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Sunday Column: The road

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I’ve had some pretty great adventures in the name of music. This summer almost every weekend has been filled with some sort of gig that takes me away from this place for a bit.

I’ve loaded and unloaded my car and pickup dozens of times.

It’s been months since I’ve completely unpacked my bag.

Please don’t look in my closet.  I don’t even want to look in my closet.

Anyway when you live in the middle of nowhere, pretty much everywhere you need to go involves a road trip.  So it’s a good thing  I’ve had years to master hours of car time. Sunflower seeds. Coffee. An updated play list on my iPod. A mental list of the most convenient places to stop for fuel. Not a bit of hesitation about singing at the top of my lungs, even when pulling up next to you at a stoplight. Windows open when the weather’s nice and the time is right.

The road to and from this place is early mornings, peaceful and dewy, running-late afternoons and evening sunsets where I don’t really feel like it but I’m going.

Some of my most creative times have been behind the wheel of my car, alone out there somewhere on a road in the midwest.

Some of my scariest have been out there too. Blizzard and tornado watches, black ice, flooding and miles and miles of antelope and sagebrush fields with an emptying tank and not a gas station for miles.

In the last few weeks my road trips have involved the men from my hometown band. It’s nice to have a pickup full of voices and stories about the old days playing in bar bands and bowling alleys. I welcome the company in the car and beside me playing guitar.

And it’s nice to have a crew that understands the life of a musician is mostly just an absurd train of events that involves setting up on flatbed trailers as a thunderstorm rolls through town, hauling around and hooking up sound system after sound system, laughing off requests to play “Smoke on the Water, ” to turn it up, to turn it down, to play something faster, or slower or something we don’t know. It’s good to know that this group won’t mind if a gig doesn’t quite turn out the way we planned, or the night drags on into morning, or we have to haul our guitars through a foot of mud to the stage. It’s alright. Because sometimes it’s great, and the harmonies are on and the audience is swaying and singing along and you know that they know that there’s more to music than the miles we’ve put on to get here and home in one piece.




So when you get back to the ranch at 3:30 in the morning only to wake to a call that the cows are in the neighbor’s wheat field, you don’t complain, you just take a swig of coffee, pull on your snap shirt and boots and head out the door to saddle a horse and bring them home.

Because it’s the life I chose. The one I write about and sing about and bring with me when I go.

Coming Home: Freedom sometimes means settling down
By Jessie Veeder
August 4, 2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

Music and miles, late nights and cows with terrible timing…

And it’s good.

A birthday month moment.

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Well party people, we’re officially the second day into my birthday month. Flip your calendars to the photo that features a sunflower or a golden wheat field. It’s August.

It’s August and in 23 days I will no longer be allowed to use the excuse “well, that was in my 20s…” for any and every one of my poor choices.

i.e.: The pug…

In 23 days I will seriously consider just letting my hair go gray, pour myself a glass of tequila and wave at 29 as it slips on out the back door and out into the home pasture, taking my youth with it as it goes on its merry way.

Goodbye youth. Perhaps it was always meant to be…

Bwahhhhh…..

So, yes, it’s official, I couldn’t stay 26 forever.

26 was my ideal age. Have I told you that? I don’t even know what I was doing then, probably broke in Missoula, MT climbing a mountain or contemplating just letting my hair turn to dreadlocks on its own. I thought 26 was good because I was old enough to have finished school, found someone who would marry me and continue my quest for a respectable job, but young enough that if none of those things worked out there would still be time.

I could take that trip to Europe or cross the country in an old Winnebego. There was no rush to settle down.

I was 26. I could pierce my nose and it would be cool.  Because I was 26 and I was still young.

But turns out 26 turns to 27 and then 28 and pretty soon you’re on the back side of your twenties knee-deep in a complete home renovation project that keeps you from the buying that Winnebego and following dots on the map.

And you forgot to get your nose pierced.

I have 23 days. I could still do it.

But seriously folks. I’ve got 23 days before I’m 30 and I’m feeling a little wistful about the whole thing. I mean, I have to be honest, these last ten to twelve years of adulthood have been pretty great. I can’t complain. I’ve spent them traveling the country singing for my supper, dating and marrying my high school crush,

Wedding Tree

testing out different towns and different jobs, buying concert tickets, planning ski trips, raising two misfits dogs, updating my resume,  tiling bathrooms, painting new bedrooms, writing my story and singing it out loud and moving all my earthly and hand-me-down possessions six times in six years.

