Tag Archives: Home

Not because the land is mine…

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This morning a documentary film maker came to the ranch to visit with Pops and I about what makes our community special and to try to get to the root of why the people who chose to stay or come home to farms, ranches and small towns in Western North Dakota are so passionate about this lifestyle.

He asked us what it is about the landscape that inspires us.

He contemplated what it’s like to watch a community you know so well boom and bust and boom and bend and mold and grow in front of our eyes.

He wanted to know about our roots.

And in between the lighting checks, the questions about the economy, the oil boom and what it was like to be a child surrounded by all this wild space with an unspoken expectation to get gone someday, he wondered what it was that brought us back…

I have many answers to this question:

The promise of a sunrise over a landscape that grew me.

The need for the wind in my hair.

The hope that my children might be born to dig in this dirt and smell the first rain of the season.

The fact that I was planted here

That I belong nowhere else…

How do you say these things? How do you explain reasons to a stranger that you have not understood well enough to explain to yourself?

I thought about the question and kept quite as my father looked into the camera and told this story.

About his mother’s father.

His grandfather, Severin, tall and lean from the fjords of Norway.

A homesteader.

A farmer.

A husband and soft-spoken, good-natured, father of twelve who made a living with his family plowing fields and raising a few farm animals for milk and meat.

In those days when farmers like my great-grandfather were sectioning off land and turning up dirt in the more fertile landscape north of the Little Missouri River, there were major cattle operations still present that would use those acres to drive a herd of hundreds across country to the big operations in the badlands to the south.

And so the story goes, and it isn’t a long one, that Severin woke one morning to find his cattle missing.  My father is quick to point out here that the quantity of cattle raised by Severin’s large family likely consisted of only five to seven milk cows—not a large herd worthy of the drama of a Western novel and apparently not significant enough for the cowboys to take notice or any action to sort them off from the herd.

But no matter the numbers, they were Severin’s cattle and he was determined to retrieve what had mistakenly and nonchalantly been taken from him.

So the tall and soft-spoken Norwegian homesteader from the clay-packed fields of western North Dakota (the man who rode his bicycle 93 miles over North Dakota prairie from the train station to his homestead) took off that day, with a big stick in his hand, to begin the 7-mile walk over rugged buttes, under the hot sun (or maybe the relentless wind, to this story there is no season)  to find his cattle, to sort them off from the herd that tried to own them, to turn them around and bring them home.

7 miles.

To the land he laid claim to.

The home where his son raised his family.

Where his grandson has raised his.

Where his great-grandchildren are likely to return.

My father laughed as he completed painting an image of a man from another time.

A time when you gave everything inside of you not only to belong somewhere, but to survive there.

Severin’s blood pumped through the veins of my grandmother just as it moves with every heartbeat inside the body of the man who raised me.

Inside my body.

The one I can’t seem to move off of this place, not because the land is mine…

but because it is me.

Severin’s Family.
My grandmother is the young girl in the middle with the bow.

A poem for the hot summer sun…

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Summer if I could put you in the pocket of my jeans

I would take the way the sun shines through my dad’s fresh garden peas.

Then I’d grab the smell of green grass and the sky a vivid blue

I’d leave behind misquotes and I’d forget my shoes.

And oh, if I could catch you under an old mason jar lid

I’d be sure grab a baseball and the sprinklers for the kids.

Then I’d saddle up the horses and put the cattle out to graze

because I need my ponies ready at the end of long, hot days.

We’ve talked about this summer, how you come and go too fast

and I’d like to find a way to hold on tight and make it last.

So summer, I have warned you that I might just catch your light

and keep you by my bedside for those long December nights.

I could be a bird…

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My world is packed up in boxes in my parent’s garage. Stacks of important papers and photographs, hats and shoes, books I’ve never read and albums I haven’t listened to in years. We pulled these things from a home that was threatened by flames and forces we can’t control.

