Hazy Skies

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

There has been a haze in the air for the last couple days. Fires in Canada couldn’t hold their breath any longer and so some puffs escaped our way, lingering in the calm, hot air and reminding me of living in Montana in August.

When the wind doesn’t blow here in North Dakota it’s sort of eerie, like there’s some secret we’re not being told.

This place is full of them, untold secrets. I’ve always thought that.

How the snow ever fell on all this green and gold I never understand come mid-July. How it could look anything like this, my skin anything but brown and warm, my hair fuzzed just a bit from the heat.

How pink flowers spring from the same earth that was frozen seven feet under just months ago…

and the once wooly horses shed their coats and transform into sleek, high-spirited creatures I can’t comprehend because I have decided it’s magic.

And so I can hardly stand to be inside.

There’s plenty to do out there in terms of work, so I wander around a bit, grab a broom and sweep the garage, pick a weed or two and then sort of wander off to a couple hilltops to see how the flowers look from up there. The purple coneflowers out in full force, sprung up overnight among the grass and clover stirrup high.

I was away less than a week and look at all I missed.

How can I be lonesome for a season I’m standing in the middle of? How can I be scared that I might not catch it all? It’s ridiculous to be so anxious about the flowers. It’s ridiculous to be so worried that I might blink and miss the best part of a summer sunset.

When I was a little girl I was convinced there were parts of this ranch that were yet to be discovered and so I was determined to explore every inch. I walked the trail beside the creek bed in the spring, throwing in sticks to see where the cold rushing water would take them. In the summer I took off my boots and walked directly in that water, my bare feet navigating trails to the big beaver dams.

In the fall I would crawl to the tops of the banks and count the colors. In the winter I would bundle up and trudge, trudge, trudge…not to be kept away no matter the weather.

It wasn’t until I grew up and came home, camera pointed out of every window, dangling off my neck on every ride, every walk, that I discovered the gift of this place is the very thing that makes me crazy and sends me walking, searching for the undiscovered places. The most beautiful things.

This place never looks the same. Every day, every shift of light, every turn of season, every passing cloud, every breeze, every snowflake and raindrop changes it completely.

Gray sky, gray grass. Gold sun, gold flowers. White snow, white trees. Rain clouds, sparkling leaves.

It’s nature, but isn’t it interesting? Isn’t it magic how something so many miles up in the universe can change things for us, our mood, or intrigue, or plans for the day.

May the fires in Canada soon become a memory and the ashes turn to the greenest grass.

Because up here, the wind, the wind changes everything.

Among the clover.

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I wish you could smell the sweet clover out here this time of year. I step outside and I’m flooded with a wave of memories of all that I used to be, summer after summer growing up out here. It smells like work and evenings spent sliding down hills on cardboard boxes with my cousins. It smells like ingredients for mud pie and playing house in the lilac bushes by the red barn. It smells like bringing lunch to dad in the field above our house, horseflies and heat biting our skin.

It smells like my first car and the windows rolled down, taking back roads with my best friends as passengers, kicking up dust as we tested the limits of teenage-dom.

It smells like my leaving, bittersweet. My last summer as a kid here before it was time to go and grow up already. Be on my own.

And it smells like coming home, take a right on the pink road, stop at the top of the hill and look at it all before heading down and turning into mom and dad’s for a glass of wine and a steak on the deck that looks out toward the garden and up the crick bed where I used to play everyday.

Last week we had family here from Texas, a couple of those cousins who used to help me make mud pies, a couple of aunts and an uncle I adore and then, of course the grandkids. The ranch was buzzing, laughing, full of life like I remembered it when I was growing up and our grandparents were alive and serving us push-up pops from the small from porch of their small brown house.

Funny how the world changes when suddenly there are kids running through the grass, pulling up dandelions, blowing bubbles and making memories on this place like the ones I hold so close to me.

After the Centennial celebration was over we did nothing but sit on the deck and visit, catch up, eat and then run inside to watch the rain pour. We laughed at the kids as they played and fought over toys and I looked at my cousin, the one closest to my age, the girl I used to wish was my twin sister, a mother now, and I thought, well, weren’t we just the same size as her baby A? Weren’t we just five years old running through the clover, itching our mosquito bites, begging for popsicles and just one more hour to play outside.

Now look at us, all grown up and still here on this place.

