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The little shops that make us a town

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My mom, who has owned a clothing store on our Main Street for over 12 years, is officially closing the doors on that chapter of her life this month. An end of an era, we’re calling it.

This store has been in the community for decades, under different management and ownership throughout the years, a staple in town for finding the perfect outfit for your wife or a holiday party.

One of my first memories of Meyer’s Department Store would have been when I was around 8 or 9 when our neighbor, Shirley, owned it. My best friend and I would try on the high-heeled shoes in the middle room and walk up and down the carpeted ramp to the green tile floor, pretending to be models.

I wouldn’t have imagined at that time that my own daughters would be doing the same thing all these years later, growing up between the pretty outfits hanging on the walls, pulling clothes from the racks and trying them on in the four-way mirror, picking candy from the dish and playing with the toys set up for the kids in various corners throughout the years.

Meyer’s Department Store is set to be a core memory for my oldest daughter. But don’t ask her to talk about it. She’s too heartbroken. Turns out her plans were to work there one day, when she became a teenager, which can’t happen soon enough in her opinion. What is she supposed to do now, she wonders out loud at the kitchen table through tears. How could Gramma possibly sell it?

She’s too young to understand what it means to be a 69-year-old small business owner so I just tell her she’ll have more time with Gramma now, which will probably mean more shopping with her, too.

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Mom purchased Meyer’s Department Store after a career as a social worker and at the height of the western North Dakota oil boom.

My little sister and I both worked at the store at different times in its life, before our mom took it over and during the economy that was small-town North Dakota in the 1990s and early 2000s. At the time, we were the only clothing store in town and the talk about rural North Dakota business was going the way of combating outmigration and aging communities.

I was 16, sitting behind the counter watching my friends drag Main Street, selling blouses and jeans that fit women so well they traveled miles from neighboring towns to try them on. I learned that customer service wasn’t always about the sale, but maybe more importantly about just being there, being open, being available and reliable, and remembering names.

Our mom bought Meyers when she was almost 60. It was at the height of the oil boom in our community, a big transition for our small town as well as for a woman who spent the majority of her career in social work. I remember admiring her ability to shift and visualize her life in a different way. She didn’t have a roadmap to retail management, but she did have a handful of people who helped her learn and get acquainted and comfortable enough so she could do things her way.

And great customers and employees she loved.

That was her favorite part, hands down: the people. We always joke with her that her generosity wasn’t helping her make a profit, but the social worker in her couldn’t be changed. So many of her employees, past and present, thank my mom for her kindness and the open-minded environment in which they were able to learn and thrive enough to move on to the next phase of their lives successfully.

With the end of this era, it has become even more clear to me just what places like Meyer’s, or your hometown pharmacy, grocery store, café or hardware store can mean to a community like Watford City, through all the phases of its life. These days, we are seeing transitions in leadership in many businesses in our community — some in generations taking over and some with closures and, of course and thankfully, new ideas and services popping up on the corners and in reconstructed buildings and storefronts.

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Mom holding baby Rosie with Edie nearby in the early days of owning the store. 

In the age of online shopping and virtual connection, I argue that storefront, although more challenging than ever, is more important, not less, for our community. Doors open for business and faces behind counters not only reflect the flavor of a community, but these are the places that support your basketball teams and 4-H livestock shows, special events and big ideas.

But most significantly — and I saw it so vividly with Mom’s store — these are the places where people remember your name and your size and your coffee order and your prescription. These are the grocery stores that will order the special cheese for you, that cater your weddings and baby showers and funerals. They employ your teenagers. These are the places where you meet your local friends to catch up and take your out-of-town friends and family to learn about you and where you come from. They are the places you go to be seen.

Singularly, you might not notice what it means to have these little shops there for you to feed you, clothe you and send you flowers, remember your name and your size and your coffee order. But put together, it’s everything that makes us a town and who we are in it.

And with that, I say congratulations to my mom on her retirement and this new phase in her life. Give her a minute for a celebratory glass of wine and she’ll make the move to envision her life in a new and wonderful way once again, which will probably find her spending more time in her coffee shop. She might even learn to make a latte. Stop in and say hi if you’re in town. Tell her what you’ve been up to, she’ll be so happy to host you.

Give it a few years and I’m sure you’ll find my daughter there, too, serving up coffee as the teenager behind the counter where she’s always wanted to be.

May you find what you need in this construction phase of life

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For the past six months, every time we visited our local Cenex store, my daughters would pick out a color swatch from the paint section and ask to re-paint and redecorate their rooms. I would tuck the swatches, bright purple and dusty pink, inside the folds of my purse and tell them, yes, we’ll put it on the schedule, and then dread the day they would ask again.

