Tag Archives: horses

Why I’m shopping for khakis and a house in the suburbs…

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Last night I went on a ride with Pops to gather the cows. We were in a hurry because every day it gets darker a little earlier. It was 6:30. It gets dark at 7:30…or something like that.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, I have never been able to keep up with Pops on a horse, and I’m afraid no matter how much help I think I am, I’m quite certain he would be better off without me.

I mean, I could be riding a race horse. You know, one of those fast buggers that wins the races race horses win. It could have countless trophies, made jockeys famous and fans from around the world could be chanting his name. And that horse would take one look at me and decide that running isn’t his thing today.

And neither is trotting for that matter.

Nope.

Not until we’re pointing toward the barn anyway.

Or cutting a path through the thick trees. Yeah, in the trees he’d find his pace.

But Pops. Pops could ride a horse that was half-way to the light at the end of the tunnel and that horse would turn right around to give him his last breath.

So this is what I deal with when we’re in a hurry–kicking and pushing and working to find a pace on a lazy horse to keep up with Pops as he heads toward the trees, providing me with directions that I cannot hear because he is facing the hills and I am three horse lengths behind him.

I yell “What?”

And he says something about following a cow through the trail in the trees.

So I do.

Only there isn’t a trail.

So me and my suddenly-lightening-fast horse make one through the brush so thick that I lose sight of the cow I’m supposed to be following (and all forms of life and light for that matter).

I hear Pops hollering from what seems like twenty miles away and wonder how he got that far in what I’m certain has only been thirty seconds (I’m not sure though because I lose all sense of time as soon as I get into the trees, you know, because I’m focusing on trying to not die a horrible, mangled death now that my horse has found his first wind…)

“Jessss!!!” Pops’ voice echoes through the trees. “Wheeereee youuuuu attt?”

“Uhhhh…” I spit the leaves from my mouth. “Just, uh, cutting a trail here…”

…and bringing with me some souvenirs from the experience–sticks in my shirt, leaves down my pants, acorns in my pockets and twigs jammed nicely in the puffs of my ponytail as I emerge on the other side of the brush alone and searching for any sign of the cow I was supposed to keep an eye on.

Ah, nevermind, looks like Pops has her through the gate.

Shit.

Shit.

I kick my horse to catch up while I work on ridding myself of the vegetation I acquired on my “Blair Witch” journey through the coulee.

I catch up just in time to follow him to the top of a hill, down through another coulee, along the road and into the barnyard where we load up the horses and I wait to make sure Pops’ tractor starts so he can get home and get a bale of hay.

It does not start.

(Good thing I have patience, you know?)

So I drive him and the horses home.

Slowly.

Because I have precious cargo.

And because apparently I like to torture this man who is trying to beat the sun.

And the other man in my life who was still at work when I got in from “helping” and decided to make him a casserole, only to be asked, three bites into his meal, what I put in this thing.

To which I replied “cheese, noodles, hamburger…the regular…why?”

He gets up from his chair while pulling something from his mouth, looks and me and says:

“Because I just bit into a stick.”

Shit.

If you need me I’ll be shopping for khakis and a house in the suburbs.

Summer: A photo recap.

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September is creeping in on us as summer draws to a close.

Summer.

It’s my favorite season, but this year it has definitely been a challenging one. So I’m sad to see it go. I haven’t enjoyed it the way I should have. I haven’t ridden enough horses, I haven’t taken enough walks. I haven’t basked long enough in the sun or written enough songs about  the way the light floods through these windows in the morning.

So tonight I want to celebrate the moments of summer I was able to catch. We may not have had the chance to spend the time together, but the time she gave me was breathtaking and heartbreaking and awe-inspiring and peaceful and colorful and all the things summer is in my heart.

March 10. First ride of the new spring season.

March 21, my first crocus siting of the season…

April 17: My world starts to blossom

April 22: A spring joy ride…

with my favorite cowboy

April 25: Celebrating the green grass.

May 1: And the sky is a perfect blend of blue and white and fuzzy horse face.

May 6: Paddlefishing season!

May 10: The wildflowers bloom.

May 14: And the ranch comes to life.

June 2: The river calls again and it’s my turn to catch something.

June 5: The babies arrive!

June 7: The rain soaked the leaves…

and the badlands…

and the horses…

and the pug.