We did not grab one another when the wall of our home was smoking from the inside out into the night. No, we placed our arms around computer screens and television sets, guns and guitars. We threw our possessions on the earth to be saved and to save us from the need we might feel to replace them.

What it would cost us to purchase another would mean time and money, the things that take up the biggest part of us some days.

And now here it all sits waiting for us to use it. To go through the books and read the stories inside. To listen to the music, to watch others live their lives on the television screen, to step into our favorite dress or shirt and go out into the world to show it off.

Some days I don’t want all of this shit. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want a choice between red boots or black, I don’t want the papers reminding me to pay, I don’t want the movies suggesting I should stay in and watch a world that doesn’t exist for us.

I don’t want the memories waiting in boxes for me to recall what we were when we were sixteen and sun kissed and scared to death.

I don’t want it weighing on me.

Some days.

Yesterday a wise voice coming through the radio on my car spoke to me.

He told me that we do not have a soul, we have a body.

I pause to think of this today when my clothes feel heavy against the wet sticky heat of the summer and the body that houses my soul is feeling tired at the thought of moving through the tasks we’ve laid out for the day.

And I think about where my soul might live next.

Perhaps in the body of the yellow bird that returns to the feeder outside of this office window, concerned with nothing but her next bite,  spreading her wings and cooling herself in the puddles left from an early morning rain.

A bird attached to nothing but the sky.

Or maybe a long living oak with the mission to reach my branches out to the sun in the summer, to release them in the autumn chill and sleep until the spring sun asks me gently to bloom again.

I would have roots that would keep me grounded and grass and branches from the aspen or the birch to keep me company, to lean on, to protect me from the wind.

Maybe a wildflower, a thistle or a cricket screeching my song into the night.

I could be all of those things.

But today I don’t want to be attached to anything…

I have felt like this as a teenager, before I understood what I was so anxious about, what it was that was worrying me.

Why I suddenly had so many emotions pulling at my skin.

I remember walking out into the rain on a cool late summer evening. I wasn’t upset or worried or milling anything over in my mind. I just wanted to be out there, away from the four walls of a house, away from the telephone and parents who wanted to talk, things that needed to be thought through. I don’t know why, but I felt heavy that day with the business of being human and I wanted nothing more than to be a blade of grass, grounded and soaked in this rain.

I walked further into the protection of the oak groves and stepped off of my path, then slowly out of my shoes and finally out of my clothing. I stood there in the lush green of the weeds and wild fruit bushes, under a canopy of leaves dripping the rain down through their branches and onto my bare skin. There I was naked and caught in the moment of what it feels like to be so alone and so exposed and so unbelievably grateful for the silence and familiarity of nature.

I was comfortable like this for only moments before I glanced down at my pale skin and recognized that imperfect body once again as my own. But for a moment I was there, holding my breath, and I was the rain and the clouds and the dirt. I was the grass and the still, damp air.

I wasn’t my body.

I was my soul.

I know I am blessed as a human, blessed to have this soul in this body with a voice that can sing out loud, arms that I can wrap around the people I love and legs capable of  moving me to hilltops to get closer to the sky. I understand that those boxes are stacked high and filled with things that many people would love to possess. I am not taking them for granted and I am not wishing for the reminders of a good life that are held in those albums to disappear. I am not wishing them away.

Today I am just asking to not be held accountable for my possessions or a body that doesn’t do much to hide the relentless emotions of a soul that too often crinkles up my nose when it cries, bites the scar on her lip in worry, screams air out of her lungs in frustration and laughs with an enthusiasm that sometimes cannot be contained.

Today I am just taking a moment to remember that someday my soul may have wings…

Summer heat

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When summer sets in out here among the clay buttes and tall grasses it’s like nothing else.

It’s like our world could not be further away from the one we know in the middle of January when the windswept snow drifts outside our door and the cold is so cold it actually hurts.

