Tag Archives: Home

This familiar place

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Weekends out here can be bliss. Especially when it’s 50+ degrees and sunny and crisp and it’s autumn and your little sister comes over to spend the whole two days with you.

This happens sometimes–the weather cooperates perfectly with the plans you have. And our plans consisted of big breakfasts and coffee, a long walk through our favorite coulees,

a ride with Pops to our favorite spot in the trees

and a couple birthday parties for Little Big Sister and her Little Man.

Little Sister and I scheduled our weekend together and proceeded to tackle the checklist that ensured we got to everything from omelets to birthday cake. And we accomplished it all.

See, she’s been gone for a bit, out doing what we’ve been taught to do when we hit eighteen and graduate high school: get out, get going, see stuff, learn stuff, work and study and graduate and travel.

And come back if you want to.

Come back for a while.

And so Little Sister has come back. She’s come back with the same sort of remembered wonder that I experienced a few short years ago when I did the same thing. I’ve tried to explain it here a few times in these lines and photographs I share with you, how rediscovering those secret places I used to wander at the ranch as a child hold a sort of haunting nostalgia and comfort when visited as an adult.

But now that I have arrived and am here to stay my childhood secret spots have become familiar again. I visit them regularly either for a stroll to take photographs or to chase cattle along the trails. I am remembering and learning every day where all of these deer and cow paths wind and twist and turn, determined to be capable of navigating the place the way Pops does one day, without pause or back track.

And it’s an interesting and adventurous task I’ve set out to accomplish, one that, growing up, was always tackled with a shadow following a few yards behind me.

I swear just yesterday I was hollering at that little curly-haired six-year-old in the purple barn jacket to “go home and leave me alone!” Just yesterday, wasn’t I suggesting that if she really had to build a fort along the same creek bed, perhaps it should be a little further up the coulee and out of my sight.

And there we were last weekend walking side-by-side, adult women with our own fears and worries pushed back until Monday, tucked away so that we might enjoy and remember the time the tire swing broke sending Little Sister flailing into the creek, how we used to climb the old apple trees behind the house, and the hours we spent following Pops chasing a cow or a deer in the oak trees and brush that line the creek bottom.

How many mittens did we drop along the way? How many times did our boots fill with creek water?

How many wood ticks and burs and grass stains did we accumulate?

And in all of the lines and photographs I share in this space about the magic and adventure the ranch, our home, holds for me–all the ways I tell you it mystifies and heals, puts me in my place and brings me closer to the version of myself I like the most, I have to confess it is not the landscape alone that holds the responsibility.

I imagine I could fall in love with a number of creek beds, oak groves and rolling fields, marveling at the way the afternoon sun hits the leaves that have fallen into the water, getting to know how the trail winds up the embankments, coming to understand how it changes with the season.

I know I could fall in love with many places and landscapes throughout this world.

But it is this one, this one that holds my father’s footprints, my Little Sister’s laugh, my mother’s call to come in for supper. It is this one that promises Little Man a place to run and learn to ride horse and Big Little Sister a refuge if she needs it.

It is these hills, these paths, these coulees, these acorns, these fallen trees and fallen logs and this mud and these thorns and soft grasses that have bent under my growing feet and the feet of those who know me the best that gives this place a heartbeat and makes the sunrise brighter, the trees grow taller, the creek clearer, the horses more capable…

and me more grateful every day that through all these years we can be out in it, loving it and living in those familiar spaces on a days that were made to be together.

I blame the wind

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The wind is blowing like a spooky scene in a movie outside my window. What’s left of the leaves on the trees really have no chance at this point. It’s autumn and it’s acting like it, regardless of the fact that I was getting comfortable with weather in the upper 60s.

I’m not sure if it’s the wind or the rain or the cold that’s stirring things up, but I feel like the universe is out to annoy me.

I mean, I woke up this morning to the rain beating on the roof of this house and the wind whipping its hardest against the siding. It felt like it might shape up to be a nice day to stay home under the blankets, only, some people have to work.

And I am some people.

So I drug my weary body out of bed only to discover Husband milling around the house with a headlamp strapped to his forhead. Thinking this was a sweet ploy not to wake me in the dark of the early morning hours, I pulled my robe around me tight and flipped on the light switch.