The task of a redo — a cleanout — always feels so daunting to me. When you live in a house long enough with children, things seem to pile up in the corners and crevices of every room, stacks of papers and tiny pieces of their imagination, creations and childhood spread all about waiting for you to come digging or looking for that lost piece of paper or the most important Lego part in the world. It takes diligence to contain it and to help teach them how to do the same. Truthfully, I’m not so good at it.

While my daughters have been on winter break, I’ve done my best to focus on them in a way I don’t do as much anymore now that they are 7 and 9 and much more independent. I used to sit with them and color. I used to coordinate art projects. I used to have to supervise every outdoor excursion, cut up every meal.

I woke up sometime this year and realized I sort of miss them in a way that feels sneaky, like it would be easy not to notice. I’m nostalgic for their baby faces and their baby voices that I’ll never hear again.

And that imaginary red thread that connects me to them, it used to be close and tight, but slowly, surely, inevitably, it’s unspooling, and I’m not sure what to do with all that slack.

I suppose these are the types of musings many of us are doing at the cusp of the new year between planning the dip for the party and undecorating the Christmas tree. I want to say something profound about how the past 365 days have taught me lessons and I’ve abided, but after I am done typing this, I’m taking my daughters to town and we’re picking up a few gallons of paint and I’m doing what I’ve done all year — the next thing there is to do.

Surprisingly, lately, I don’t feel much like pontificating.

Yesterday, in preparation for painting over nail holes, scuffs and the occasional crayon mark on their walls, my oldest daughter and I unloaded the clothes from her pink hand-me-down dresser drawers and repainted them a dusty blue to match the new bedding she picked out on a recent shopping trip. She helped me unscrew the glass knobs and sand and scuff the bright pink paint, sang along with every word of every Taylor Swift song on the speaker, and made the funniest little digs and jokes as she worked, and I thought, oh yes, this girl, like me, like her father, she likes a project.

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A project. I suppose that’s it right there, the word to sum up a year if it doesn’t sum up a life. What are we doing if it isn’t project after project?

Specifically, this year featured an album release, a music video, art classes and events, and a new retail store for our non-profit, taking care of cows and bottle calves, teaching the girls about horses, a new garden spot, fences and water system fixing, and wrapping up the loose ends of a five-year-long house renovation. I just bought the toilet paper roll holder for the new bathroom last weekend, finishing one thing so we can move on to getting that wall the right lavender color for Rosie’s room.

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Putting the floor in in our new addition

Anyway, I wanted to find a way to make this New Year’s note to you inspirational even though you are all probably running into as many encouraging quotes as you can handle this time of year.

Regardless, I think I’ve finally come to what I want to say since the winding journey from the Cenex’s paint section where we started. My husband and I, when we were young and first married and searching for where to land, or where to go next, made ourselves a life motto that has carried us through this year, and all the years since, for better or for worse: Our life is a series of choices, and you’re allowed to make a new one anytime you want. If you don’t have the tools, if you don’t have the muscle, someone you know does. Replace those old knobs. Build a new wall. Take one down. Ask for help to undo the hinges.

I’m realizing now, with my daughters growing up, that I don’t want to say “right before my eyes” at the end of it all, but more “right by my side.” That red thread, when you’re building something together, it seems to tighten up a bit. That’s always been the case for my husband and me, so of course, why wouldn’t it be for our relationship with our children?

Happy New Year to you and yours. May you find what you need in the construction phase.

Toppled tree

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Last week, our Christmas tree fell over.

I’m writing about it not because I’m surprised, but rather, because I’m absolutely not surprised. And I wonder if there’s something wrong with me.

It started with our annual Christmas tree hunt with the family last Saturday. We had a window of about 45 minutes to complete our 2,000-acre hunt for the perfect holiday centerpiece between the time my husband got home and when the prairie would be pitch black, but I was determined. This was the only weekend I had open to make the house magical before the holiday and, because I was on a strict timeline, the side-by-side was dead and we had to wait another 15 minutes to jump it while our girls threw snowballs at each other’s faces.

Never fear though, I thought I saw a nice little cedar back in August just a quarter of a mile or so in the home pasture that would work nicely in the new addition in the house. And so, we followed the trail and our instincts to scope the northern slopes of the clay hills where the cedars seem to grow. After all these years of hunting for trees, I vowed to finally learn our lesson about scale — like, they always look smaller under a big prairie sky and about 10 times larger when you bring them inside to thaw out and take up the entire living room.