I’ve learned what it takes to be married. I’ve learned what it feels like to be truly disappointed and truly happy. I’ve killed pretty much all of my house plants.

I’ve put on a million miles, grew a few muscles and found my way home.

And now here I am, looking out the window of our new house, our forever home, at a dirt pile that will someday be a lawn and I’m a little bit exhausted, a little bit satisfied, and little bit nervous, a little bit hungry (I’m always a little bit hungry) and a little like, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing…except I think I know exactly what I’m doing. I think…

My friends tell me my thirties will be the best years. They say you know who you are. They say you’re settled in. They say you’re more sure. More confident.

Older.

I guess I’ll find out.

Lately I’ve been staying up late, the windows open to the sounds of a stray truck rolling by on the pink road, the breeze pushing through the trees, the howl of a coyote. In that time when the house is quiet and so is the world, I allow myself the sense to feel that tightening lump in my chest, the one that makes you wonder what the hell you’re doing out here, wonder if you’re cut out for it all, wonder how long you have, what you’re missing, wonder what’s next, wishing for more time to think, to do, to sleep…

And then I close my eyes and listen to the sound of my husband’s breathing and convince myself to think about it all tomorrow in the light of day. Because the night is for sleeping and turning you one day older.

One day wiser.

But here’s the thing. I joke about turning another year older, but the truth is I’ve never been afraid of aging. I’ve always admired the women who let their hair grow long and gray, the ones who wear their clothes the way they like and how to change a tire, change a diaper and change the world.

I’ve always looked forward to becoming one of those women.

I remember being a little girl who couldn’t sleep. I would close my eyes and try to visualize what I might look like when I got older. Would my butt get big? Would I cut my hair short? Would I get my nails done on Saturday?

And then I would busy my imagination with making plans for my life, to be a veterinarian, then maybe a teacher, a wilderness woman, a horse trainer,  a writer or maybe just a singer…like I don’t have to be famous or anything, just make enough money to sing for a living…

I would marry a handsome boy with brown hair and strong arms and we would ride horses and live in a cabin.

I would have a garden and a baby and dramatic adventures that always turned out ok in the end.

I wonder what that girl would think of us now, married with no baby and no garden in a house we make dirty with sawdust on the weekends and sweep up a little on Monday.

We always hated to sweep.

And we always hated the way the frizz of our curls escaped our ponytail. I think she’d be happy to know my hair is long.

Think she’d be glad that I married this boy.

And that I’m still singing, just enough to make a little bit of a living…that’s alright…

Yes, I think she’d be glad there’s still so much I want to do. She’d understand that’s those thoughts, the thoughts of what I want to be, are the same ones that keep me up late while I plan on growing up.

I think she’d tell me it’s gonna be fun…

Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so Rockin’

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On Friday evening we took a ride through the east pasture checking cows. The sky turned from blue to pink in front of our eyes and a small storm pushed through.We caught the breeze but didn’t get caught in the rain.

We caught the juneberries and the raspberries before the birds.

We caught Pops over the hill filling his mouth and his pocket and we were caught in one of the greatest things about living on this place.

Today I will attempt Juneberry pie because Husband packed his saddlebags and the breeze is blowing nice through the kitchen windows and it’s Sunday.

This is the kind of life I like to talk about. The kind of things I moved back here for. Sunsets and wildflowers and the sleek back of horses and fat happy cattle and Sundays and family.

These are all part of my reality.

But so is the dust kicked up by trucks tending to the oil well a mile down the road and the slick mud they make when it rains.

Sometimes I get stuck on my way out of this place.

Sometimes my car breaks down and so does our pickup on the way to get it all fixed. Sometimes the price of progress means you won’t possibly make it to your appointment on time.

And sometimes, after all that, one of those big trucks kicks up a big rock and you get another big chip to add to the 27 you already have in your windshield.

Sometimes I use my middle finger and think, hell, it’d be easier to just ride my horse out of here.

Sometimes it rains like hell and I’m reminded that I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so rockin’
By Jessie Veeder
7/21/13
Fargo Forum

I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

In July…

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There’s not much I don’t like about July in North Dakota. It’s like 1,000 degrees out today, and I’m still gonna say it.

Because there’s a breeze. There’s always a breeze.

If I could hold on to this month for another I would. I would take the horseflies if it meant another thirty days of thundershowers in the evening…

Wild sunflowers in the road ditches…

Haybales lined up nice and neat in the fields…

Chasing cattle in the cool draws…

and windows open at night.

