To sing about it.

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Well, I made it back to the ranch and have found myself a moment to kick my feet up in the chair and warm up near the stream of sunshine pouring through the windows of our house on this beautiful almost-March morning.

Last week was a doozy that started with a flight out of Boomtown to Vegas to help my momma pick out some pretty things for her store. I had a couple mini-heatattacks during the two days filled with nothing but shopping, but I came out O.K. despite my run-in with these beauties…

and an entire Vegas-Sized convention center filled with nothing but shoes.

I could have spent the week there trying on all of the Luccheses and Ariat and Corrals and working out a second mortgage to afford a few pairs, but I needed some money to get back to North Dakota for the concerts I had scheduled across the state.

Now let me tell you, there are few things that give me more joy than music and beautiful boots, so I was off to a great start as I stepped off that plane from Vegas. The cold air bit at my exposed fingers as I ran to my car, praying that it would start so I could get home in time to load up my guitar and head out the door again.

Because I booked February up pretty tight, playing music almost every weekend and trying to keep up with work and dinner in between. When I do this to myself a few little bobbles are inevitable–like locking my momma’s keys in her car and losing my debit card–but I have become pretty good at brushing them off and finding quick solutions (like calling Pops or Husband to rescue me), because I am a woman of very many mistakes.

But now that the whirlwind has settled for a bit and the pug has moved from the top of my unpacked suitcase…

to the couch beside me, I don’t know exactly where to start except to ask you this: Have you ever found yourself standing in a moment that has come together so sweetly, a moment so undeniably and perfectly comfortable, so surprisingly you, that you can do nothing but close your eyes and thank the stars above that you chose to step out that day instead of staying nestled under your covers safe and sound?

I hope you have.

I hope you’ve found yourself in one of those breaths where the things you’ve worked for have proven worth it.

I have been a singer my entire life. I’ve sat around campfires and on flatbed trailers in the middle of small town streets. I have climbed crow’s nests to belt the National Anthem out to bleachers and arenas full of cowboys and I have sat behind my guitar to serenade couples saying their vows and families saying goodbye. I have played to crowds from three and three hundred. I have played by heart and forgotten words. I’ve stomped my feet and swayed back and forth in smokey bars and competed with the latte machine in small coffeehouses. I sit alone in my bedroom on hot summer nights and cold, dark winter mornings and I sing.

I have never loved anything the way I love hearing the words I’ve strung together come out of my mouth and into the air, sometimes unexpectedly and sometimes just the way I meant.

And nothing has ever made me so nervous, so frustrated, so calm, so inspired and uninspired, so sleepless or relaxed, so conflicted or comfortable or scared or absolutely and utterly, undeniably happy.

That’s the thing about music, you just never know. And the choice to put it out there in the world makes it even more unpredictable, it leaves you wondering who is listening, who might understand, who might hate it, who might love it too and who might just want to sing along…

Last Thursday I loaded up  my guitar and headed to the big town to meet up with some musicians at the studio and practice for the CD release party I had scheduled at a theater the next evening. I brought along Pops and Adam and we were going to work out my tunes with a fiddle player, a steel guitar player and a drummer. I had never met the fiddle player or the drummer and the guitar player and I had been working out details over the phone and email for a few weeks. I didn’t know these men and I didn’t know what to expect, except that somehow we had one evening to get it together in time to play for the few ears I hoped were making plans to attend the next night.

In these unpredictable moments I wonder why I didn’t just pick a career that might have me home eating hot dish on a Thursday night.

But my worry melted away faster than it had creeped in on me as these men trickled into the studio, making small talk while unloading their instruments and arranging themselves in a circle.

The drummer counted off the beat to the first song, the bass line fell in easy as the fiddle sweetly moved in with the line of the steel, leading me in to the words of the first verse of a song these men had clearly listened to closely.

My songs were songs they knew.

And I knew then that it didn’t matter if the only people who walked through the doors of that theater the next night were the members of this little band we threw together, although I felt it would be a shame if there weren’t more ears there to listen to the sweet sounds of that fiddle.

Because just as these men took the task seriously it was clear we all shared a little something in common. It was clear that they weren’t sitting behind those instruments after a long day of work on a Thursday night with a woman they had never met because she was going to pay them good money to be there.