And got nothing.

The same result with the faucet.

No power.

No water.

No lights, no coffee, no heat, no coffee, no shower, no coffee.

No coffee.

Well, I had to get to town so I came up with a reason this situation was a good thing. If I couldn’t take a shower, at least it was dark enough in the house so that I couldn’t see my hair sticking up or if my socks matched. At least I would have an excuse for looking disheveled. So I loaded myself and my empty thermos into the car and made my way to town, put on a little makeup in the visor mirror of my car when I arrived and, well, it all went down hill from there.

And I blame the wind.

I blame the wind for the fact that not even a ponytail can contain this wild hair. And for the hole in my sock that my big toe’s been poking through all day.

I blame the wind for my attention defect disorder while trying to meet a deadline.

I blame the wind for the long lines at the postoffice, the grocery store, the gas station and at the stoplight in town. I mean, it could be the damn apocalypse.

I blame the wind for blowing the door open to the house while I was gone and bringing with it a nice collection of leaves I’ll be cleaning out of this place until next fall.

I blame the wind for the fact that the dogs ran away. Again.

And while I’m at it, I blame the wind for compelling this ridiculously playful kitten to take painful swipes at my fingers as they move across the keyboard before she decides to climb up the back of my sweater to perch on my shoulder and put her butt in my face.

And it’s the wind’s fault that I have no idea what to make for supper, which is even a bigger problem because I skipped lunch. That was the wind’s fault too. And so is the lack of wine in the house and the fact that the lights in the bathroom didn’t come on with the rest of them when the power returned.

I blame the wind for the cow poop in the yard and the fact that we might never get around to finishing this house.

I blame the wind for the moldy cheese in my fridge, my laundry pile-up situation, the lack of cell-phone service in this house, my missing motivation to run a marathon, lift a weight, climb a hill or do any related form of exercise , the weird mole on my neck, my shattered dreams of becoming a professional figures skater, my sub-par culinary skills and my unruly eyebrows.

I blame the wind.

I blame the wind.

I blame the wind.

And I feel better.

Trail Riding

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It was a beautiful fall weekend at the ranch and to celebrate roundup and the change of the seasons and friends and horses and kids and ranch life in general our community got together for a trail ride.

The Blue Buttes Trail Ride is a tradition that has been organized on and off for years in this rural “neighborhood” that spans a circumference of 30 some miles.

When I was growing up this event was the like Christmas. The opportunity to ride my horse across pastures all day alongside my best friends made me feel grown up and capable and wild and free and a million things that a little girl wants to be when she’s 8 or 9 or 10.

Sometimes it snowed. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes the wind blew and sometimes we got all three. But regardless of the weather, the neighborhood showed up. They showed up with their horses and wagons and drinks and snacks and kids and they rode together on a trail mapped out weeks before that stretched for miles across pastures and cleared fields, through coulees and along fence lines and roads.

I don’t remember anything from when I was a kid about the route we took or the weather really, I just remember being so excited the night before that I couldn’t sleep. I remember riding my old mare, Rindy, kicking my feet out of the stirrups during the third or fourth mile, swinging my leg over the top of my horse’s neck and thinking I was cool.

Thinking that there was no kid in the world luckier than me.

And so this weekend, almost twenty years later (20? REALLY?) I saddled up again to hit the trail with my neighbors. And I have to say, aside from a little horse malfunction due to all of the energy in the air on that warm fall morning, it wasn’t long before I was feeling all those things again.

Cool? Well, maybe it was more temperature related than attitude, but capable and wild and free and lucky?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And really proud of my community and how they’ve held on to this tradition despite a changing world.

Proud of how they’ve kept their kids on the backs of horses and encouraged them to run.

Humbled by how they swing ropes and hitch up teams of horses to wagons.

Proud of their potluck dinners and generosity and enthusiasm for a lifestyle that is unique and important and tested by the modern world every day.

For twelve miles I sat on the back of a good horse and rode next to a friend. We talked about life and house building, husbands and pets, horses and work.

And we observed our world as it played out before us, young kids, their stirrups barely reaching the bellies of their mounts, kicking and flying back and forth across the pastures as fast as their horses were willing to take them.

Those kids would have gone faster and further if they were allowed.