Turns out this year, once all was said and done, we overcompensated (undercompensated?).

Simply put, in our attempt to not overdo it, we picked a tree that looked sad and bare-boned and far from holiday material when we stood it up against the window and let the light reveal its flaws. Honestly, I didn’t care that much. It’s a wild tree after all, what can we really expect from it? I figured adding a few lights and ornaments would fill the gaps. I was prepared to call it good.

My husband was not on the same page, however. And while I made 10,000 trips to the basement to retrieve our ornaments and decorations, my husband again took to the frozen hills with his saw and returned with a plan to perform cosmetic surgery on our scraggly tree. And when I say this, I mean he whipped out his nail gun and hauled in an armful of cedar boughs and proceeded to nail them to the trunk of our little tree. Essentially, he did what he’s best at and remodeled the thing.

But because the tree was only 10 feet tall and not 25 feet tall like usual, he opted out of nailing the whole thing to the wall and we all got on with decorating what turned out, in the end, to be a pretty decent tree.

Now I’ve mentioned before that we found ourselves in an Elf on the Shelf predicament last month when my 7-year-old found the felt toy lying limp in my bedroom drawer stuffed among mismatched socks and extra phone chargers; understandably, she had some pretty serious questions that needed answers.

So this Christmas, like never before, it is imperative that I restore the magic that is hanging on by the tiny threads of that dang elf’s hat that I now cannot find anywhere. Anyway, I needed to tread carefully and creatively this holiday season, so I retrieved that hatless elf out of its new hiding place that evening and put it on one of the transplant limbs of the Christmas tree with a note wishing the girls a happy hello in handwriting I tried my best to not look like mine.

Now it’s here I must pause to ask, why do we do this to ourselves? It’s all fun and games when the kids are little and oblivious. But thanks to my recent magic misstep and a couple unfortunate situations with the tooth fairy earlier this year, this Christmas season has me under constant surveillance and major pressure to keep the magic alive and real because, well, skepticism has entered the house and she’s a lurker.

Anyway, all seemed to be going well in our freshly decorated Christmas house until the girls started flipping cartwheels on Monday evening, shaking the stability of that retrofitted tree and sending it toppling over right next to Rosie sitting pretty and shell-shocked on the rug, swearing up and down it wasn’t her foot that caught it in her most flip.

And then: “Oh no, Ella! Ella was on the tree! Is she dead?!” (Ella is the name of our elf, if I haven’t mentioned that yet.)

I ran to the living room and, after I made sure that both kids were cleared of the tree, called my husband from the garage to help pull that cedar up and assess the damage. And there was that elf, still smiling and hatless, surrounded by broken bulb glass and Chad’s now legless and one-armed He-Man ornament, his sword arm launched all the way across the room.

Yes, there were some casualties for sure — He-Man was one — but Skeletor was seemingly unscathed, and so was the elf. I suppose that’s why she’s made of felt. But now she was in the way, which was a problem because, well, you can’t touch the elf or she will lose her magic and THE LAST THING I NEED IS LESS MAGIC AROUND HERE, OK?

“Get the kitchen tongs!” I hollered to my oldest. “Grab her with those and put her somewhere safe. We’ve got to redecorate this thing. And no more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas!”

No more cartwheels in the living room until after Christmas? What kind of sentence is that?

If you need me, I’ll be Googling Elf on the Shelf ideas, but not while my daughters are lurking, because they can read now. Learned that lesson the hard way …

The saga of the missing suitcase…

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Old Man Winter is showing…

My husband and I are at a weird stage in our lives. I think most refer to it as “middle age,” but, as most stages go, you don’t fully understand it until you reach it yourself.

I was talking to one of my friends recently who was lamenting this phase as well: “I have one kid planning for college and I’m packing ‘extra emergency accident clothes’ in another’s backpack. It’s wild.”

Which brings me to a little story I’ll call “The Saga of the Missing Suitcase,” which started in early October and ended last week with the serious revelation that I need to start taking those memory supplements my mother gave me for my 40th birthday.

Anyway, God bless all my friends, co-workers and family, who, for a solid two months, have had to hear about the absolute mystery of how I could have lost an entire suitcase that contained my expensive curling iron and hair dryer between town and home when I distinctly remember unpacking it on the floor of our bedroom.

What could have happened to it if it’s not in my car, the pickup, the garage or anywhere in my house whatsoever? My mom was looking. My husband was looking. Could it be in a ditch somewhere with my sanity? Did I hallucinate the fact that I brought it inside and unpacked it? Did someone come into the house and steal it? I was mixed up and totally frazzled, and so was my hair.