I was so thankful to be here with them on this place.

Because I know it didn’t come without a cost for our family, keeping it here for us, so future generations can smell the clover and be young and wild out here…

I know that we did nothing but be born to good people who know the value of the land, not in dollars, but in something that is hard for me to find words for right now.

Pride?

Work?

Home?

A place to belong?

On Monday when the rest of his family loaded up and hit the road, Uncle W, stayed home one more evening. Little Sister came out and we saddled up our horses and headed out east, riding along and listening to the two brothers remember what it was like to be young out here.

Little Uncle W always found hanging back on a roundup, eating on a Juneberry bush.

Young Pops getting bucked off on the road when his little brother popped over the hill on his tricycle.

Milking cows and riding broncs and chasing girls and growing up together, out here on this place.

How many gloves and hats and scarves have been left dangling in these trees, scooped off heads and hands of little cowboys and cowgirls rushing on the backs of horses running through the trees?

How many wild plum pits have been spit at one another?

How many mud pies have been made in this barnyard, topped off with little pieces of sweet clover.

It’s so quiet here this morning as I get ready to head to a show tonight and then on to Minnesota to celebrate the 4th of July. If I had my way we’d all live out here together, my cousins and us, and those kids would be over the hill forever being raised by kids like us, and we would rehash memories and then create new ones.

Every day, out here on this place the way it used to be.

But that wouldn’t work. There’s space out here, but not that much…not enough…

So I’ll take the clover. I’ll breathe it in and I will remember when it itched our bare little legs in the summer while we searched for kittens in the nooks of the red barn.

Then I’ll remember the weekends, weekends like these, when they came to visit us out here along the gravel roads, and how small the kids were and how they were so little, because they’ll grow up too fast you know. Just like we did, out here among the clover.

In July…

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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

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

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

Wild sunflowers in the road ditches…

Haybales lined up nice and neat in the fields…

Chasing cattle in the cool draws…

and windows open at night.

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

It’s kind of a funny way to wake up.

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

Which is a pretty perfect place to be in July.

And then came the sun.

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

This morning I woke up to another dreary, snowy, cold, white, un-springy day, a husband who couldn’t make it to work on account of a night spent puking and a pug literally hiding with his head under the covers and his ass facing the world.

I felt like doing the same thing, not puking, but, you know, just letting my ass face the world. Because, I mean, look at it…not a crocus in sight…

I was going to tell you all about it, after I took a few photos of the icicles hanging off the eaves,

the gray, dreary sky, the white flakes fluttering across bare and brown branches,

cold, leftover leaves,

big brown dog’s big brown cold nose,

and ground just begging to warm up…

I was prepared to feel like the pug who doesn’t wake up to face the dog dish until well after the noon hour, going to absorb the sad, gray, so unspringlike day into my veins and mope a bit over peanut butter toast and coffee that just couldn’t be black enough, ignore the dishes in the sink and just say well shit, it’s snowing. It’s snowing again.

But then the sun came out.

and the gray turned to sparkle,

the bland to beautiful,

the gray to blue,

and the leftovers looked a little less lonely.

Ah, the sun.

The sun!

Look at that, the sun.

What a difference you made.

I hope you found your sun today.

He flies airplanes.

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

This is Adam.

Adam plays the bass for me.

Long, low notes ring out from his fingers, finding a rhythm in the melodies I created between the comfort of the walls of the old farm house. Adam’s bass is something I didn’t know my music needed until it was there.

And now I don’t know if I ever want to hear my songs without it.

Adam also plays the guitar.

And the harmonica and the banjo and probably a hundred other instruments.

Adam grew up between the sidewalks of our little hometown. While his limbs stretched toward the sky Adam was listening…to his mother’s singing voice and the beat of his big brother’s guitar, the way the waves of Lake Sakakawea sound when they hit the rocky shore and the buzz of his dad’s airplanes as they took off from the runway and into the sky above his home.

Adam is my little sister’s age, five years younger than me. I can’t help but look at him and think of him as a little boy, though I was just a little girl myself in some of those memories.

Adam doesn’t say much, so I’ll tell you what I know:

Adam plays the bass and the guitar and the harmonica and the banjo and probably a thousand other instruments. Adam sings songs about the North Dakota badlands and that big lake where he’s caught a thousand fish. Adam plays music about big trucks and dirt roads and whiskey with friends around campfires, on front porches, in bars and on stages, anywhere there are ears to listen.