No.

They knew better. They know the business.

They were there with me because they love to play. And man, are they talented.

Man, was I lucky.

Man, did we have fun.

And man, did that theater fill up the next night.

I mean, to the brim! People were coming in from all walks of life to have a drink and listen to what we had up our sleeves. There were farmers and bankers and mothers and aspiring drummers, my best friends, people who knew my parents, people who were related to us, to our neighbors, to our neighbor’s neighbors.There were classmates and old roommates and my best friends’ mothers. There were people who I’ve never met, young girls with their own copy of the album who wanted to be singers some day, other musicians, dads dancing with their daughters and people who wanted to talk about the pug.

There’s always people who want to talk about the pug.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude that this group of people decided to spend their Friday night with me and the talented men playing their hearts out in the spaces that needed them in the songs.

There was so much joy in that room and on that stage, and because it is North Dakota, there were so many connections, so many stories that we could all relate to–the red dirt roads, the smell of clover on a hot summer morning, the warm glow of the yard light next to the barn and the unwavering respect for the place that grew us up and sent us out into the world as we looked back over our shoulders for the right time to return.

Music has given me so many gifts. It has taught me to stand up straight, to be honest, to work a little harder, to stay calm, to reach out, to be brave and, most importantly, to listen.

And I could have listened to the beat of that drum, the lonesome sound of that steel guitar, the steady thump of that bass, the sound of my father’s voice and that fiddle backing me long into the night and on until the sun came up. But I didn’t want to let those people sitting patiently in their seats, along the steps on the floor or standing along the back of the room by the door out into the night without knowing them and why they came.

I wanted to shake every one of their hands and give them hugs and thank them for coming. I wanted to invite them over for coffee this spring and to sit on my deck and drink margaritas this summer.

I wanted to tell them all how much it meant to me that they came.

And I wanted to hear their voices.

So I sang Red River Valley and they sang along and I will never forget the sound of our voices together in the middle of the prairie on a chilly winter night.

And the next night I sang those songs again, standing next to Pops and another talented guitar player as the wind whipped through the narrow streets of downtown Fargo and the crowd swayed and tapped their toes.

There are so many things in this life that I love: pretty boots and pretty horses, my family, crocuses on the hilltop in the spring and the way the sun rises and shines through the windows of a house my husband is building for us.

I know I would love these things even if I never sang another song about it, but to be able to sing it out loud to ears that want to hear, not just the beautiful things, but the things that scare us and make us braver, hoping that maybe someone out there might not feel so alone, that’s my life’s sweetest gift.

Thank you for coming to hear me play. Thank you for playing along. Thank you for reading. Thank you for telling me your stories.

Thank you for listening.

www.jessieveedermusic.com 
www.facebook.com/jessieveedermusic

Click here to watch a short KX News segment on the concert in Mandan.

Singing for my supper

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Jessie Bismarck Party

Well, I haven’t seen much of the ranch lately and am looking forward to a cup of coffee in my big chair watching the sunrise out my window on Monday morning when the dust finally settles on this week, but for now I’m having a blast planning, playing and performing in celebration of the release of “Nothing’s Forever.” 

A big thanks to Bismarck/Mandan and the ONE Theater for a wonderful turnout and beautiful crowd.  I was able to get together with some talented musicians and convince them to share the stage with me. Standing up there with them last night was one of the best music moments of my career.

Practice

Practicing at Makoche Studios

Now I’m heading a little further east to do it again in Fargo, tonight at 8 pm at Studio 222. The show is free, all ages and open to the public.

Click here to watch a video interview with the Fargo Forum about my music and inspiration. 

And I’ll see you in Fargo…

or back at the ranch!

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Not so sparkly love.

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There’s something about existing in nothing but white and brown for months on end that makes people around here head out to search for some color.

Some of them book a flight to Jamaica for sandy beaches, blue water and umbrella drinks, some head for the mountains so they might see the same white at a different height and some just step outside to see if the sunset is up for putting on a show tonight.