“Do you remember what that suitcase looks like?” my husband nudged. “No one is going to steal it. More likely it got thrown in the trash.”

After a month of searching with no success, I broke down and bought myself a new, too-expensive curling iron and dug out the old hair dryer we use to warm up cold, newborn calves in the spring. I decided only God truly knows the fate of my wares and wondered how early is too early to check myself into the nursing home …

Fast forward to last week when I was organizing my closet and preparing to pack for a trip. Because it’s barely been above zero for the past few weeks now, I decided it was time to store the last of my summer clothes in the big blue summer clothes bin. To get to that big blue summer clothes bin, I needed to climb the stairs, open the door of the closet, and remove the stack of old picture frames and purses I need to give away from the top of that bin to get to the lid.

What I’m saying here is that it took effort.

As in, I had to dig and un-pile piles. I had to get on my hands and knees and rearrange items. It was a whole thing. Which is relevant only because when I finally got to the part where I opened the lid expecting to toss the summer dresses into storage with my shorts, tank tops and sandals, I found instead … my suitcase.

Of course I did.

Because that seems like a logical place to store an only partially unpacked piece of luggage.

Why? I really couldn’t tell you. I have no real memory of the task. But at least I was right about my missing beauty appliances sitting inside as the only things I didn’t bother putting away. I apparently just needed to spend money on a replacement for the mystery to be solved.

Anyway, now that I’ve brought you through that wearisome journey, I bring you back to where we started, which is that weird stage we’re in where our pants are hooked on the barbed wire fence between youth and a front porch rocking chair. Because after I gave a little hoot at my discovery and promptly texted all my friends who have had to hear about this saga for weeks, I ran down the steps to tell my husband, who I found was in the middle of a shower. But the news couldn’t wait. I pulled open the door and chirped, “I have a very important announcement! Can you guess what it is?”

My husband stopped scrubbing the soap in his armpits and frantically searched the expression on my face through the steamy glass door. His heart sank to his stomach. He looked terrified. I paid it no mind. I was too happy.

“I found my suitcase!” I sang with delight and then went on to explain the whole ordeal you all just had to endure, totally oblivious to the fact that there could possibly be a more important, more heart-pounding declaration at this point in our very adult lives.

“Oh, Lord!” my husband replied with a big exhale. “I thought you were going to say you were pregnant!”

Increasingly forgetful with a small side of “I guess it’s still possible” … that’s where we’re at.

If you need me, I’m probably looking for my phone I put down around here somewhere.

Peace, love and Prevagen,
Jessie

Celebrating doing what we love at the sale barn

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Last week, on the tail end of the season’s first blizzard that shut down schools and created precarious road conditions, we bundled up in long johns and Carhartts to work our cattle and haul our calves to the sale barn 60 miles south of us.

There’s nothing as important, nostalgic or nerve-wracking as shipping day at the ranch. The culmination of a year’s worth of water tank checking, fence fixing, winter feeding, spring calving, bum calf saving, bottle feeding, branding, vaccinating, missing and injured bull drama, pen rearranging, haying, equipment breakdowns, and number crunching comes down to four minutes, three pens of calves and an auctioneer.

In the modern days of ranching, there are plenty of different ways to sell your calves and cattle, from online sales to direct to consumer. But for decades, we have sold our calves at Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, with its wood-paneled walls, steep, concrete bleachers, and familiar faces sitting along linoleum countertops eating the best hot beef sandwich in town because you’ve been gathering and sorting all morning and drove a big trailer through the breaks and you need to thaw out, which you will, because it’s warm in there and this is what we do.

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And maybe every sale barn in America looks and sounds and smells like this, and maybe every rancher or rancher’s kid who walks through the doors of a place like Stockmen’s is immediately transported to his or her first sale, if only for the moment the sharp aroma hits their nostrils. And I say aroma because we wouldn’t dare say it stinks, the scent of grit and hard decisions and risk and long days in and out in the weather.

“When I was a kid, oh man, if I could be that guy, I thought that would be the best job in the world,” my dad said, nodding toward the young man pushing calves up through the alley and into the sale ring in front of the auctioneer crow’s nest.

I sat between him and my husband on those wide, concrete bleachers, listening to the men take guesses on cattle weights, Dad coming in a bit short and Chad even shorter nearly every guess. Per tradition, our daughters got to skip school to come with us to the sale, and even at the fresh ages of 9 and 7, nostalgia took the wheel immediately upon entering the doors.