Adam climbs mountains and rides the snow down. Adam balances on rope strung between trees. Adam brings his own beer to the party in a little blue cooler. He wears a green jacket and is waiting for me to bring him some garden tomatoes so he can make salsa.

Adam makes salsa and plays the bass guitar for me.

Sometimes I listen to those notes and I think the things Adam loves are too big for our little town.

Adam flies airplanes in the sky above his lake,

above his badlands

and above the oak groves of this ranch.

He buzzes over the landscape that grew him tall and lean.

And because Adam doesn’t say much I’ll tell you what I think:

I think if you asked him Adam would make you a jar of salsa.

I think if you wanted he would take you fishing and play you a song on his banjo.

He might even play the bass in your band.

And I think he would take you flying. If you asked, I think he would.

I think Adam likes the way his world looks up there.

Because from up there, the things Adam loves are just the right size…

Under a Badlands Sky…

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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.

Summer heat

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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.

A winter breath in Theodore Roosevelt National Park…

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I took a moment on a regular weekday morning, a morning when much of the state was preparing for one of our first winter storms of the season, to find some magic in the winter.

I knew just where to go to find it. A place that was set aside just for us when we need magic moments like these.

The Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

It’s right in my backyard really. I’ve shown you before. It’s just down the road from the office that was waiting for me to take phone calls, finish some reports, and stay caught up. But it was snowing ever so lightly, frost was hugging the branches of the trees and the wind was calm enough to for me to hear something calling me out to explore, to look, to listen.

I needed to see what it looked like out there in its winter outfit.

I needed to listen for silence because in the absolute quite, everything inside of me quiets too.

I needed quiet.

I needed quiet enough to remember that I was in there all along. I needed quiet to tell me I was in there with all of that noise and static and voices drowning out the sound of those young deer on the trail ahead of me, cutting a path with their hooves, leaping over fallen branches and stopping to check out that creature behind them in a puffy coat and mittens. They don’t miss a thing and if I hadn’t stepped off of the road and up that hill, if I wouldn’t have stepped softly, slowly, I certainly would have missed them.

I don’t know what it is about being alone in nature. I write about it often. I dream about places not yet discovered, about trails that have been untouched by human feet. I don’t know anything except for it heals me in some way. I know that being alone under the branches of the oaks or the arms of the big cedars awakens something in me and reminds me that not only am I alive, but completely insignificant in the grand scheme of it all.

Insignificant.

But that word doesn’t scare me. It thrills me. It thrills me to know that one charge of the mighty bison, one stomp of his hoof, could send me reeling.

It excites me to know my limits out there and to know to keep to them. To know the dangers of a mis-step could send me into a catastrophic fall.

To know the river flows fast under the ice and I have no matches for a fire and no intention of staying out past my allotted time.

To know that once we belonged here, but not anymore.

Because somewhere along the line we have separated from nature, from the quiet spaces on an earth that was laid out for us. We covered ourselves from the stars to survive, laid floor on the dirt and found new ways of making things that were good and true and simple damn complicated.

We’ve built fences and staked claim to things like rocks and mountains and grass. We have named it all. Dissected it. Studied why anything would turn out the way it has.

We’ve learned how it all could benefit us. How it could help us cure diseases, build more skyscrapers, heat our homes and reach us closer to the satellite we have placed among the stars in a sky we have yet to conquer.

So I go to the park, I take the back roads, I follow the trails on the ranch that holds my family’s name to be reminded of this:

I know not a fraction of what the acorn knows. I will never tame the wind nor will I ever touch all that the breeze has touched. I will never listen close enough to hear what the coyotes hear. I will never be as brave and howl my life into the night.

I count the striations of the exposed earth on a landscape that was formed by tons and tons of moving glacial ice and I know I will never have a story that grand. I will never be as interesting or romantic as those buttes.

I catch a hawk circling above the tree tops and am reminded I will never soar. I will never see our world the way she sees it.

And I won’t possess the strength of the bison, the authority of the season, the power of the sun and the clouds. I will never stand as tall, or know the patience of the old birch trees. And I will never own the delicate strength of the wildflower.