I think that’s why they put a holiday like Valentines Day in the middle of February, because we all need a little warming up by now, a little snuggle and a little smell of a rose to remind us that they are blooming somewhere.

Last night I played music for people out on dates at a fancy restaurant in the middle of the badlands. I sat at the front of the room and tried to pull out as many love songs as I could muster, wondering while I was singing Elvis’s “Fools Rush In” why I have a closet full of earth tones and black. I wondered why the only colorful thing I own is the pair red boots I wore with my wedding dress.

And my guitar strap with the little red birds.

I was glad I was wearing both as I finished up…”and I can’t help, falling in love with you…” and watched a couple hold hands and eat little pieces of lobster and steak off one another’s plates in a sea of men and women in their best clothes, dressed up right for a Thursday night.

I wished I had a sparkly pink shirt like the young woman toasting a glass of champagne with her husband or boyfriend at the table in front of me.

The night before I had warned Husband not to worry about Valentines Day this year.

“I won’t be home until well after midnight,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

And he said “Ok.”

And that was fine. I’m not a fan of chocolate and where Husband works, there’s not a floral shop for miles. My Valentines Day gift to him was to let him off the hook.

His gift to me was his yearly rant about the holiday and why we have to designate a day to remember we love each other when he remembers he loves me everyday.

I know it’s coming, his little rant. And I know it will be followed directly by the “flowers are so predictable” speech.  I smile and remember the time he left a rose in my locker on a Valentines Day in 9th grade and I’m happy for the memory.

And happy for all the Valentines Days I’ve been able to share with with a cute and thoughtful boy who turned out to be a man who makes the coffee nice and strong, searches for his clothes in the early hours of the morning with a headlamp so he doesn’t wake me, knows his way around a kitchen, unclogs the clogs, fixes broken things and promises he will be there tonight when I sing again, no matter the hours and miles he has to put in at work today.

And I think that’s pretty nice, those little promises to make life a little nicer for one another.

It’s not always that way. Sometimes you just have to make a comment about the dirty dishes that have been piled up in the sink for days because of the silent protest you’ve made not to touch them just to see how long it will take for him to get fed up and put a few in the dishwasher already.

Sometimes you have to say something about the way his feet smell when he takes off his work boots because you fear the hidden toxins coming off of the green steam is killing the cat.

And sometimes he just has to ask what the hell is going on with your hair, because really, what the hell is going on with your hair.

But when you come in after midnight because you’ve been out singing to pretty people eating cheesecake and toasting to love to find the lights on and that smelly-footed man waiting up for you in the kitchen just to say hello and goodnight, somehow those dirty dishes don’t seem to catch your eye.

And it doesn’t matter that you’re not wearing that sparkly pink shirt you should have in your closet but you don’t.

Because in the glow of the kitchen light in the middle of a February night that was coating the world with snow and promising more white and cold, a stubborn, thoughtful, groggy man reminds you that love is never off the hook.

Especially on Valentines Day.

Living room songs.

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I’m going to do something a little different here today and I hope you don’t mind. See I just returned from a trip to the mountains where I played in the snow during the day and listened to some of the world’s best musicians at night. It was a vacation full of refreshing things: mountain air, mandolins, whiskey drinks and my best friends in the world.

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And now I’m home at the ranch, catching up on a couple days of work and planning for some shows of my own in the coming days and thinking that isn’t it amazing how we all have stories in us, little quips of life that we get to share over dinner, shoulder to shoulder as we drive across Montana in a pickup heading toward a mountain or on stage to a crowd drinking beer and tapping their feet.

Trout Steak Revival. Big Sky Big Grass Festival

Trout Steak Revival. Big Sky Big Grass Festival

I’m thinking there’s so many ways to tell these stories and I have chosen a few, but my favorite has always been song writing. I love to sit down behind my guitar on a snowy evening or a quiet morning and work out a melody, pick out words to roll off my tongue, join together and send off into an empty room while my fingers search for the next chord and a soft place for the music to land.

To come to the end and know that it means what you meant, though you know nothing of where it came from is a quiet little satisfying mystery.

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I write songs to fill forgotten corners of my life. I write songs to see if I might be able to add to the beauty in the world. I write songs to tell you something that might otherwise go unsaid. I write songs for the love of writing. For the love of singing my own words out loud.