“I remember this place, where the guy sounds like he’s yodeling,” my 7-year-old declared, her backpack stuffed with markers and papers to help fill the time spent waiting for our calves to take the ring. “Let’s sit in the top row like last time so we can spread out our coloring!”

And so, we spread out the way families do here, among the buyers and the spectators and the other ranching families. I spotted a little boy with toy tractors and plastic horses playing farm beside his mom, and I said what I’ve said for the last five years or so: “Girls, when you were little, we brought you here in your pink cowboy hats and you cried so loud when you realized our calves weren’t coming home with us that I had to take you out of the building.” They laughed because they like stories about themselves and spent the next half-hour asking if it was our turn yet.

And when it was, that familiar jump hit the bottom of my stomach and did some flips as the auctioneer said our names and graciously praised our calf crop.

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“It’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor,” .

And in these particular moments, it’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor. It is and always has rung profound to me in a way that makes the candy bars we got to buy at the Stockmen’s Café every year when we were kids some of the most precious treats of our little lives.

Because somehow, even at such tender ages without a prayer of deciphering the auctioneer’s yodeling, we knew the weight the day carried.

And if you’re lucky and the market is good, in those moments after the sale, the weight feels lighter and you take the family out for pizza and arcade games because it’s a tradition you’ve added to the long list of little ways to celebrate being able to do the thing we love for yet another year.

Taking care

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It snowed for the first time on our drive town this morning. It started with rain and then suddenly we have a new season on our hands. I was not prepared, of course. My oldest daughter doesn’t fit into her snow boots, snow pants or coat. Two of the three things are still coming in the mail. The third I forgot about until the drive to town.  I wonder how a weather change could have snuck up on me like this, as if I haven’t lived with the promise of snow any moment my entire life.

I wonder how I am surprised every time I realize my kids grow, as if I don’t watch it happening with every second helping of oatmeal and spaghetti.

Waiting around every corner is a way to fail at parenting. I spent the past three days away from my family, on the other side of the state performing and singing for my supper as I do. I never worry about leaving the kids back at the ranch with my husband on the scene because, honestly, he has about as much control as I do at any given minute, which means sometimes he doesn’t. We’re aligned in that way. Neither one of us is too uptight because we’re both bordering on being a little too laid back. And so I understand that a spic and span house is not in the cards for me when I arrive home from a long weekend away, because, frankly, it isn’t really in the cards for me when I stay home.

But when I’ve been driving for six hours and surviving on coffee and fast food and I arrive home past bedtime and find a bowl of crusty butter noodles and a bag of open and half-eaten sour cream and onion potato chips on my bedroom nightstand I couldn’t help but wonder—if the kids were going to eat every meal and snack of the day in my bed, they could have at least hidden the evidence.

Judging from the countertop relics, it looks like they had fun without me. They made brownies and quesadillas. Ate Halloween candy and made friendship bracelets. The entryway indicated they rode dirt bike and shot bows. A phone conversation said they had friends over and ate goat steaks and who knew, goat steaks are good!

I reported from the road that things were going fine. I was on my way home and I still had hours to go, so my husband stayed on the line to visit. We talked about the cows and the water tanks, holiday plans and shipping calves and the big drama that occurred when our youngest found the elf on the shelf hanging out in a drawer like a civilian stuffed animal.

It was almost a tragedy, but he saved it somehow and he thinks the magic can continue.

Like I said, a parenting fail just waiting around every corner…

On our way home from school on Election Day, my six-year-old asked me if I would be happy if she wanted to run for president. I said I would if that’s what she wanted. And then she said, “No, I don’t think I would like that. It would be like having 100 bazillion kids to take care of. That’s too much.”

The next morning, we woke up and the nation decided on a new president. Some were devastated. Some were elated. Some were just happy it was over.

And despite the six-year-old’s sentiment, or where you fall on the scale of scared and elated, I’m here to remind you, the taking care of one another has always been up to us.

Do your boots still fit? Do you have a warm coat?  Can you stay for supper?

Red Barns and People Get Old

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The Official Music Video for Red Barns and People Get Old has just been published. Please take a moment with this special and personal story about generational ranching and the hearts and land involved.

Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing with the people in your life who may see a familiar story in this song.

Red Barns and People Get Old: Written by Jessie Veeder
Starring: Cody Brown, Carol Mikkelson and Rosie Scofield
Special thanks to Patty Sax
Directed by: Nolan Johnson DoP Editor/Editor: Steven Dettling
Video by ‪@quantumdigital1404‬

Recorded at ‪@omnisoundstudios‬ ‬ Nashville, TN
Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Bill Warner, Engineered by Josh Emmons and Bill Warner

jessieveedermusic.com

Night worries

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This morning I dreamed of the rain.