And we watched families connected as they talked and laughed and moved through the pastures and gates. Old friends catching up.

Sisters laughing and joking.

A big extended family loaded and bundled up in a wagon sharing snacks and stories.

A husband and wife riding quietly side by side, helping one another along.

Whatever’s going on here.

And my friend and I, getting to know one another and the landscape that stretched for twelve miles as Pops pointed out where his mother was born, the dam where he used to swim and the route we took nearly twenty years ago when I was 8 or 9 and knew nothing but those miles and the back of my favorite horse.

Last Saturday I may as well have forgotten everything I’ve ever learned and all the things I’ve seen and have come to know in those years between. I may as well have forgotten I’d ever wanted to be anyone else.

Or anywhere else.

Because I was having good old-fashioned, genuine fun.

And I was the luckiest kid in the world.

More time

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If I had one wish worth fulfilling I would wish the days longer.

I would wish for the sunrise to take its time,

and for the afternoon heat to linger.

And I would suggest that the night wait a while to come creeping in, sprinkling stars and showing off the moon.

I would ask to prolong that evening light, that witching hour where the world seems to glow with the soft golden haze of the sun.

I need more time to bask in it.

And I need more time to get to my work, to do the things I love and do them right. With care. With thought.

Yes, if I had a wish I would wish for more time.

More time.

To linger in embraces.

And kisses.

And not worry about the passing hours and a list impossible to tackle in the time given me in 24.

If I had a wish, I wouldn’t make lists.

I would move through the day knowing that what I get done is good enough.

And I would splash in more puddles.

If the earth spun slower I would take longer walks, I would write more poems, scratch more bellies, take longer baths, and can those tomoatoes already.  

I would spend more time on the back of a horse,

in a conversation with my mother, over pancakes in the morning and in his arms at night.

If the sun would wait to set I would get in my car and drive to see you. I would. I would come with the muffins I baked and the bottle of wine I picked up along the way because I had time to make muffins.

And to pick the perfect bottle of wine.

Because I wished for more time.

I wish.

Delusions.

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I’ve been meaning to tell you some things about the pug. You’re all so supportive of him, the dog who, despite his sins and misadventures, still somehow finds a way to sleep on the couch.

Anyway, I figured you might be wondering how he’s been adjusting to this new life in his new home over the hill.

I’ll tell you, at times, it hasn’t been pretty…

And sometimes, his ear does this.

I’m guessing it’s probably due to the wind whipping through his fur as his short, stubby legs take his barrel shaped body across the pasture to try his luck at hunting down this guy:

Nope, not much has changed. Despite the new four walls the pudgy canine is still shitting on floors, hitchhiking to the nearest oil sites to see what’s cooking, working on taming the new feline in his life and exercising his delusions of grandeur.

And every year those delusions get, well, grander.

Don’t tell him he’s not a horse. He won’t believe you.

He will also not accept that he is not a cat.

Or a 110 pound cow dog.

Which is working out really well, now that Husband is on board with the idea that this dog could actually become something… well…helpful.

And so Husband has decided to work on it, you know, making the pug the best cow dog on our place. Which I realize doesn’t say much for the other dogs at the Veeder Ranch, but based on what we have to choose from, I’ll tell you, it could be true.

But it’s definitely weird.

Because the pug’s newly-honed talent has allowed for a fat little pug-shaped space in the corner of my husband’s heart.

A bond 4 years in the making…

Now I wasn’t aware this new role and relationship was occurring until I witnessed the pug stare down a small herd of cattle that had found their way to our front yard, pleasantly munching on what was left of the green grass poking out from under the fallen oak leaves and acorns.

Anticipating that damn dog’s next move, I hollered his name.
I hollered “no.”
I hollered “get back here!”

The pug turned his good eye toward me in confusion while Husband came up behind me, scolding me for yelling at the pooch.

What?

He then proceeded to inform me that lately he had been working with the pug on the whole cow-chasing thing, because, well he seemed he was brave enough, and when told to “sick ’em”  the lab just runs for the first big stick.

So it’s either Husband or the pug who is destined to perform the task of getting those cows out of the yard.

And it seems the pair have found their common ground.

Delusion.

A prayer for wild women…

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To be content at the end of the day. As the sun goes down and the world goes dark, to know that it was yours for the taking, and so you took.