June 12: A country church along a back road…

June 17: And then there was the back road itself…

July 2: Summer settles in and we pick our favorite horses

July 7: We turn our faces up toward the hot sun.

July 10: We welcome the friendly bugs and watch our garden grow

July 21: The hot sun sets on us.

July 21: Checking the cows.

August 7: We’re home!

August 16: Bullberries in the morning.

August 18: Husband got himself another big catch!

August 26: And then there’s the dogs again…

Ah, summer, if I could put you in a jar beside my bed you know I would.

Enjoy the dog days everyone!

If you need me, I’ll be out catching salamanders…

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.

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.


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…

When it pours…

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We got drenched here yesterday. The morning brought us thunder against the glow of a sunrise trying to peek through the clouds and, well, it just escalated from there.

Around here we don’t get too many downpours like this. Typically we get our moisture in the spring and then watch the sky for a chance of showers to help soften the hard clay throughout the summer, so this day of gully-washing rain was a welcomed site for us.

And when I say gully-washing, I mean it. The coulees were flowing with raging river rapids, the corrals below the house turned into swimming pools, a new ravine was cut along the edge of my driveway and, well, I got myself a free pug wash. It’s days like these that make me feel like I’m in a different world altogether. The ten-year-old in me itches to run around in it, to let the rainwater soak in my hair and squish between the mud in my toes. But the logical grown-up in me decides it’s best not to get pneumonia, even though I’m fully convinced the pneumonia scare was a ploy by  mothers and grandmothers everywhere in an effort to avoid soggy kids running into the house with a pile full of muddy laundry waiting to be stripped from their pruny bodies. But whether it was the threat of a sniffle or the scarier threat of more laundry that willed me to stay inside until the monsoon-like rains subsided, it doesn’t really matter. I was out in it at the first sign of let-up.
Because I love the way rain makes my world look. I love how it changes things, how it drenches the wildflowers causing their petals to recoil.

I love the sparkle of the rain drops waiting to be evaporated back into the sky on the soft surface of the leaves.

I want to lick the drips from the un-ripened berries.

I like to visit the horses, to see how they fared as they stood still against the opened sky, their butts turned against the wind, soaking the heavens into their skin. It always seems a storm makes them ravenous, starving for the lush green grass that seems to turn neon at the first drop of moisture.

 But after the storm they won’t have me poking my nose in their business. They are not about to come in.
 They braved the storm, now they’re going to feast.

 I always walk to a hilltop then. I scrape and scramble my way up the face of the clay buttes, my boots, suffering from a severe case of mud-pack, weighing an extra 10-20 pounds. I scour the bushes for flowers, check out the sky for more rain, listen for the birds coming back to life and breathe in the fresh, new air.

Funny how a good rain can cleanse us, even when we watch it from the other side of the windows or come to know it after the calm has set in.

I love this land.

I love what exists here.

The changing and unexpected beauty cannot be recreated, not matter the repetition of the seasons.

I find I’m manic about being a witness to its changes, running out to be a part of it…

to be a part of the down pour…

Because when it rains I feel there’s something up there responsible for this…

When it rains, when it pours…I believe.

The Steers vs. Pops vs. The Brush

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I think it’s time I address some things that have been making an appearance in my stories, walking past my camera lens, stomping at the pug, pooping in my yard, leaning up against the house and looking in my windows…

Yes, it’s time I explain…these guys.

There are five of them out here on this landscape. And they are the only cattle we have on this place through the winter until springtime when a whole mess of angus beef cattle arrive. Pops purchased these misfits from a neighbor who runs a herd for roping practice and rodeo events in the area. Before they stepped off the trailer and into the buttes of the ranch, they had spent their lives in arenas being chased by cowboys and cowgirls and moved around from pen to pen.

They are “the steers,” and they are here “for fun.”

See, we’ve always talked about having a small herd of cattle out here that look like the old west,  and these “longhorns” fit the bill. Each day they are on the wild grass and alfalfa hay they grow a few inches…both their bodies and their horns. I have enjoyed taking their pictures and meeting them on the trail on a walk or a ride through the pastures, but that’s about as far as their worth goes…unless we, ahem…decide one of them might make a good cheeseburger….

Because, well, they are “steers” and “steers” lack the adequate parts necessary for, ummmm, shall we say, “growing a herd.”