The window to our bedroom was open and in my dreams I smelled it and heard it falling on the oak leaves still clinging tight to the branches. In our bed, between my body and my husband’s, our youngest daughter slept. Sometime during the darkest hours of the night, she wedged herself there, as she usually does, on a sleepy hunt for her father.

She is still only six. Or, she’s almost seven! She should sleep through the night on her own by now! We go back and forth on where we land with this, but in the middle of the night when the child needs someone to hold on to, neither one of us feels the need to fight it too hard. She’ll be grown soon. The bed is big enough. She won’t need us like this forever. I pull back the covers and I let her in.

I woke this morning to my alarm singing. Last week at this time, the sky would have been pink with the sunrise. This morning it was black.

“It’s time to wake up,” I huffed into the dark as my bare feet searched for the floor.

“Did it rain? Or did I dream it?”

My husband rolled over to try to wake our daughter and told me it wasn’t a dream. I pressed my face to the window screen to smell it the way I smelled it in my dream.

Even with the rain falling, my sleep wasn’t restful. My mind woke my body to worry about bills and things I shouldn’t have said and the work I should have done by now. And then enter the state of the suffering in the world, then of people I know and love, and things I can’t possibly change. Not at 3 am. Not ever.

Why is the quietest part of the night the loudest in my head?

Last week I visited a tiny town in North Dakota to play some music for a special event. In my career as a touring musician, I’ve had the privilege of learning how so many rural communities choose to bring people together, on a blocked off Main Street, in a Legion Club steel building, in an old high school gym, in parks and on patios. I perch myself up behind a microphone to tell stories to people listening intently or to a room full of folks who just want to visit, my music the backdrop to their conversations about the weather, the hay crop, the football team, the latest local tragedy or scandal. I use the word privilege because I regard the opportunity that way, even when the night is long and it feels like no one is listening. I get a front row seat to watch it all play out, who’s refilling the punch bowl and swapping the casserole dishes. Who’s folding programs and is the only one who knows how to turn on the old sound system. Who makes her rounds to each table to say hello. Who sticks around after to put away the folding chairs. Who’s kid grabs the big broom when the room is all cleared out.

Usually, I’m sent down the road with an extra centerpiece or noodle salad or a bag full of sandwiches and plenty of kind words and “thanks for coming all this way,” sometimes apologetically, as if their community isn’t as deserving of a visit as any other community in this country. 

The air feels heavy as the weight of an election year makes big waves, moving through our conversations, across our kitchen tables, streaming through our speakers, screaming in the street. I lay awake last night and wondered, after all my life experience on the road and working in small towns, why it’s easier to holler enemy than try to understand one another. We’re making rivals out of our neighbors. It’s unsettling.

If I’m being honest, I’ve written and re-written the next two paragraphs a dozen times. Because I’m not sure what to say next. Here’s what I chose: Maybe you too were up in the quiet hours of the night with a loud head and a heavy heart. Maybe you felt lonesome or helpless, even with someone lying right next to you. Maybe you stood up and walked to the kitchen to feed your body and look at the moon. Maybe you slept soundly and dreamed about rain. Maybe you didn’t sleep at all.
And maybe, in the midst of your insomnia, your daughter crawled in bed with you because she needs to be close. She needs to feel safe and loved. She needs something to hold on to.

And maybe, in the most tumultuous times, we could be brave enough to consider she’s all of us…

And the magic followed us home

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When we were growing up my little sister and I would spend every minute the weather would let us out in the trees behind our house. We’d get off the bus, take a snack break and then we’d get out there. Because the creek and how it changed with the seasons was more magical to us than anything else in our world in the 90s.  

My sisters and I are spread out pretty far in age. I’m in the middle of a lineup that puts my older sister seven years ahead of me and my younger sister five years behind me. I never got the bathroom to myself. Ever. But also, that age gap seemed to make things a little quieter on the ranch back then.

Now that my little sister and I are raising daughters close in age and right over the hill from one another, we find ourselves trying to re-live our childhood adventures with them. They’re not babies anymore, so we’re excited to take them down to that creek to follow it, wade in it, and help them float sticks and build little boats.

Just to give you a glimpse into what we’re dealing with here….

And so that’s why we found ourselves a mile or so in the back woods by a little beaver dam with all four of our daughters last weekend on a perfectly beautiful fall day. As usual, it took forty-seven years to get all four of them in their shoes and out the door at the same time because someone needed to pee, someone needed a new hairstyle, someone had a hang-nail and someone was already outside somewhere and we couldn’t find her. It’s either that or they are so deep in their own game of Barbies or Babies or Animal Doctor or Orphaned Children on the playground that convincing them to follow us into the woods takes a lot more prodding than we expected. And when we finally got them all together and moving the same direction, well, someone always has to pee.