I’d take the pissed off squirrel chattering in the tree by my head if it meant I could sleep with the cool breeze tickling the curtains for another few days.

It’s kind of a funny way to wake up.

Kind of like I’m sleeping in a tree house.

Which is a pretty perfect place to be in July.

The recipe for time.

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The best part of summer is the back of a horse on top of a hill when the sun is slowly sinking down below the horizon leaving a gold sort of sparkle in its wake. And the cows are in their place, grazing in the pasture with the big dam and the tall grass that tickles their belly.

And that guy you love is finished arguing with you about how to get them there, so you can relax now and just love each other and take the long way home to notice how the coneflowers are out in full bloom and the frogs are croaking like they’re trying to tell us something urgent. Something like, “Hey, stop worrying about trivial things. Stop working so hard to make more money to buy more stuff. Stop moving so fast.  This is it right here guys. This is the stuff.”

Who knew frogs had such insight.

Around this ranch moving cattle is a sort of therapeutic chore. With everyone working a day job, taking care of the cattle is a priority that gets us home in the evening and out of the confines of the office, the checklists, the phone calls and the stress of the highway miles full of big oil trucks we pass by with white knuckles to get back home.

If our office could be the back of a horse all day, I think it’d be better for our blood pressure.

Maybe someday it will. Maybe not.

This is my third summer back at the ranch and every day I’m gaining more insight into what it takes to keep a place like this up and running. I’m beginning to understand that there are things in my life I need to weed out to make space for the time I want and need to spend out here on the back of a horse.

It’s funny coming from a woman who, three summers ago, started writing again because she had more time on her hands.

Because she didn’t know how to sit still.

Because she needed to work through what coming home for good means.

You’d think I’d have it figured out by now, but I’m not sure I’m there yet. For months our minds have been set on the bricks and mortar that hold us and all of the stuff we’ve picked up along the way.

That’s the step we are standing on.

But every day I look out the window, step outside to feed the dogs or pull at a weed or get in the pickup to move down the highway and I’m so overwhelmingly grateful that the summer came as promised.

And then I get a little lonesome.


And I haven’t figured it out quite yet, but I have a theory.

I have responsibilities. I have burdens I’ve placed on myself to move forward, to achieve goals. I have deadlines I’ve committed to and jobs to complete, people who have questions and dates marked on my calendar to leave.

And when I’m leaving I want to stay. When I stay I think I’m missing a chance.

What chance? I don’t know. Aren’t I where I want to be?

But I’m not eleven anymore. No one is buying my milk so I can play outside all day.

All I want to do is play outside all day.

All I want to do is sing.

All I want to do is write.

All I want to do is take photographs.

All I want to do is ride.

All I want to do is drink cocktails and sit on the deck that we need to build and catch up with my friends and family and take in the sunset.

All I want to do is everything.

Is this a battle we all fight, the battle of balance? I feel I’ve been fighting it my entire adult life, with a list of so many things I want to be, so many places I want to see, and only one body, one life to achieve it.

No frogs, I don’t want stuff. I want more time.

More time to sit for a bit on the back of a horse and watch the sun go down on a place I love with a man I love and watch the cows graze.

But no one is selling time, turns out it is homemade.

I just need to find the right recipe.

Sunday Column: How we’re tied together

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We built our new house below a hill we call “Pots and Pans.”

This morning the windows are open to a cloudy sky and the damp, cool breeze is drifting in the windows and tickling my bare feet. I look out on the hill my cousins and I used to scale with little legs, a weekend’s supply of juice boxes and big aspirations of adventure. Even after all these years that hill looks big to me. 

Even after all these years, when the cousin’s get together, we remember the quests we would take to reach the top where a different generation had left us treasures–flour sifters, cheese graters, mixing bowls, cast iron pans and big deep pots we could use to make mud pies or sweet clover soup.

Even after all these years we still remember who got a cactus in his butt on the way up, who peed her pants, who cried when the horse flies got unbearable and who lead the charge. 

Even after all these years I still climb Pots and Pans, to get a better view, to check on things, to remember and to be grateful–for my family and the landscape and memories that binds us. 

Coming Home: Family is connected by land
By Jessie Veeder
7-14-2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

 

 

 

A princess in the garden.

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Pops has always kept a garden. He grows things like peas and carrots, radishes and green beans, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and plenty of weeds. Once or twice he grew corn just tall and delicious enough for the horses to find their way from green pastures into the yard for the free buffet.

We no longer plant corn.