But up until this week that was all we really needed from them: to look pretty, munch on grass and stay home. Once the other 100+ cattle arrive at our place in a few weeks it will be no big deal to have them run with the ladies. We were looking forward to it. But it turns out the steers couldn’t wait for the women to come to them.  So they huddled up behind some bullberry bushes and made a plan to casually meander up the road and cross the cattlegard that has been filled in by the dust of the traffic to hook up with the hot momma’s grazing in our neighbor’s pasture on the highway. They all agreed that not only was the grass greener on the other side of the fence, but their chances of getting lucky increased by like 1,000%.

I mean, I can’t blame them. The only creature that has shown any interest in them in the past six months has been the pug, and, well, we can all agree that he’s generally confused…


what with the thinking he’s a momma cat thing and all…

Anyway, it turns out that just because a bovine is missing necessary reproductive parts does not mean his is missing any, uh…urges. And when Pops and I saddled our horses on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon to go retrieve them, we were sorely, sorely mistaken in our anticipation for a casual, laid-back ride. So much so that I let my stirrups hang a little long and my reigns a little too slack. By the time Pops and I made it to the cattlegard that was responsible for the possibility of an escape, we had settled into a comfortable ease, and so had our horses.

On the other side of the fence, just across the highway we spotted our white steer staring back at us from a black sea of cattle.He was nuzzling and sniffing and grazing close to his new-found lady friends. About 200 yards to the south one of the red guys was showing off, chasing a couple mommas around the pasture.

Figuring the other three couldn’t have strayed to far from the herd, we left White and Red to hang there while we searched for their brothers. The plan is always to get who you want together and then move them toward your destination. So we rode south around the tree row, down through our neighbor’s barnyard, in the creek bed, and back north across the highway again. We saw black cows and calves, a hawk, some oil-trucks, a few hundred birds…and no steers. Not too pleased with the outcome of our short hunt, we decided to chase the two located steers north toward home. Pops had me convinced it would be pretty easy, that they knew their way and we would just follow them up the road and put them in the corrals until we found the others.

We didn’t give much thought to the possibility that this plan had potential to turn into a shit-show. Because when two steers find themselves surrounded by 100 eligible and voluptuous women, they aren’t about to go home without a fight.

And fight they did.

The entire three miles.

After a strategic and high-speed move that separated the two steers from their girlfriends and sent them flying across the highway with Pops at their tails, I held my breath and prayed for a reprieve in traffic as Whitey veered back toward the road and toward his women before Pops cut him off from his plan and sent him through the gate of our pasture. I stayed back to close the gate as Pops continued following them toward the barnyard. I was thinking we were out of the woods, that they had been defeated and would get the hint to head toward home…pretty easy Tuesday afternoon ride. Just the right amount of excitement…

But as soon as I my head popped over the hill to discover Pops riding his sorrel at speeds we hadn’t yet hit on horses this spring to cut Whitey off as he escaped from the thick brush of the coulee and veered back toward the cattlegard of destiny, I regretted not shortening my stirrups and my reigns. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Now I’m not an expert in cattle maneuvering, and I sure as shit am not a cow-whisperer like my father, but from my experience once a couple stubborn cattle hit the brush in the middle of a roundup, you’d better cowboy-up. Because hitting the brush is a bovine’s way of giving you the middle finger. And I’ll tell you, the bovine middle finger was flying last Tuesday…

And this wouldn’t have been such a harrowing move on the steers’ part if the three miles that separates our barnyard from the neighbor’s wasn’t filled with some of the most gnarly, thick, bur infested, boggy, fallen-log-ridden brush in the county. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if the steers just walked through it and came out on the right side eventually. But that was not their plan.

Their plan involved an escape back to the south. Camouflaged by the now-budding trees and scrubby underbrush they figured they would get in the thick of it, and then when the cowboy on their trail was crossing a creek or leaning over to keep from being decapitated by a low-hanging branch they would turn on their heels and high-tail it towards the neighbor’s.

As for the girl on the paint? I guess I didn’t look too intimidating bouncing along after my Pops at high-speeds on the back of a horse that had different ideas about the situation. Ideas that included a fast trot through the trees regardless of whether there was a trail, a high jump across the creek and ignoring any signals received from her rider to stop.