But in mid July the air swelters. It settles on the top of the water in our stock dams and grows creatures we haven’t seen for months. It pools up under our cowboy hats, drips down the back of our work shirts and moves with us in the slow motion effort we use to make it through the day.

The people and animals of the north were not meant for 90+ degree weather. We see it coming and run for a canopy of trees, find refuge inside the ice cold of a sparkling drink and on the other end of our lawn hoses. We watch our garden grow and wait for the sun to retreat to do the weeding or to check how the radishes are coming along.

We swat horseflies and search in our houses for the summer cutoffs we wear five times a year to sit by the fan and say “Geesh, it’s a hot one.”

Our skin turns from white to red to brown as the wild sunflowers growing in road ditches reach their petals toward the sky.

We know who we are here inside the smells, sounds and sites of a season we wait all year to indulge in. We know what it looks like and what it means.

It means foxtails sweeping and bending in the draws, horseflies biting at our necks, hard cracked earth and tall wild grass that scratches our bare legs.

It means sweaty brows and an alfalfa crop, a sky with no clouds in site and dust hanging in the air kicked up by neighbors and big trucks heading out somewhere.

Summer means rain puddles left in the sun to dry, dragonflies and pink sunsets and a sky twinkling so bright you can’t tell the difference between fireflies and stars.

And we hold this under our skin, the pieces of the hard dirt, the swish of a horse’s tail, the sweet smell of cattle and summer grass and the trails we wore down to dust, we keep this with  us as we move through the season, grow tired of the heat and welcome the cool down.

And come January when the ground is white we will say to one another “Can you believe it was ever green out here?”

Then we will close our eyes and dream of a summer that held heat under our hats and sent it trickling down our backs.

Songs for home

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I want to thank all of you for your support and words of encouragement regarding the loss of the old farmhouse last week. We are very fortunate to have been able to save most of our things and even more fortunate that we have another house in the works over the hill that we will be able to move into very soon thanks to the help of our wonderful friends and family.

In life we are given little nudges and reminders to slow down, breathe and re-evaluate. I truly believe this was one of those times and I am so glad we stayed quiet enough to listen.

Today I am thankful that my knees are sore from tiling the floor in the new house all weekend and that I’ve been wearing the same two tank tops and three pairs of pants for the last five days because my momma’s been washing all of our clothes. I am thankful for my father-in-law’s plumbing skills and for running water, for the forgiveness of summer weather and for the fact that my sister and brother-in-law spent their anniversary laying hard wood floor in our house.

I am thankful for the rice-krispie bars the neighbor made, for my Pop’s patience with the world as he spent an entire ten-hour day with me running around to home improvement stores and for the fact that he only used a few cuss words when we got home at midnight in the pouring rain only to get a huge trailer full of house supplies stuck in the muddy driveway.

I’m thankful that one of my biggest annoyances is that I can’t find my left riding boot.

I am thankful that I have memories that can never be destroyed and new ones waiting for us over the hill.

I’m thankful that I have a moment today to catch up on work and share with you a little glimpse into one of the most exciting things happening in my world these days–the creation of my new album, scheduled for release before summer comes to a close.

Take a sneak peek at the recording process and hear me talk about why I think this work is so timely.

Jessie Veeder talks about recording her new album with Makoche Studios 

Because if I’ve learned anything in the past few years of making plans and moving around between the walls in that little old house on the ranch it’s that this place inspires me, feeds my soul and encourages me to share my story.

And as long as I can exist out here among the oak trees, barbed wire fences, pink gravel roads and clay buttes, no matter the walls that hold me, I will be forever grateful and forever inspired.

And I will always have a song for home.

Prairie Musicians Series: Jessie Veeder & Lonesome Willy
Prairie Public Television  

Check out my new music website: www.jessieveedermusic.com to keep updated on the latest on the release and the performances.