No, I come to the park as a spectator. I come to the park as a girl. A girl who has hands that need gloves made of leather and boots made with fur. I girl with thoughts and ideas and dreams about how to capture this place, how to share it by telling the story of the bison, singing the music of the hawk, and whispering just as softly as the doe caught on my trail.

But they are stories I am not worthy to tell.

So I stay quiet and listen.

The top of our world…

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

See those buttes, way off in the distance in this photo? Yes. You see them? Good.

I love those buttes. They are like the backdrop to this little painting we live in here at the Veeder Ranch. They are always there in the distance, reminding us of our neighbors to the north, reminding us that we are pretty small here on this landscape, you know, in the scheme of things, and staining as a fixture of the beauty that surrounds us.

The Blue Buttes. That’s what we call them around here. Why? Well, because they look blue don’t they? Yes? Bluish, purplish…

There they are again...way out there...

Every time I look at them I am reminded of a story that my pops told me about a drawing he colored of a cowboy on a mountain during a project at school. He used his crayons to make the man’s hat brown, his shirt yellow, the sky blue and the mountain he was riding along purple.

When the teacher asked “Why did you paint the mountain purple? Mountains aren’t purple!” young pops said he felt embarrassed and confused. Because the only encounter he had up to that point with anything resembling a mountain was the Blue Buttes that waved to him from about seven miles north. And they sure looked purple to him.

Oh, my heart.

Anyway, on Tuesday I found myself up close and personal with those buttes that have been such a far away mirage on this place. A new friend who moved to the area with her husband and settled into a little farmstead a few miles north asked me to come spend the day with her poking around the countryside, taking photos and climbing the area’s famous Table Butte.

Of course I was on board and for many reasons. Number one is that I had a chance to spend some time with a woman who I hadn’t quite had enough time to really get to know in person, but who already understood that I was the type of person who would be enthusiastic about this kind of activity. She didn’t ask me to go shopping or to help her bake a pie. No. She met me a few times and understood that hiking might just be my thing.

And it was her’s too.

This had potential to be a great friendship.

Number two was that I have grown up here, traveling to the small town of Keene for youth group activities and meeting up with friends on the other side of the buttes, but never have I had the chance to stand on top of one of them to catch a glimpse of my world from way above and all directions. I was grateful for the opportunity.

So I headed up the gravel road in the morning armed with my camera, sunglasses, hiking shoes and water and began poking my way to her house, kicking up dust and admiring how the day was shaping up. The sky was blue, the clouds were fluffy and the breeze was just right. I followed my new friend’s directions and pulled off the main gravel road and down into a coulee to find her standing in the door of her quaint, renovated farmhouse and her border collie-blue heeler mix running up to greet me.

And I’ll tell you, it was all over from there. See, this woman from eastern Montana, who married one of my High School Rodeo buddies and found herself out here making her home at the bottom of the Blue Buttes, couldn’t have been more connected to the land or more appreciative of it if she had sprung from the soil herself. While we loaded up the dog and our bodies into her husband’s old pickup she drove me down the gravel road toward our hiking destination and talked about the history of the area as she understood it. Because she’s enamored with the stories and finds the old houses, barns and shacks that still remain as ghosts off a different time among the rolling pastures and fields of the countryside so intriguing, so mysterious. And while she spoke about what family owns what acreage and told me stories about who homesteaded in the little wooden house with the green trim and who taught at the old sandstone school, I was struck by the fact that just as much as my new friend was at ease in her new surroundings, she was equally, if not more, astounded by it.

And so we drove a few more miles, chatting about growing up, our husbands and the people we knew in common, a tail of dust floating behind us, until we reached our destination.

Table Butte. A well known sacred spot for the Native Americans of the area and a landmark, a striking feature, a special place for any rancher, farmer, teenager or passerby who has stood in its presence, no matter the heritage. As we approached I understood why. See as you head north, away from the badlands, the countryside evens out a bit, the fields get larger and more fertile, the oak coulees less thick, the clay soil dissipates. While you drive further from home you feel like the wheels under you are literall stretching the earth…

And you think the landscape might all just even out eventually, until you find yourself approaching two massive looming towers of rock and dirt and grass that seem to have sprung up from the depths of the earth in an explosion of rocks and vegetation. And although from the back of your mind you extract some knowledge about glaciers and weather that could scientifically explain the formation, what you really want to put in its place is the story from the perspective of the Native Americans who climb to the top on their vision quests.