This is my prayer for you and wild women everywhere.

To know you’ve tamed some wild things, and let the others run free. To have ridden hard and fallen harder.

To have found your way back to your feet.

This I hope for you.

To have loved a good man, a good horse and a good dog, but not necessarily in that order.

To have been loved. I know you have been loved.

To have mud on your boots, on your face and under your fingernails and still call it a good day. To know the smell of a well-worked horse and call it sweet. To stand in the rain because it’s raining.

To find a soft place to land, wild women, I pray for a soft place to land.

To climb a hill to be closer to the moon.

To do it yourself because you can do it better.

To work. To work. To work. And to love it as much as you can possibly love it.

Wild woman.

Wild, wild women.

This is our prayer.

Under a Badlands Sky…

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One of my favorite autumn rituals has become my now annual trip down the road to visit the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park just outside the ever-expanding limits of my home town.

These days, more than ever, I believe this park to be a blessing and a gift, a reminder among the chaos of a bustling industry to slow down and remember the best things in life.

The sky…

The grass…

The quiet, wild things.

I like to visit those rugged buttes to be reminded that I am one of those quiet, wild things and last week I took my Little Sister along on a little hike so that she could remember that too.

See, Little Sister has just recently come into some major responsibilities after graduating from college last winter. And with her new teaching degree in health and physical education, she has found herself in a small school outside of our hometown writing lesson plans, leading jumping jack sessions, chasing around adorable kindergarteners and helping seniors prepare for college while working on getting a master’s degree in counseling and guidance.

I’m tired just thinking about it, but so proud of this woman who, in my mind, should still be 8 years old and following me up the creek to the forts we built behind the house.

I still find it a little disheartening that when we grow up that seems to be the first thing we give up…walks to nowhere.

And building forts.

But that’s what the ranch does for us, and places like this park. It provides us with a reason to walk to nowhere, to climb to the top of a hill and look down,

to notice how that jet leaves a white streak in the sky and to wonder where it’s going…

while we find we’re happy to be right where we are.

Happy to point out the small deer crossing the road or a chipmunk below our feet instead of worrying about deadlines and messy kitchens to clean.

Happy to notice how the sun shines through the changing autumn leaves on the river bottom instead of how the end tables need dusting and the windows need a wipe.

Happy to trip on a rock as we make our way down from the buttes, happy for a near-miss incident that we can laugh at together, thankful we made it in one piece.

Thankful that we’re not sweeping right now.

Or doing paperwork.

Or making dinner.

Thankful that someone set aside a place for us to go to get away from all of the things that seem to matter so little when it comes to a choice between watching the leaves change or watching a television screen.

Thankful that we can walk to the river and talk about the time Little Sister broke the tire swing as it flung her out over the coulee and dropped her in the creek. Thankful she survived the fall, though she was certain she was dying.

Thankful she has nearly forgiven my reaction of hysterical laughter.

Thankful that years later, though those jets could take us anywhere, we still chose to be out under this beautiful and familiar sky…

Together.

About Today

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I have so many things to tell you about the weekend, about the long ride I took with my two favorite people,

about the leaves changing…

and the radio show we performed on on Saturday.

I want to show you this picture because it’s so damn cute…

and let you that we have tomatoes coming out of our ears in case you need any.

I want to tell you about our new kitten and why my fear that my husband likely lost his mind is equal to the fear I have for my furniture.

And I want to show you my new favorite photo.


I woke up this morning with every intention show you all these things  by performing my Monday ritual of coffee and words. But as I stretched my limbs, turned on the coffee pot and let the dogs out the door I got distracted by the way the frozen air leftover from the evening made the stock dam steam as the sun worked on warming the morning.

I stood at the big windows and watched it roll off the top of the water and suddenly I was very aware of the seconds passing. It seemed the season was changing right in front of my eyes and I wanted to be wide awake.

I didn’t feel like Monday morning or the sleep lines that hadn’t yet had a chance to work their way off my face. I didn’t feel like the daunting deadlines of the week or the kitchen that needed a good cleaning. I didn’t even feel like coffee.

I felt like I needed to be on the other side of those windows.