I write songs for no reason but to sing them to the walls and the dog at my feet, songs that never touch another’s ears.

I wrote a song today.

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After my coffee had cooled, my emails were answered and phone calls made, I sat down behind that guitar and listened for what might come from me.

Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes I hear it in pieces and sometimes it unfolds like it’s been waiting for me to come knocking.

Always I tuck it away for another day, another show, another time that might be better.

Today I decided to share it with you. A song. Just born in my living room on my lunch break with my laundry in piles and the dishes in the sink and no plans for supper or anything really because I wanted to sing something new, so I made this.

Please listen and enjoy and keep writing, singing, creating and sharing your own stories.

I used to be
Jessie Veeder Living Room Session
Listen here:

I used to be a  summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I used to be a storm

I used to be a whiskey drink
Burning strong against your lips
Heating through your veins
Softening your fingertips
I used to hold you tight there
I used to make you sing
I used to make you brave
I used to be your drink

I used to be a fast train
Loud and steady on my tracks
Heat and iron and muscle
No promises of looking back
A heavy hearted stranger
Gone before I came
Like smoke on the horizon
I used to be a train

But that’s before I loved you
Before I ever knew
That no matter where you are now
I want to be there too
So I think I’ll be a bird now
With silver coated wings
I want to be your song now
More than any of those things

I used to be a summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I don’t do that anymore

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Upcoming Shows: 

February 14 & 15
Theodore’s Dining Room
Medora, ND
5:30 – 8:00 PM (MT)

February 22
O.N.E
Mandan, ND
7:00 PM

February 23
Studio 222
Fargo, ND
8:00 PM

More information at www.jessieveedermusic.com 

Some things I know for sure.

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Sometimes life is just so unexpected, like the thirteenth rock flying into my windshield on my way home from town.

Those uncertainties make me nervous–I come up with worst case scenarios. Like now, for example. I got home from work this evening to say hello to Husband who also just got home from work only to turn around and walk out the door to go back to work again. I don’t think it was an emergency, but it was something important that sent him out there in the dark on the same scary road that throws rocks at windshields unexpectedly.

I worry.

internet issues

So now I’m sitting here with the cat on my lap and the pug at my feet breaking all of the rules about pets on the furniture while I come up with a list of things I know for certain to help deal with that nagging little feeling of terror that at a moment it can all fall apart.

And that other worry about the aliens.

So here it is, my list of ten or eleven or twelve or however many things that I know for sure on a perfectly calm Thursday night in February.

  1. I will always worryHorse
  2. The pug, when left unattended and to his own devices, will always shit on the floor. Sometimes he will puke, but always he will shit.
  3. I could eat guacamole with every meal. I should have guacamole with every meal. Avocados are a vegetable.  It can’t possibly be a bad choice.(No photo available because I ate all the guacamole)
  4. A climb to a good hilltop cures me. Every time, it cures me.
  5. Spring will come. Spring always comes.
  6. I love him. I love him. I love him.

  7. It’s not the singing, it’s not the words, the guitar, the harmonies or the harmonica. It’s everything. Music. It’s just everything.

  8. One day I will have pigs, I don’t care what you say.(no photo available because I don’t have a pig. Yet.) 
  9. If you call me I will have to call you back, because I never put the phone back on the hook, therefore I can never find the phone when you call. It’s a sick cycle that I am unable to break.(no photo available because I can’t find the damn phone. Again.)
  10. This cat is crazy.
  11.  This puppy is cute.
  12. So is this kid.
  13. I am grateful every day to call this home.
  14. It will probably, most definitely, very likely, I mean, I’m pretty sure, almost positive  everything’s gonna turn out alright in the end.

Now you know what I know, what do you know for sure? Let it fly party people, I promise it will make you feel better.

Farmers at the Super Bowl.

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So you watched the Super Bowl. You saw the game, you saw Beyonce shake it, you saw the lights go out and, among the flashy messages, the advertisements for M&Ms and beer and phones and underwear and cologne, you saw this:

Another ad for another product, yes. But one that had a message attached to it that has sent my world into a humming since it aired.