Irreplaceable Things…

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Sometimes in the middle of an ordinarily beautiful summer night, below a nearly full moon and among crickets singing their song into the darkness the world takes a moment to remind you that you are not in control.

We were reminded of this in the early morning hours of an ordinary Tuesday as we stood on the edge of the barnyard and watched our neighbors work to control the flames that were threatening to destroy a house that has been a fixture of memories on this landscape for well over 50 years.

As the smoke rolled from the walls and out the windows I kneeled among the things I was able to grab while we still had time–my guitar, my books of writing, my camera and photographs chronicling years of blessed living, pieces of me I could not bear to  see dissolve in the heat of a disaster we were powerless to stop–and I knew this was that last night I would spend under that roof.

We weren’t ready to let go. We had plans for this house, plans that I have shared here to ensure many more years of popsicles on the front porch, canning wild berries in the tiny kitchen,  waking to the sound of horses grazing in the pasture below us, windows open to the prairie breeze and watching the sunrise from the window above the kitchen sink.

But we’ve been reminded, once again, that nothing’s forever. That house where my father was raised, where my grandmother lived and died, where I put on Christmas performances with my cousins, fell in love, grew up and sighed a breath of relief when my new husband carried me over its threshold, held us close and reminded me that I can come home again.

That no matter how lost I might be, I can be found, out here among the wild grasses, red barn and sweet smell of horse hair.

And so I have been found. And thanks to the quick response of the rural volunteer fire department–our neighbors, local bankers, truck drivers, farmers and ranchers that transformed into heroes in the night–we did not have to watch that house burn to the ground. We were able to walk through its doors once again and bury our noses in the smoke-laced fabric of our world and make decisions on what to keep– our favorite sweater, our dining room table, a forgotten photograph–and most importantly, what to let go.

 We are thankful for that.

And thankful for our community of friends and family who helped us sort through the rubble, made us dinner, poured us a strong drink, encouraged us to salvage the irreplaceable things (like the rocking horse that has been in our family for as long as that house has stood ) and told us everything was going to be alright…told us they’d be right over to help with paint the new house, put in the floors and get us ready to move in.

We are blessed. Unbelievably blessed.

So today I am thankful to kick through the rubble, to sort my clothes on the lawn, to make plans with my husband, take a trip to the lumberyard with my pops, curl up on my momma’s couch rest easy knowing that we can never lose everything.

Because we are worry and love, community and friends, sentiment and replaceable things.

We are us, we are exhausted and summer’s only so long.

We have a life to build out here.

We’re moving on.

I will leave the light on
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
August 17, 2011 

To come down from the buttes after staying out a little too far past sundown only to see the lights of the barnyard illuminating the grass and the kitchen of the house glowing warmly through the windows, waiting for my return…

it means more to me than I can describe here.

I imagine the same sight greeting my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and my father. I imagine them feeling the same deep breath, the same overwhelming calm as they drove in from the fields, rode up to unsaddle a horse or strip off the layers from a hunt in the hills in the still of a late summer or autumn evening.

I imagine the smell of baked bread reaching them from the open windows or the smoke from a grilled steak waiting for them to sit down around the table, the door swinging open and the warmth of this old house whispering “this is home this is home this is home this is home…”

No matter how far you find yourself.

No matter the distance between you and these buttes.

No matter the time that has passed, the mistakes that you’ve made, the words you can’t take back, the pain you might hold onto, the life you might have found down the road or the love you might have lost here…

No matter.

Don’t worry.

This is home…

And I will leave the light on.

Pug: For Giveaway

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When I’m out and about in the world–working, shopping, grabbing a drink with friends–there’s  a common question people from all corners of my life make sure they stop to ask me. It isn’t “how ’bout that weather,” or “how’s the new house coming along?” (the answer is “slow” in case you’re wondering). No, it’s not even “why’s your hair weird?” or “where’s your husband?”

It’s “How’s the pug?”

Followed by “Any more run-ins with porcupines?”