So before Husband could finish buttoning his work shirt, I pulled on my boots, tucking my bulky sweatpants inside the tops as I reached for a second sweatshirt from the laundry pile. I didn’t want to waste time on things like proper clothing. I had to capture this quiet  moment that I was certain to be short-lived.

Because I know that once it hits the horizon, the sun rises fast…and it never stops moving.

It’s always on time.

I know that raindrops dry up.

I know that when the leaves start to change, winter isn’t far away…

And if I would have slept a few minutes longer I would have missed the pair of ducks cutting their way through the mist.

I know I don’t want to miss these moments.

Or these moments.

Or these.

And I know there are so many things to say…

about today.

Weird.

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Life out here is beautiful.

Life out here is peaceful and dirty and busy and windy and full of long “to-do” lists staring us in the face.

And life out here can be weird.

My first example: Last Sunday night when we arrived home from a trip to see Husband’s family, I was working on unloading the groceries and figuring out the jig-saw puzzle that has become my refrigerator while talking to a friend on the phone when my dearly beloved husband sauntered into the kitchen with a hammer in his hand and declared:

“There was a bat in the bedroom.” And then he nonchalantly walked over to the fridge to free up some space by grabbing a beer.

My mouth dropped and so did the package of celery that was working it’s way into a nook of drawer space as I screamed into the phone:

“HERE! In the NEW house! Why? How? Whyyyy?”

Husband cracked open his beer and walked over to the cupboard in the entryway to replace the hammer.

I stood there with my mouth open, looking up, over my shoulders, scanning the walls and then up at  the ceiling again, scoping out any signs of additional intruders as he walked over to me, took a sip and said,

“Don’t worry. I got him with the hammer.”

What?

I have combined this little episode with the fact that I’ve  had a golfball sized crack in the driver’s side of my windshield since the beginning of May and a companion chip that showed up around mid June. I’m worried that we might soon be getting a call to pose for the cover of  the “Rednecks of America” magazine because I refuse to fix them. Because out here when you have a thirty mile drive to town behind gravel trucks and pickups that go too fast, I have convinced myself that installing a new windshield is like asking for another giant rock chip.

And so I will not take the risk. Instead, I’m somehow comforted knowing that I already have two giant rock chips and am okay with watching my world fly by this way. Because I know they’re there. Apparently I’m not comfortable with the invented and preconceived rock chip that is certain to appear once I spend money on my already ruined windshield.

That is ridiculous.

Which reminds me of another behavior that I cannot explain and certainly have no laid out plans to change. The dogs. When left to their own devices they continue to flee to the nearest drilling rig in search of leftover lunches, t-bone steaks, enchiladas and a rig hand willing to play fetch for hours and let them sleep in their camper. Each time we decide to trust the hooligans to be on their own unsupervised in the great outdoors we find ourselves scouring the countryside for the misguided pets only to find them miles away in doggy heaven.

And each time we go and look for them.

We can’t seem to take a hint. Feed them t-bones, let them sleep in our bed and keep them forever.

Dry dog food and a spot on the floor? When will we realize that ain’t cutting it?

And when will we get it together and build a damn fence already?

Which leads me to the weirdest thing of all. With all of the trouble we have keeping the dogs we have raised and fed for their entire canine lives at home, we have now discovered that a stray puppy is living in our grain bins and seeking refuge in the culvert underneath our road.  We have tried and failed to capture the little guy, who is more like a wild coyote now than a dog, skeptical and resourceful, but a bit intrigued by the humans who poke their heads in on him to fill his food bowl. And now our dinner conversations have been centered around how that poor pup got their in the first place.

And how we might tame him.

That stray puppy is strange and intriguing and sad mixed in with a twinge of that feeling of childhood wonder and hope that we might save this thing…

Yes, out here, no matter how predictable we think our lives have become, whether or not we expect the daily visit from the cattle to graze and shit in the short grass outside our unfenced yard despite the fact that there are acres to shit upon, we seem to always be a little in awe…

About how the dogs always run away and how we never learn. By the sudden startle of a horse, a swarm of unwelcome wasps, and this pan that has been sitting on this hill for longer than I have been alive and I have no idea why.

Yes, life out here is wonderful, broken, dusty, shitty, beautiful, predictably unpredictable…and just weird sometimes.










Yup.

Weird.

Up here, I always feel the same.