Now it’s possible you missed it. It’s possible you didn’t hear it tucked in there among the baby Clydesdale and the elderly escaping the nursing home for a night at Taco Bell.  It didn’t make the top ten commercials and didn’t get nearly as much buzz in other parts of the country, but it sure is buzzing here.

I don’t usually comment on pop culture or what ‘s happening on T.V. or in sports here because I’ve made it my mission to talk about different things: the way the sun shines on the back of a horse, how the wind blows snow across the prairie and what it’s like to be a woman connected to a place, but as a girl who grew up feeding cattle alongside her father in the coldest winter nights, someone who watched him doctor horses, bring new-born and frozen calves into the basement of the house and nurse them back to life, as a former FFA president and the 4th generation on my family’s ranch, I have to talk about this.

I have to tell you why people like me have been so inclined to share this advertisement, to watch it over and over again, to shout its praises from the rooftops and, well, post it on every social media networking site they can link up to out here in the boonies.

Because finally, among the hype of sports, the glitzy glam of pop culture, the humor and the ruckus and the fight to be the winner, right there in the most prime real-estate of prime-time television someone out there felt it might be important enough to slow it down and tell our story.

Now, I wasn’t at every Super Bowl party in middle America during the 2.5 minutes Paul Harvey’s message was pumped into millions of homes across the country, but I was at one, and as soon as that familiar voice spoke the first word, the room fell silent.

We held our breath in that moment we were certain we were looking at an image from our backyards: a black baldie cow near a barbed wire fence in a barren, snow-covered prairie.

We were quiet because we saw our church standing tall and worn beside a country road,

we saw our grandfather with callused hands and a face wrinkled and weathered from the long days spent in the elements.

We shushed our voices and choked back a tear for the colt our father couldn’t save, laughed a little because we’ve ridden a horse using a head stall made out of hay wire and smiled at the memory of our father’s stopping the tractor to move a nest of newborn rabbits out of harm’s way.

We saw ourselves standing in those fields, our grandmother’s eyes under that hat, our mother holding our hand, our father holding on hope.

We saw our children in the steady cadence of comforting words and a familiar voice that we’ve heard coming through the static on our old tractor radio for years.

The rest of the story.

Our story.

Some days I feel like we’re moving further and further from our connection to the land and the understanding of the dirt from which that potato was plowed. Farmers, ranchers and agriculturalists are not known to stand at the pulpit and tell their stories to the masses. No. Many spend long days working alone in the combine, on the back of a horse checking cattle or working fencing pliers in the deep brush.We share our stories by living them alongside our elders, hoping to learn something, dreaming that one day we might be fortunate enough to try our hand at tending the land.

I know my grandfather’s story. I see the old equipment that couldn’t be repaired breaking the wind from the hilltops on this place. I find little pieces of wire, old engines, scraps of leather, worn coveralls and other little pieces of a life spent scraping and saving and getting by in the old out buildings, in the 100 year old barn, in the fences that need to be repaired. My father keeps the same collection, adding to it at will in case he might need to patch something up.

I know my father’ s story. I know that on Sunday mornings he will knock on the door of my house like he does every weekend for a cup of coffee and a chat between chores.  I know he will take off his boots, un-do his silk scarf and leave his wool cap on his head. I know he will keep his Carhart jacket on because he won’t stay long, just long enough to wonder out loud what might be wrong with the old tractor this time and discuss some plans about buying cattle, fixing the corrals in the spring and making things work better out here.

I know that tractor’s story. It’s been on this place for decades, bought used when my father left for college in the 70s. I know the only thing wrong with that tractor is that you can’t stop time, and we could not afford to buy a new one.

Each day my father has been the caretaker of the family’s ranch it has been an adventure to get that tractor up and running.

Every day it has been worth it.

Somewhere along the line a company like Dodge took notice of the kinds of people buying those trucks they were selling, not for the paint job or the heated seat, but for the horsepower and the muscle that it takes to haul a trailer full of bulls to the sale barn, a couple of priceless horses and a teenage daughter to her first high school rodeo, or through a snowy trail as your grandfather scoops grain for the cattle in the winter.

