were lost. Livestock were lost and killed. Early law enforcement reports indicate nearly 90,000 acres in Williams County were destroyed, with more in the surrounding counties.

My husband comes home from the fire hall and steps out on the deck next to me to watch those Northern Lights. His hair and skin smell like smoke and ashes. The light of two helicopters moved across the sky, little beacons of hope among the stars.