Yawning Horse

I love Pops’ garden. I love it as much as the deer love his peas and the moles love his radishes. I love to watch it sprouting from my parents’ deck. I like to watch their cat hunt for mice and big bugs out there. I love breaking off rhubarb stocks, digging around for the first sign of a ripe carrot and the taste of the first fresh garden tomato on a BLT.

A few weeks ago Pops’ garden had a new tiny visitor, a little girl named Addy who flew in all the way from Texas to explore the ranch where her grandpa grew up.

Addy climbed hills and picked flowers,

looked out for Little Man,

 
chased the cat, bossed the dogs,

got a woodtick or two, and probably a few mosquito bites too.

I followed the little darling around because I didn’t want to miss a word that came out of her adorable little mouth.

“Jessie, can I borrow your ring for when my prince comes?” she asked as she made her way out of my bedroom with one of my big bling rings wobbling on her tiny pointer finger.

“Well of course you can Addy. You can have anything you want. Want my wedding ring too? Take it. Want all of my necklaces and my horse and my car and the pug? You might need those too, you know, so you’re prepared when your prince comes.”

I would have given that girl anything she wanted, but Addy didn’t want everything, she just wanted to play. So we did. I showed her around the place, showed her where the tiger lilies grew and where the dogs go for a swim. Addy wanted to swim too, so I found someone to tell her it might not be a good idea.

There was not a chance I was uttering the word “no” to this girl.


So instead I took her to the garden to teach her about growing things and how you’re supposed to step over the pea plants and not necessarily on them.

I watched as she put her hands on her knees and squatted down to get close to the leaves of the strawberry plant, where she declared and made known to the world every bug that crawled on its leaves.

I gave her a taste of rhubarb and watched her cute little face pucker up while she threw the stalk down, declaring it sour before asking for another one.

I followed her following the cat who was hot on the trail of a mouse.

I tried to convince her that pulling weeds might be fun.

She convinced me it was time to go inside.

But before dinner was on the table we were back out there again because Addy said, “Jessie come out here, I think that it’s growing! The garden is growing!”

And so she was right. It was growing. Growing by the minute like this little girl’s wonder and knowledge of the world. So I told her that it might grow faster if we watered it a bit. She grabbed the end of the hose and I headed for the spigot.

“Ready. Set. Go!” Addy yelled in my direction as I pulled the lever up and the water made its way through the hose and to the little girl’s hands squeezing the nozzle.

Addy was watering the garden.

It’s what good princesses do. They tend to the growing things and make the world a little bit greener, the sky a little bit bluer, the birds a little bit chirpier and grown women cry at the utter cuteness of it all…

It turns out, little garden princesses make rainbows too.

At least that what princess Addy did. She made a rainbow with the sun and the water.

“Look Jessie, I’m watering the rainbow!”

“No Addy, you made it! Look at that, you made a rainbow!”

And then I cried a little bit under the protection of my sunglasses so my family observing from the deck could not see that she was melting my heart into a puddle in my chest.

Turns out that making rainbows make princesses thirsty and so Addy needed a drink…




And I cried some more.

Yes, Pops has always kept a garden, but if he never plants another one, it won’t matter. All of the failed attempts at squash, overgrown asparagus and horse-chewed corn on the cob was worth it.

Because it turns out gardens are not made for horses or rabbits or moles or regular people who like home grown tomatoes. No. Gardens are made  for princesses, and finally, one came to visit ours!

Sunday Column: On horses and what it means to hold on

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July is full of so many seasons out here in the middle of America. We have fireworks season, chokecherry season, lake season, running through the sprinkler season, county fair season, street dance season, grilling season, family reunion season and, of course, wedding season.

This month holds so much potential for fun and connecting with community and family that it’s one of the reasons I wait for it all year.

And one of the reasons each day of sweet July is planned, each square on my calendar is filled in with an idea and an event I cannot miss.

This weekend was one of those that has held its spot of anticipation for months. The youngest of the Veeder cousins had a date to get married and so the rest of the cousins were summoned from Western North Dakota, Eastern North Dakota, Southern North Dakota, Washington DC, South Dakota and Texas to give him hugs and cry because he was all grown up.

And so we were all together to celebrate most of the seasons: fireworks season, wedding season, grilling season, lake season, dancing season and family reunion season.

Here we are, all grown up! (We missed you Little Big Sister and your Little Man)

This past week spent with the cousins and family who used to gather in my grandparent’s tiny house tucked in the buttes of the ranch for Easter egg hunts and turkey dinner and carols by the Christmas tree has been the highlight of my summer.