Somewhere in their marketing plan Dodge thought it  might be a good idea to mention those farmers and ranchers out there throwing bales and feeding the country, because quite frankly, they have helped keep them in business.

So they declared it the “Year of the Farmer” and are working their marketing plan so that spreading the word means supporting the FFA.

That moment a company like Dodge took to tell our story while they had the world’s attention gave us–the farmers, the ranchers, the corn growers, bottle feeders, chicken-coop cleaners, post-hole-diggers, pig-sloppers, 5 a.m. cow milkers, –a little reminder that ours might not be a glamorous story, but it is one worth living.


Click here to watch an interview with the Montana ranchers featured in the commercial.

Winter crazy.

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I know I’ve been talking about the weather a lot lately, trudging through the snow, climbing to the top of it, bundling up and taking it on by looking for the beauty in 30 below.

Well, we’re at the end of January now so I would like to take this opportunity, in the midst of another dangerous wind-chill advisory, to say ‘good riddance’ to the hardest and most brutal month of the year up here in the great white north.

Yup, that’s a little negative sign right there next to the 20. This is before the windchill. But hey, the sun is shining so what the hell, let’s just call it a beautiful day.

I think we made it through just fine admiring the sundogs,

and the fluffy puppy,

eating egg rolls, throwing sledding parties

and climbing the frosted badlands.

But I feel now it’s time to confess the fact that all of those things did their best to distract me from going crazy in this cooped up state, but they did not succeed entirely.

No.

I am afraid I might have hung on to a bit of that inevitable winter insanity.

But please, don’t judge me. Let me remind you that I’m still a woman living in an unfinished house, sharing my winter space with a good number of power tools and using a shop vac to complete the majority of my cleaning. And in a situation like this, unexpected additions to the decor and atmosphere pop up unexpectedly.

I mean, you try staying sane when you can be jolted from your sleep at any given moment by the excruciating and terrifying gun-shot like sound of the air-compressor shaking the house as it recharges in the loft.

You try remembering to unplug that thing when the only time it makes itself apparent is at 2 am! The dogs wake up and start a barking frenzy right before one of them pukes on the floor. The cats in the basement cling to the ceiling and you shake your husband, telling him that this time, you’re sure it’s a robber.

Or an alien.

You try keeping your cool as your knight in shining armor rolls over and falls back to sleep.

I mean, I always swear I”ll unplug that thing first thing in the morning. But in the morning all I can think of is coffee, and so the cycle continues as I make my way from the coffee pot my favorite chair, but not before I trip over that stack of cedar my husband decided to place in my path, sending me flailing forward as my coffee splays across the floor and I invent thirty-seven new curse words.

And those words are in addition to the ones I invented yesterday when I tripped over that same stack of wood three times.

I’m serious. It blends in. I get comfortable in my environment and I don ‘t find it necessary to look down.  It’s a defect that I blame for the multiple times I’ve stepped the wrong way off of our front step and into the pit that will become our garage in the spring.

These types of outcomes are precisely the reason I’ve  never been a furniture rearranging kind of person. Because I strongly believe that if you put something in its place, it should stay there.

Forever.

My life, limbs and coffee, depend on it.

coffee

Anyway, I am blaming those miseries on my husband. But I will tell you, I’ve created plenty of my own this winter, starting with allowing our one and only barn cat to take up residence in our basement. I mean, it’s so damn cold out there and now that we’re not in the barnyard I felt she needed to be close by, you know, to take the pressure off of the dogs to keep wild cat occupied while keeping her diet in check by batting her away with a vengeance if she dares get too close to the food.

I’ve been questioning this arrangement, but it seems it’s too late. Last weekend I attempted to put that barn cat outside to enjoy the 40 degree day and before I even opened the door she managed to claw her way out of my grip and up to my shoulder before flinging her body off the top of my head and running for cover.

And so I’ve been warned. There’s no way in hell that cat is every leaving my basement–rain, snow, forty below or 80 above.

Shit.

Allowing another animal into this house is not the weirdest mistake I’ve made this winter. No. A few days ago in my attempt to reach Husband I dialed the wrong number and asked a complete stranger if he planned to come home tonight. The man on the other end of the line sounded a lot like my husband, and, well, I didn’t appreciate his tone.