Anyway, marching with four girls aged four, six, seven and eight out into the wilds of this place is a little noisier than when it was just me making up Disney-style songs and my little sister trailing secretly behind. Now, as moms searching for that same feeling of wonder and freedom, the two of us walk out into this magical and familiar world with our daughters and, well, yes there is singing, but think more like,  “This is the Song that Never Ends,” only with words Rosie is making up as she goes along and also, like really, really loud.

“Look at these beautiful trees,” my little sister exclaims as her youngest daughter drags her long hair through a patch of sticky cockleburs. Her oldest picks up her thirtieth stick.

We have gone fourteen steps.

My eight-year-old, Edie, who has suddenly developed a plague that didn’t exist when we were in the house ten minutes ago, sneezes and a giant green snot string dangles ominously out of her left nostril. We have now gone fifteen steps. I gag and she sort of just stands there. Rosie screams “Snot Rocket!” and I give a lesson on choosing the right leaf because no one has a tissue. She chooses a giant piece of oak-tree bark.

We have now gone sixteen steps. Rosie’s gone 345, mostly up hill.

We stop for the youngest to pick up another piece of moss to add to her acorn and tiny stick collection. She asks her mom to hold it. She refuses. She asks me. I say yes, of course, because she’s my adorable niece.

Rosie finds a fluffy turkey feather. Edie finds another giant piece of bark that she intends on floating down the creek, but the creek is running pretty low and slow, so she’s saving it for the beaver dam. She asks me to carry it. I say no. She asks her aunt. She says yes. Because of course, she’s her adorable niece.

The breeze picks up and in the golden light of the morning the trees sway above our heads and gently sprinkle us with falling leaves and in that moment, we feel like we’re in a fairytale.  

“SPOOKY, SCARY, SKELETON SENDS SHIVERS DOWN YOUR SPINE!”  blasts from Rosie at the top of the draw.

The youngest falls down.

The seven-year-old has to pee.

We reach the beaver dam.

“Look at how the blue sky reflects on the water girls,” my little sister says as that same water spills over the top of Edie’s shoes. She flops the bark in the shallow end. It pops up and goes nowhere. She sneezes again and sits in the tall dry grass.

“I’m sick,” Edie declares.

“SPOOKY, SCARY SKELETONS SPEAK WITH SUCH A SCREECCCHHH!!!”

“Time to head back girls! Do you think you remember what way we came from? Follow the trail,” my little sister takes a cue and we watch three girls head the exact wrong direction.

Edie lays down. My sister and I look at each other and laugh weakly, hands full of sticks, we holler into the woods, “Follow us now!” and off we go, the magic and adventure follows us home…

He got stuck..

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Photo out our back window on Saturday of the Bear Den Fire raging just five miles or so to the North West of the Ranch. Chad and countless other first responders, ranchers and community members spent hours and hours in 50-70 MPH winds trying their best to battle the dangerous spread.

On Saturday we had wild fires rage across Western North Dakota. Over 100,000 acres of cropland, federal land and private ranch land has burned. Two fires, one just to the northeast of our ranch surrounding the town of Mandaree, is only 40% contained as of yesterday. The National Guard has been working to contain this one and one in the badlands to the south west of us for the past five days. Homes, pastureland and livestock have been lost. Worst of all, two lives were taken by these fires, men who were trying to fight them in the area around Ray, ND. Please send us prayers for rain. And if you feel inclined, here’s a link to help aid the ranchers who lost so much this past week.

The North Dakota Stockmen’s Association and North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation have teamed up to support cattle-ranching families in North Dakota who have suffered catastrophic losses in the horrific wildfires. In addition to their own $50,000 gift, the NDSA and NDSF are inviting others to join with them to provide financial support to help these ranchers rise from the ashes and rebuild their herds, their homes and their hope. Checks can be sent to the North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation with “Out of the Ashes” written in the memo, or credit card gifts can be made at https://app.givingheartsday.org/#/charity/1576. The NDSA and NDSF will distribute 100% of the money raised to the victims of the wildfires through an application and nomination process. Applications will be available later this month. The NDSF is a 501(c)3.

The latest information about the state of these wildfires can be found here

Many of you have checked in on us as this news has developed. We were lucky as the wind was favorable to blow these fires away from our homes and the ranch, but many of my friends weren’t as lucky. And with the dry conditions and hot spots still looming, we’re not out of the woods until the snow falls. Thank you for your concern and thank you to the first responders who are working to keep us safe.