Damn the stirrups.

Damn the reigns.

Damn the branch that just slapped me in the face…

And this is the way it went as I struggled and failed to keep up with Pops as he and those rebel steers weaved back and forth across 1,000 acres of land.

In one patch of brush and out the other, they zig-zagged their way toward the barnyard, the steers stopping only to hold still and try their luck at out-smarting the cowboy. But Pops is stubborn and those steers, those worthless runaways, weren’t about to get the best of him. Between tree branches snapping and black mud sloshing, I think I might have heard him wonder out loud whose idea it was to buy these damn things.

And from a quarter of a mile away I might have wondered out loud if Whitey would look good on the living room floor of the new house.

An hour and a half and seventeen brush patches later,  the steers found themselves in front of the barn where Pops latched the gate and I dismounted to pick my wedgie. His horse was lathered and sweaty and I was questioning my cowgirl skills and wondering if I would get bypassed in the plan to go with him to find the rest of the small herd.We locked the steers in the corrals in front of the barn until we could get a handle on the cattlegard situation and go back for the others later on.

But it turned out that during the night those rebel steers put their heads together and conjured up another successful escape route. And when Pops got to the barnyard yesterday to saddle his horse and finish his roundup, he discovered that although those two steers lost the battle on Tuesday…

they sure as shit won the war.

My thoughts exactly…

Love. Lust. Romance. It always wins in the end.

Essential parts or, ummmm, no essential parts…

A good day to be a horse

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I like it when the clouds do this.

It makes me feel like I am not so small after all, like I could reach up and pluck one out of the sky, put it on an ice cream cone and go walking through the pastures, taking licks and bites of the sweet fluff as I make my way to the hilltops.

Under clouds like this the horses get sleepy and relaxed, their ears twitching the flies away, four feet taking turns resting while the breeze blows through their manes and the sky provides intermittent sunlight and shade.

It’s a good day to be a horse and I’d like to imagine they are happy to see me as I come marching their way. They nuzzle my hand for a snack, check my pockets and sniff my hair as I bend down to take their picture.

I also imagine they think I’m strange, but they’re used to it. The woman in the plaid shirt always pointing and clicking and leaning across their backs.

But they humor me.

Between biting the tops off of new wildflowers and munching on the new green grass they lift their heads up and lean in close to pose.

To check out the camera.

And fight over the spotlight.

I like this time spent with horses. The time where I catch them in their element, but I don’t need to catch them. We don’t have work to do. I don’t have an agenda or a plan to bring them in and saddle them up. I just want to see what they’re up to scattered across the rolling landscape in their favorite grazing spot east of the corrals.

I like the way they look up there against the green and gold grass, the blue and white sky. They add something special to the painting I sometimes picture when I look out my kitchen window or through the windshield of the pickup as I come into the drive.

Is it wistfulness?

Peace?

Sentiment?

or just beauty…

I try to decide the words to describe what the sight of a horse has always done to my spirit as I scratch under the buckskin’s chin and he leans in a little closer.

But when I rub my hands down the sorrel’s back, brush the flies from under the mare’s belly and breathe in the familiar smell of dust and sunshine and grass and sky that our herd of horses keep under their skin I decide…

I may not be the best cowgirl and these might not be the best horses. We might not win buckles or keep the burs out of our manes. We might limp a bit or sport an attitude.

We may over-indulge, roll in the mud, stomp at the dogs and find holes in the fences so we can escape to the fields…so we might get away for a bit.

But we always come home.

Our home is the same.

And if I could I could be a horse I would wish for wild black hair and sound feet, a slick coat and pastures of sweet clover under blue skies filled with clouds.

If I were a horse I would want to run with these guys.

Flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms

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When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horse hair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek, where the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud  tracked from my boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust…because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I am older and my memory is filled to the brim, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my father on the first warm day of spring when the sun had warmed the snow enough to cause small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while my dad rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain, that I don’t forget the rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I am an old woman and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I am still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me and my worries away to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am an old woman I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and recall how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture at 22-years-old waiting for the horse-drawn wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all of the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry and laughter, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones…the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I am old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope I feel it was all worth it.

But more than anything I hope that those things that made me– the dirt under my fingernails; mud on my boots; a good man’s laughter; the strong back of a horse; the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter–I hope they remain here on this place so that another spirit living along this pink road might one day find herself in flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms.