Turns out he didn’t appreciate mine either.

And then there was that time my car was making weird noises as I drove through the neighboring town, forcing me to pull over in the parking lot of Runnings where it became evident that when I put the thing in park it was going to ignore me and just kept rolling…and when I put it in reverse it sounded like it was going to blow up.

So I sat there with my foot on the brake for a half an hour while I waited for a tow truck to bring me to the mechanic and for Pops to come and save me and take me grocery shopping before bringing me 60 miles back home. I waited, car-less through the holiday season, only to get a call informing me they couldn’t find anything wrong with the vehicle, except, well, you know the thirty-seven rock chips in the windshield.

Yup, that really happened. It was an annoying Christmas miracle and I have spent every day since driving that car just waiting for it to blow up or something.

Oh, I know we all have little mishaps and results of poor judgement in our lives, I just think the annoyance is multiplied out here by the fact that we’re also cooped up and freezing. So I guess I decided to share them so we could laugh about while we dream about summer.

But I’ll I make sure to roll my eyes first.

And sometimes I might hollar “Really?! Really!” so don’t be alarmed.

Happy last day of January. I hope you made it through with your sanity.

If you need me, I’ll be looking for mine…

Goodbye Summer

Seeing it all.

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We’re finding our way to the end of January, and around these parts that’s a huge relief.  I’ve been keeping busy playing music, writing and eating carbohydrates, and after a Friday evening spent singing to a full house, I was thawing out and happy with the way life gives you gifts, like 40 degrees on a January weekend.

Funny how a little warm up can turn an attitude around. Suddenly I was in love with winter again and while Husband worked on hammering and nailing and putting up walls in our master bedroom, I worked on ways I could sneak out the door unnoticed.

Because I decided it was of utmost importance that I load up little Juno and give her a tour of her new home turf.

Because we needed to check on things, ensure the gears were grinding right, the snowbanks weren’t too deep and the view was still as beautiful.

We needed to make sure those weird clouds weren’t storm clouds above us.

We needed to introduce her to the horses.

We needed to play…

and run…

And do whatever Tucker was doing here…





That looked like fun.

See, around here, if we chose to look, we can see things like this every day.

And although winter gets long, it’s one of those seasons that changes the landscape constantly. And so I suppose I’ve made it my mission here to keep tabs on the way the horses grow beards to ward off the chill…

The way the clouds roll and shift and change directions and colors…

How the light hits the grass and makes it sparkle…

How the horses settle lethargically into a pile of grain…

and how their noses feel under our hands.

I watch it all because I don’t want to miss it.

Because I like the way a puppy kiss looks.


And the sound of snow melting under a blue sky.

And the tree rows planted all those years ago? I like that they’re scraggly but standing still under a slow to rise winter sun.


I like the idea that this all will be green again, but first it has to be blue and white and brown.

I like that I’m here for all of that changing.

And I like the feeling, that like Juno, I’m hearing it all, seeing it all, discovering it all for the first time…on a 40 degree weekend at the end of January.

The beautiful things.

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10

I have a good life. Not much to complain about when it comes down to it really, except for a weird tail-less cat trying to climb up my leg, not enough hours in the day, unfinished projects and cold toes.

But some days, during a break in the morning news, I cry at the Walgreens commercial.

And the commercial for a web browser that tells the story about a dad sending his daughter off to college. And then they video chat.

And anything with a cute baby or a puppy or a grampa or a soldier coming home.

And lately I cry at the weather report.

Now, don’t get all worried about me yet. I’m not sure I would be diagnosed with any emotional disorder, although Husband has diagnosed me simply “emotional.”

And he’s right.

I spend quite a bit of my life laughing though, so I figure I’m balanced.

But I admit, some days are worse than others. I admit it because I’m human and I know you’re human (unless you’re a dog and humans haven’t discovered your abilities to access the web without thumbs) and we all have days like these.

Days that send me running for the hills.

I’ve learned over the course of my nearly 30 (gasp!) years alive in this breathtaking and heartbreaking place it’s the only thing to do to recover my senses and gain my balance and center myself once more.