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I was interviewed today on Trent Loos‘s radio program, “Loos Tales.” Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer with a passion for the rural lifestyle. “Loos Tales” is dedicated to exploring the interesting people and places of Rural America.
Listen to our discussion here: 

http://www.ruralrouteradio.com/affiliates/thursruralroute.mp3

Now onward! I have to tell you how I feel about roundup season!

There are some tell-tale signs that fall is in the air. The evenings are getting cooler as the sun sets a bit more quickly and I am thinking about canning tomatoes so we can have a piece of summer all year round.

Yes, I’ll try my hand again at preserving our garden vegetables, but haven’t yet found a way to capture the smell of the season changing and the color of the green and gold leaves against an overcast morning sky. This season is so unpredictable, sneaking up on us slowly in the middle of a hot summer day and leaving with a strong gust of wind.

But this year it seems to be settling in despite the heat. The trees that were first to display their leaves this spring are the first to display their colors this September and I’m reminded of roundup season and spitting plums at my little sister on her pony, Jerry, as we rode to the reservation to gather cattle.

Fall roundup has always been one of my favorite events of the season. My memories find me as a young girl bundled up in my wool cap and my dad’s old leather chaps braving the cool morning and a long ride through coulees, up hills, along fence lines and under a sky that warmed the earth a little more with each passing hour.

I would strip off my cap first, and then went my gloves and coat, piled on a rock or next to a fence post for easy retrieval when the work was done.

But moving cattle, even then, never felt like work to me. Perhaps because I was never the one responsible for anything but following directions and watching the gate–it was a task that provided me with the perfect amount of adventure, freedom and accountability.

It was during that long wait from when the crew located all the cattle in the pasture, grouped them together and moved them toward my post that I would make up the best songs, sing the loudest and find ticks for slingshots or the perfect feather for my hat.

Turns out today, as an adult woman, my role when working cattle with Pops and Husband hasn’t changed much. I am the peripheral watcher, the girl who makes sure the cattle don’t turn back or find their way into the brush or through the wrong gate.

I am given direction and then left to my own devices while the guys head for the hills and I wait to see if I will have to battle a horse who is whinnying and prancing and wishing he could go with them.

Sometimes I get lucky and he just stands still.

Sometimes I wait for what seems like hours for any sign of life coming from the trees–the best time still to make up a few melodies in my head and collect photo opportunities.

Because sometimes, most of the time,  it’s just nice.

Nice and easy like it was on Monday morning when Pops showed up with our horses already caught and saddled and asked us to help him move the cows home from the west pasture.

Who could refuse that kind of valet service? So we pulled on our boots and obliged, sitting on the backs of our horses walking slowly, swatting the sticky flies with their tails and anticipating that the calm and sunny morning was sure to turn into a hot afternoon.

I could walk these trails on the back of a horse forever and not get tired of them. Because each month the pastures change–a new fence wire breaks, the creek floods and flows and dries up, the ground erodes and the cows cut new trails, reminding me that the landscape is a moving, breathing creature.

And I am the most alive when I’m out here. I think the guys are too, making conversation about the cattle industry as they make plans for the day. I follow behind like I always have and look around to notice the way the light bounces off of cowboy hats and trees slowly turning golden.

I wait for instruction and find my direction while Husband cuts a path through the trees to search for hidden cows and Pops lopes up to the hilltop to scan the countryside.

I move a small herd toward the gate and wake a bull from the tall grass at the edge of the pasture.

Pops comes up off the hill to join me, the cattle he’s found moving briskly in front of him toward the rest of the herd. We meet up and discuss where Husband might be and turn around to find him waiting at the gate with the rest of the cattle.

And that’s how it went on Monday, the three of us pushing the cows along, Pops at the back of the herd counting, taking note of brands and numbers,

Husband on the hillside making sure they turn the right way,

and me watching the brush.

We pushed the cattle slowly with the sun warming our backs and sweat beading on our foreheads as morning turned to a sweltering afternoon.

We headed toward home and talked about lunch and the fencing that needed to get done that day.

And cattle prices.

And the deer population.

And a pony for Little Man.

And the weather and the changing leaves and all of the things that need discussing when you’re on the back of a horse, on the edge of a season, on a piece of earth that’s constantly changing…

even though, year after year, up here…

I always feel the same.