We parked the pickup under the cliffs of jagged rocks, unloaded the dog, and made our way through a herd of red cows and on up to the top.

The climb was steep and as stories and childhood memories and marriage and family flowed from our hearts and memories and out our mouths, we had to stop halfway up to take a break, because it turns out spilling your guts and climbing up the face of a massive cliff at the same time requires a good amount of oxygen to the lungs.

And then we were at the top and words stopped in our throats for a few moments as we took it in.

From the cusp of the giant cliff you could see for miles in all directions. We could take in our entire rural community in one sweep. To the north the big lake laid like a dark blue slate.

To the south, the coulees of my home and neighboring pastures.

To the east, miles of grass, oil wells, a ribbon of highway and wheat.

And to the west Chimney Butte stood in our view, the other side of the story, another magnificent formation.

We milled around up there, kneeling down to pay tribute to a memorial that was placed at the top of our world in honor of two members of my new friend’s family, we watched her dog get as close as she possibly could to the edge of each rock while I had mini-heart attacks and my new friend called her pet back.

We knelt down and snapped photos of the wildflowers growing out of the rocks. We laughed and shared funny stories. We sympathized with one another as we told tough ones about the hard stuff.

We got to know one another up there as the sun moved from the east to the west and the wind tangled our hair and we had scanned just about every inch of the landscape with our eyes and our lenses.

And then we headed back down when we were ready…

back into the seats of the brown pickup, and back along the winding road, stopping at my new friend’s favorite places: that old house with the green trim,

the Sandstone School my grandmother attended…

By the time we pulled back into her yard I noticed the sun was planted pretty close to the horizon. I tried to guess the time as we chatted about her horses and her husband pulled into the drive…home from work already?

I said hello, told one more story and loaded into my pickup to head home. I took a look at the clock for the first time that day.

8 pm.

It was already 8 pm! Ten hours I was out there among the grass and wind and sun and in the company of a new friend. A new friend that I felt had known me for years.

What the heck!? I had so much fun I forgot about lunch! That never happens.

I meandered home, snapping a photo or two of the wheat fields on my way,

and gave husband a few words about the day before stripping off my clothes and crumbling into bed, my spirits lifted, my body tired, my heart a little lighter from a day on top of the purple colored buttes.

So yes, when I went out the next evening and looked toward the buttes, I thought of their purple color, of course, and the story of my pops as a young, net yet worldly boy. But I also thought of the day I spent with my friend…

The friend I got to know on the top of our world…

Winter Optimist vs. Snowshoes vs. January in ND

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

January. Oh January. A challenging month for even the most optimistic North Dakotan. One could easily throw in the towel around here, especially with the uncharacteristic snow accumulation we have seen already this winter, but most of us stick around.

Or go to Jamaica for a couple weeks.

Some people do this.

Wusses.

But the glass-half-full individuals, we put on another layer and say things like “Wow, that snow…hard to drive in it, but gorgeous isn’t it?”

or “Whew, it’s cold out there…great day for chicken noodle soup.”

And my favorite

“Halfway through. Once we get through January, it’s all downhill…spring’s just around the corner.”

I imagine these phrases come out of the mouths of the residents of our neighboring states (oh, and Canada) in all directions, in our typically northern accents, patting one another on the back while brushing snow out of our hair and stomping our feet on the rug, cheeks rosy from the bite of the wind.

Yes North Dakota Januarys bring out the true colors of our people: the Jamaican cruisers, the Arizona dwellers, the optimists and the people who are not phased who expect it and keep their mouths shut and Carharts on. There are the non-natives that are so damn cold they can’t keep the coffee coming in fast enough. There are the natives that love it because every new inch brings a new story about a neighbor they had to pull out of the ditch or the challenges of getting the cows fed or how the Schwann’s man got stuck in their yard and didn’t even offer a complimentary package of corn dogs for all the trouble you went to in digging the southerner out…twice.

But always, no matter who is residing in this, picking up their children from school, breaking ice, enjoying winter sports, there is astonishment at how it can possibly keep snowing and how it ever was summer.

Ever.

And then the stories, the comparison from winter to winter come rolling in.

“This is bad, but not as bad as the winter of ’77. Or ’96.”

“Do you remember last Christmas when we couldn’t even get our doors open?”