With that, lets move on to a more light-hearted predicament we found ourselves in last week on the ranch. I write about it in last week’s column:

He got stuck…

Last week I looked out the window to find my husband walking through the home pasture gate in the middle of the morning, like I do when I take a little stroll except my husband hasn’t taken a little stroll in his entire life. So naturally, I could only conclude that something did not go as planned.

And probably, more than likely, the man got something stuck somewhere…

Around here, no one really gives anyone guff about being stuck, because you never know when it could be you. Because, inevitably, it’s gonna be you.

But the man, he walked almost two miles in pretty cold 50 mph winds just to avoid the call to me or his father-in-law for help. I asked him why he didn’t use his “phone a friend” option and he said a guy who gets himself stuck so stupidly probably deserves to walk a good mile or so, you know, as a sort of lesson or punishment or something.

But walk-of-shame or not, he did need help, so he rounded up another side-by-side and me, his wife, who was wearing the entirely wrong outfit for traipsing around in 50 mph autumn winds miles from civilization (which is almost always my outfit choice in times of impromptu crisis.)

When I tell you this is not side-by-side or ATV country, I mean it. The denial of this fact is what lands us all in the sort of stuck-up-to-the-floorboards predicaments my husband found himself in that day. Because we live on the only quarter of North Dakota that isn’t entirely flat. We live where the hills drop down to form coulees ripe with springs and creeks that hold water and mud at different levels at different times depending on the season or the mood just to keep it sketchy and iffy and dangerous. And in those coulees the thorns and the brush patches thrive and twist and tangle over cattle and deer trails, letting enough light in to make you think you can make it through without a tree branch to the face, but usually you can’t, especially if your little sister or big brother is riding in front of you, scheduling that branch release to land just right.

Anyway, you can avoid the brush and the big canopy of oaks and ash trees if you keep to the hilltops, but you can never avoid the rocks and the holes and the craters on the edge of the badlands, so this is why we ride horses mostly. And, well, honestly, we’ve had to pull a good handful of horses out of thick mud and ravines in our days too…

But we forget all this somehow when we think we’re just gonna go check something quick, as if the fact that we’re in a hurry changes the landscape in some way. And that’s what my husband was doing that day he hopped in his all-terrain-vehicle and decided to go look for a missing bull, you know, real quick.

“What were you doing?” I asked him when het got into the house, cheeks flushed and a bit winded from the ordeal.

“Yeah, I’m stuck. Like, way back east.”

And I tell you, between being raised by my dad and being married to my husband and being, well, me, I have seen a lot of serious stuck-in-something-or-other predicaments and so I wasn’t surprised to find that this most recent one was no different. A classic case of “the crick bottom looks dry enough” and then, surprise, surprise, it gives way to the stinkiest, stickiest, black mud that Mother Nature makes. I know. I’ve been here before myself, I just happened to be a little closer to home.

And I tried not to say anything. I did. I stood there and took my directions as he hooked one bumper to the other with a random old calf roping rope that was in the back of the second ATV. I wondered to myself silently why on earth my husband didn’t bring a tow strap or a chain since he knew the task ahead of him. But I didn’t say anything. Not even when he instructed me to gas it but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, and we went on like this not moving a nudge for a good 30 to to 60 seconds before his makeshift tow-rope snapped.

Then I couldn’t hold it. I had to ask, why. Why no tow strap? Why no chain?

Because he thought he had one.

Fair enough. Been there. But I was certain then that both of us would be walking home in no time and wished I wouldn’t have worn these stupid leggings and no wool cap like a dummy.

So then, because I couldn’t help myself looking at the cliff-like, brush tangled terrain in front of the stuck-side-by-side, I had to add ,“Where were you gonna go if you actually made it? “

I didn’t get a real clear answer on that one…

But the man is nothing if he’s not determined. So out came the shovel (he did remember that), a bit more rearranging of the rope, a bit more shoveling and five or six more “gun its” and well, what ‘do ‘ya know, we were out. 

So off we went, me following him following our tracks back to the house. It was a miracle!  I never doubted it! Sorta felt like a date then. I wonder if he learned his lesson…

And now, because I am publishing this for you and Jesus to read, I suppose to be fair, some day I’ll tell you how I got the side-by-side stuck between a tree and the dog kennel in our yard this summer. Well, my side of the story at least.

Stay safe out there. If you need me I’ll be hosing the black mud off the side-by-side and my stupid leggings…