I remove my body from the television screen, the radio, the music, the computer and all of those heartbreaking, heartwarming and heart wrenching stories and just try to live in my own for a moment.

It hasn’t been easy to do this lately, between the life-threatening cold temperatures, scheduled meetings and darkness that falls too early in the winter, I’ve had to make a special space in my day for clarity.

It’s why I keep an extra pair of snow boots and a furry hat in my car just in case. You never know when you might have a chance to escape.

I found one yesterday afternoon. I had a few of those teary moments over coffee and the news while I moved through my morning trying to pull it together, get to the office, make it to the meeting, keep up on emails, plan for an event, meet a deadline and live comfortably in pretty work sweaters between four walls.

4:30 came around and I had a meeting at 6.

An hour and a half hours would do it.

I got in my car and pointed it toward a favorite refuge, the only other place in the world beside the ranch where I can look winter in the face and call it truly beautiful.

The Theodore Roosevelt National Park.


 I’ve taken you there before on similar weepy days in the  fall when I’m overwhelmed and worried, on summer days when I’m tan and moving to the next adventure, and winter.

I really love it in the winter.

And it never lets me down.

So in 15 minutes I was there, turning off of the highway and following the snow coated road toward the river and the buttes,


stopping to capture how the sun looks above the frozen water and if I might catch the bison grazing somewhere in the snow.

I drove slowly to admire the lighting. I rolled down my window a bit to feel the fresh, 20 degree air and pulled over where the road ends, next to a trail that can take you to the top of it all.

I checked my watch. I had 20 minutes before I needed to turn my car around and head back to my other world. I was in my town coat and dangly earrings.

I switched out my fancy boots for snow boots, covered my hair with a beanie and trudged on up there, slipping and sliding and panting because, well, I just felt like it.

I felt like climbing.

Because this is what winter looks like in the badlands.

This is what it looks like from the top of it all…






all 360 degrees of it, surrounding me and telling me it’s ok to cry.

Especially for the beautiful things.

Summer horses.

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6

I miss my summer horses. I miss the way their coats lather up under the saddle after an evening ride to the east pasture.

I miss the way that smells and the way it feels to see them grazing on the green grass of the season–admiration and beauty and peace and home all wrapped up in their breathing and munching, snorting and fly swatting.

I even miss those damn burs I pull out of their mangled manes every evening.

I miss my summer horses because they have turned into winter horses, wild and free in the big pastures chewing on hay bales and hiding from the wind in the coulees at night.


We don’t ride much in the winters, the ground’s too hard, the wind too bitter, the hills too slick, so we give our working animals a much needed break during the coldest months and in no time they turn into a sort of wild and wooly that always amazes me.

On the coldest days they find their way to the barnyard and I bury my face in their thick coats where they keep the summer,


feed them grain from the buckets in the tack room and watch as they argue over the first and last bites.

You have to have respect for the animals that bear the burden of this extreme weather on their backs. I know the white tale deer that bed down on frozen hillsides or in a bull berry patch, the grouse roosting in tree tops and the wild elk competing for the same domestic feed as our horses are built for endurance with instincts that save them, but I still wonder if their noses get cold.


On frozen days like this I go looking for them, as if catching a glimpse of how they’re surviving this season might help shed some light on how I might do the same.

There are bison that live on the land next ours. I catch a glimpse of them when I’m on the highway, stopping to watch as the young ones run and the old ones nuzzle the ground for grass. Frost forms on their muzzles where they breathe in the cold air and on days the ice settles in on our world those creatures wear it, unassuming, as just one more layer of their being.

I wear my sweaters like the bison wear the weather. I cannot grow a wooly coat, so I wrap a scarf around my neck and lean into the cold.

I wonder if those bison miss the summer grass.

I wonder if those deer bedded down in the oaks behind this house notice the lights in the bedroom and dream of coming in from the cold.

I wonder if they know I would let them if I could. I would let them all in to warm by the fire if animals were meant for houses.

But I’ve said it before. Houses are for people and this big wide world is meant for deer in the bull berry brush, grouse in the tree tops, elk in the hay bales and horses in their wool coats waiting for a girl who’s waiting on summer to come and drop them some grain.