And then “Does he still think he’s a cat?”

“Has he peed in your husband’s boot lately?”

“Is he still wandering around the countryside?”

And finally “Oh that dog, he makes me laugh.”

The damn pug. Everyone just loves him.

These days, as his behavior has moved further away from domestic lap dog and closer to wild hound I’m trying to figure out, despite all of the reasons I shouldn’t, why I don’t send that damn dog packing.

Because as I run through the answers to the questions it’s pretty evident that’s exactly what I should do.

I should just let him run away like the wild wind he thinks he is, tell him that the next time he hits the road, curly tail in the air, nose to the ground sniffing out which oil rig or neighbor has steaks on the grill, I should just leave him there to fend for himself.

Yeah.
I should.

I had this discussion with myself yesterday when a friend I work with in town popped in my office to tell me she had received a phone call.

About the pug.

See I hadn’t seen him ever since I pried him off of the couch a few days earlier and shoved him out the door to find a spot to poop.

Well apparently he likes a little privacy to do his business away from the house…like far away.

And apparently it takes him a while…or maybe he just gets distracted by things like butterflies, wandering coyotes, the herd of cattle up the road and, well, life in general.

Each time he goes missing I imagine him sitting shotgun in a big rig finally fulfilling his dream of traveling the country by highway, front paws up on the edge of the open window as he leans into the wind, letting it blow through is floppy ears sending the drool trailing off with the dust of the 18-wheels. I think of him looking over at the truck driver with the white beard, bald head and Harley Davidson t-shirt, and saying something like “Hey, thanks for picking me up man. I’ve been trying to get out of here for years. Life on the road…now this is livin'”

In my imagination the pug’s voice sounds like one that would come out of the lungs of a middle-aged biker who’s been smoking cigars and Marlboro Reds his entire life.

Anyway…it’d been a few days since I’d seen the damn dog,  but I wasn’t concerned. Aside from the one recent episode where my momma was on her way home from a trip to the city and spotted a black dot out in the middle of our neighbor’s pasture nearly four miles away from home, the dog has generally been making his regular rounds. When I decide it might be time to get him back on his diet, I’ll get in the pickup and start my searching ritual: up to the oil site south of the house, then the one across the road. If he’s not there, I’ll check mom and dad’s. If he’s still MIA,  he’s usually at the rig near the highway.

It’s getting ridiculous, but each time I arrive to load his fat ass into the pickup I have to spend a good ten to fifteen minutes talking to the guys about how awesome he is, how bad-ass he looks with one eye, how much fun they had with him and how they fed him T-bones and let him sleep in their campers with them that night.

No wonder the little bastard won’t stay home.

How can I compete with T-bones?


Anyway…back to yesterday. The pug was missing and I was starting to get a little concerned because he wasn’t in any of his usual locations. And the lab was home.

When the lab is home and the pug is not, that’s when things get hairy. The pug, left to his own devices, has the potential to go rogue and stay that way until someone comes looking for him. And he never calls to tell us how late he’ll be out.

But I decided I had reached an all-time low when I got a phone call about the bandit AT WORK!

This electrician who had been working on a site on the highway tracked me down to let me know that  the little shithead had been hanging around the site for days (shithead might have been my word and not his) and I suddenly felt like a mother who’s kid had been sent to the principal’s office.

And I would have never thought to check there. The pug would have been missing forever, because Lord knows he wouldn’t have made his way home until he was certain there were no more steak dinners coming out of those campers.

So on my way home from work I got to make a pit stop to pick up the pug who pretended like he didn’t hear me when I called his name across the muddy field.

But when our eyes finally met he did do me the service of at least acting happy to see me. Like he suddenly remembered he had a previous life away from this construction site. A life that maybe wasn’t so bad after all…I mean, I do occasionally let him sleep on my favorite blanket and feed him leftover dinner scraps. Come on buddy, what more do you want from me?