And so I’ll tell you all about it when I sort through the photos.

I promised you last week and I’ll keep my word.

Can you tell we’re related?

Because you have to see these beautiful and talented people. And I have to show you a photo of what we used to look like when we ran around these hills as kids decked out in our fanny packs and neon t-shirts, side ponytails and scraped knees.

You won’t believe that we all turned out to be pretty cool in the end.

It’s true, despite, well…this…

But for now it’s back to the grind and back to life on this ranch, a place that rings with the laughter of my cousins and the adventures we made for ourselves out here when we were glued together by grandparents that left us too soon.

Tonight Husband and I will move some cows from the home pasture out east, because July is also made for ranch work. I will sit on top of a horse I learned to ride under this very hot July sun all those years ago and think about the blessings and lessons this ranch has taught me about horses and family and what it means to hang on tight.

Coming Home: Learning their language, horse whisperer or not
By Jessie Veeder
7/6/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

Sunday Column: Celebrating the Legends in our family

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If I I’ve learned anything from coming home it’s that the people in my family are some of the most fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, trustworthy, giving and talented people in my life.

This last weekend we celebrated family and community with Watford City’s annual Homefest celebration, an event that features street dances, street fairs, kids games, art and music in the park, golf and a road race, all ways for reunioners to get together and reconnect.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for months because it meant that our family got to have a little reunion of our own. My cousin from Texas had made plans to swing through the ranch with her two adorable kids and her mom and spend some time before all of my relatives load up and hit the trail to celebrate my baby cousin’s wedding on Saturday.

So that’s why this Sunday post is coming to you on a Monday. Because yesterday I was making breakfast and squeezing sweet baby cheeks and picking wildflowers and climbing the hill my cousins fondly refer to as Pots and Pans with the next generation of Veeders in tow.

I want to tell you how it made me feel to stand on that hill with my aunt who reminds me more and more every day of my grandmother, and my Pops and uncle and Little Man and my cousin and best friend who used to wear trails with me on this place showing her young daughter what her great grandparents worked so hard to keep for her.

I want to tell you all about it and I will when I sort through all of the photos I snapped of those sweet babies exploring this place. It was the first trip my cousin has taken to the ranch since our wedding almost 7 years ago, so to say it was special would be an understatement.

To say I’m excited to spend next weekend celebrating my baby cousin’s wedding with some of my favorite people in the world who used to lead me up those hills, pick wildflowers for our grandmother’s table and cactus out of our baby cousins’ butts is one of those understatements as well.

But I’ll tell you all about it later. Today, I want to talk about another special gathering of relatives and friends that took place last weekend on top of the badlands on a beautiful summer day where my great uncle Lynn, my grandmother’s baby brother,  was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.


As I say in the column, when it comes to family, we all want to feel like a little part of us is legendary. To watch Lynn be recognized for the work he’s accomplished as a rodeo cowboy and rancher made me proud of our lifestyle, but after the summer days we’ve spent catching up with people connected by roots and stories and blood, I believe the real legacy we leave is in the love, time and memories kept.

Coming Home: Remembering the Legends in our Family
by Jessie Veeder
6/29/13
www.inforum.com 

To have this landscape serve as the backdrop is just another beautiful link in that connection to one another.


Sunday Column: Showing love with rhubarb

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It’s Sunday and I might get to it this afternoon. The row of canning jars lined up on my counter top,  bags of frozen strawberries preserved in the freezer

and stalks of rhubarb waiting for me in Pops’ garden,


waiting for me to stay home long enough to cut, measure thaw and put together a few jars of strawberry rhubarb jam.

It’s Sunday so it’s possible, if the rain keeps falling, hiding the blue sky that means we should go out and work.

Ride my horse.

Chase some cows.

Cut some weeds.

Cut some wildflowers.

Cut some rhubarb…

Because in this weather where the planting was done late and the vegetable seeds are working to break through the ground, the presence and plethora of the ever hearty rhubarb plant sitting out there in the dirt or hiding under the berry bushes makes me feel guilty for failing to reap the benefits.

Rhubarb should be appreciated, made into something, tasted, tested and shared. And because I haven’t had a moment to pick and put some sugar on it, I wrote about it.

Coming Home: Showing love with rhubarb
by Jessie Veeder
6/23/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com 

So I think I’ll make time for the jelly today. I owe it to the plant and my Pops who keeps reminding me, there’s rhubarb growing out back…