From the top of the hill…

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Sometimes, when the day is coming to a slow close and my head is spinning with worry and lists, schedules and a pile of things that must wait until tomorrow and the dishes from a dinner of meat and potatoes sits waiting to be taken care of on the table, I slip on my boots and head out the door.

I’m usually not gone long, and husband has grown accustomed to this behavior, understanding it’s not a storm out, or a give up, or a frustrated stomp, but a ritual that his wife needs to put a flush in her cheeks and make sure she’s still alive out here where the trucks kick up dust on the pink road and the barn cats quietly wait in the rafters of the old buildings for a mouse to scatter by.

I tell him I need to go walking and he knows which trail I’ll take, down through the barnyard, past the water tank and up the face of the gumbo hill, the one that lets you look back at the house where the kitchen light glows, the one that gives you the perfect view of the barn’s silhouette tall and dark against a sky that is putting on its last show of the night as it runs out of light.

It’s a ritual that needs timing, because that sun, once it decides it’s out, goes quickly to the other side of the world. My pace is not meandering but diligent. I need to get to the top of that hill. I need to find the horses before the last of the light cools down the air  sends me back to the house to tend to the dishes and slip under the covers until we meet again in the morning.

So I time it, and sometimes, if there’s enough light I head  a little further east to check out how the light hits the buttes in my favorite pasture making the hills look gold and purple and so far away. Sometimes I just keep walking until dark. And sometimes the evening finds me sitting on a rock or pacing in the middle of the ancient teepee rings that still leave their mark on the flat  spot on the hill. I like to stand there and imagine a world with no buildings and no lights on the horizon. I examine the fire ring, close my eyes and think about sleeping under the leather of a teepee, covered in the skins of the animals, under a sky that promised rain and wind and snow and a sunrise every morning.

The same sky that promises me these things, but it cannot promise anything else.

I think of these people, the ones who arranged these rocks, hunted these coulees, and watched the horizons and I am humbled by the mystery of the ticking thing we call time.

And I wonder what they called it.

Because I take to those hills and look back at my home and the sections of our fences that have been washed away by the melting snow, the barn that is in desperate need of a new roof, a house that has stood for fifty-plus years on a foundation that crumbles  and I am reminded that time takes its toll on this land the same way it puts lines around the corners of my eyes… and there is not one thing man can make to stop it.

These thoughts, this understanding, is not what you would call comforting or nostalgic, but it is a fact. A fact that I have come accustomed to when I climb those hills. A fact that builds roads and oil wells, new houses and fences and bigger power lines stretching across a landscape I still like to consider wild.

I climb to the hilltop to see how things have changed, to catch the last of the day’s sun, and I am reminded that the progress we seek is the same progress the wild world is after as well, but the change is steady and slow. Trees grow, the creek keeps flowing and eroding its banks, the weight of the snow sends hills crumbling…flowers bloom, wither and die and just as the earth is sure all is steady, in comes a storm, a twister, a high wind or a bolt of lightening to knock down some trees, create new ravines and change things a bit.

I climb to that hill and look back at that farmstead and remember those kids we used to be, running through the haystacks and searching the barn for lost kittens. I climb to that hill and I remember my grandmother in her shorts and tank top, exposing her brown skin while she worked in the garden. I remember my first ride on a horse by myself, getting bucked off near the old shop, hunting for Easter eggs with the neighbor girls in the gumbo hills behind my grandmother’s house, branding cattle in the round pen.

From the top of the hill I could still be ten-years-old and my grandmother could be digging up potatoes. From the top of the hill my cousins could be hiding in the hay bales and my father could be waiting on the side of the barn to jump out and scare them, sending them running and laughing and screaming. From the top of the hill the neighbor girls could be pulling up in their dad’s pickup, dressed in pastels and rain boots, ready to hunt for eggs. From the top of the hill you don’t notice all of the work that needs to be done on the fences, the roof of the house, the crumbling foundation.

From the top of the hill that light in the kitchen is still glowing the same color it was when I would come in from an evening chasing cattle with my father or catching frogs with my cousins to a house filled with the smell of my grandmother’s cooking.

From the top of the hill the only thing certain to change is the sky…

and everything else is forever.