But I guess I’ll keep him…

tied up in the yard with a “For Giveaway” sign tied around his neck.

You love him?  Come get him!

Shit.

Riding Horses

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There’s something about the view between a horse’s ears that makes a woman forget that she can’t stay up there forever.

It’s the same way she feels watching a man catch a horse. It’s the quiet and gentle approach, the soft way he whispers and coaxes…

And she remembers the good ones.

And it’s how he wears his hat, how his shirt’s tucked in and the way he sits so sure up there next to her riding along.

The way the breeze moves through that horse’s mane before brushing her cheek.

The way the sinking sunlight hits him just right.

How the grass sparkles under that sky.

And all of those things that make her happy to be alive out here…

riding horses.


The business of blooming…

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I think it’s safe to say summer’s here to stay for a bit. I declare this each year when I spot my favorite flower.

And I caught her last week, the wild tiger lily, reaching her soft vibrant petals to the clear sky.

Thrilled to see her I dropped to my knees and took her picture.

Because if I know anything about beauty this vivid and perfect it’s that it is fleeting.

It doesn’t last forever.

It doesn’t even last all season.

So I’m glad I caught her in her best dress, opened up to the sun, showing off her heart and soul and the reason she was given her name.

When I come back to this world after my death I hope I get the chance to come back as a tiger lily on this hill overlooking the badlands.

To be rooted that way, yet so wild. To be a bulb deep in the earth waiting for the warm sun to beckon my grand entrance.

To be able to wear my best dress every day through rain and wind, sunrise and sunset…

to have no concept of time…

To worry about nothing but the business of blooming.

A good day to be the pug.

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Ahhh, Monday.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little scared of the days of the week that are to follow. The hustle and bustle that comes with the short North Dakota summers is now officially in full swing. Yeah, we’ve gotta cram it all in before the snow flies again.

And all I want to do is lay next to this guy in the sunshine and soak it all in.

Monday. I have been dreading you and all of your promises about grocery shopping, finishing the laundry, meeting deadlines, cleaning up those dishes that have been sitting over the weekend, returning phone calls, sorting through emails, attending meetings, planning events and being forty-seven places at once with a homemade dessert.

Monday, I’m not ready for you yet.


It’s cloudy, the blue birds are chirping outside my window and my bed and the coffee are still warm.

Sigh.

Days like these remind me of when I was a teenager moping around with that little gray cloud of dread over my head about a chore I didn’t want to do or a class I didn’t want to attend. I remember looking at my cat stretched out on the couch in a spot of sun and wishing I was her…with no responsibilities, no chores, no dishwasher to unload, bed to make or homework to fuss over…nothing to concern herself with but sleeping and eating and pooping and lounging.

At these moments in my life I experienced the same jealousy toward anything with fur and four feet. The dogs and the simple lives they lead. No deadlines or term-papers.

The cows grazing on the hilltop, blissfully unaware of the life and death situations humans had to deal with regarding what to wear to prom or failing your drivers license test.

I wondered if horses felt humiliation. I figured they didn’t.

And I figured the grass and grain would suit me just fine if it meant I didn’t have to worry about being the only teenager in the world to never gain the legal qualifications to drive a car.

I wanted to lounge.

I wanted to graze.

I wanted to stand on a hilltop and let the breeze blow through my mane, my only concern to be switching my tail to keep the flies off of my back.

And it seems today I am regressing. Yes, facing this over-scheduled week I am once again experiencing those pangs of jealousy toward my furry companions who’s only chore is to walk past the food dish a few times to check to see if it’s full.

I want to snore away the morning like the lab at my feet.

I don’t want to make dessert.

I don’t want to do the dishes.

I don’t want to worry about supper or the business of picking out pants…or shoes.

Dogs don’t wear shoes.

And Pugs don’t have to make Jello Salad. Pugs hate Jello Salad.

And meetings.

And showers.
 Today would be good day to be the pug…