“I heard (insert name of town forty to fifty miles away) got another 10 inches. Can you imagine? Boy we were lucky.”

These are conversations you will hear in every diner, in every gas station while you are pumping your gas and shifting your weight back and forth against the cold, in line at the bank, by the cheese section in the grocery store, or at coffee with your neighbors.

Oh, I love it. The drama of this season.

For me, a self proclaimed winter optimist who has uttered the aforementioned phrases, I have to confess at times this season (and this month especially) make me feel a bit like a recluse. Like, all I want to do is wrap myself in a blanket and write songs about how cold I am and how much I love the warm body in bed next to me and chicken noodle soup and coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon and warm baths and my snow suit and neckerchief.

Yes, winter has typically been my creative time, not sure why, but I think it forces me to get inside my own head and listen…either that or take a nap. Cause it’s so damn quiet out here.

Anyway, I can’t remember if I told you or not, but for Christmas I received a shiny new pair of snowshoes from my in-laws. I have great in-laws.

I got snowshoes and husband got a kayak and now I am torn between wishing the summer to hurry and come back or the winter to stay…because we have toys.

We’ve never really had toys.

Anyway, since no amount of wishing will warm up this world and even though we are tempted to take a run down the nearest snow-covered hill in the new kayak, we know better. So I have so been enjoying exploring our winter wonderland in my snowshoes. Which seems like a safe winter activity. Much safer than thrusting a body attached to skis down a mountain at great speeds…or you know, doing the same in a little canoe type thing…

So the snowshoes are marvelous. I can go places on the ranch that I can’t even go in the summer because of unruly vegetation and mushy creek beds. I put those things on and I feel like Jesus, impossibly walking on the ocean’s water…only my ocean is white and cold and the waves don’t move the same way.

I attached my winter body to the fantastic contraptions for the first time last week and laughed with evil glee as my pups fell through snowbanks and frolicked and fell and tumbled headfirst into drifts while I effortlessly glided on up and over and down and around, like Jesus…wait, I think I used that already…well anyway, you get the point…

And I could go on and on, but I want to tell you a quick story about how snowshoes seem like a great idea, especially when you are on a mission to get in shape and actually be useful on the ranch. They are a wonderful invention that turns an inconvenient pile up of snow into a grand and beautifully daring adventure, and a way to get around the place to check things out, until you forget that the temperature gauge dangling outside your window does not report windchill and halfway through your trip to find the horses, which turned up a lot of footprints and turds, but no actually horses, you discover that the snot that has been plaguing your nostrils the entire trip (as snot does in cold weather) is actually not snot at all.

Because it is blood.

It is blood and it is gushing down your face and onto your scarf and staining the white snow. And just moments before you discovered this new turn of events you felt you were a bit tired, but could make it the mile back to the house with little effort. Because you are an outdoors woman. This winter is no match for you and your snow suit and your muscles.

But now there is blood.

Now there is blood and you quickly become aware that you are indeed alone out there in the wilderness. You think you might freeze to death.

Alone.

Because there is blood.

And you are cold and cannot possibly go one more step. And your feet are heavy. And you are sinking in the snow. You know you are sinking in the snow. What? Aren’t these snowshoes supposed to keep you up on this stuff? LIKE JESUS?!

Oh Martha Stewart, the house is far.

And there is blood…why…why…why?!!!!

The beautiful, snow-covered trees that you were photographing without a care in the world just moments before suddenly become obstacles looming just to get in the way of your safety.

Those drifts so deep, your feet so heavy, the dogs no help at all…those dogs just carrying on, sniffing each other chasing birds all happy and free like there is no one bleeding out here!!!

Oh lord there is blood and the house is so far away…

…those damn horses…

…damn exercise…if you ever make it back alive you vow to stay snuggled up on the couch where normal people belong in the winter. Who do you think you are? A mountaineer?

No. You decide you are not a mountaineer. You are a pale, pasty woman with noodle arms who belongs in the house writing songs about warm blankets and soup and love, not out here like some kind of crazy adventurer…

…you put your hand to your face…

…still bleeding…still blood…still the potential to die…or faint and then freeze to death and then die….

…you trudge up the hill, you stop to make sure you’re still alive.

And you are.

You are alive and you eventually make it home, sweaty and bloody and panting with the panic of it all. You make it home and realize, to your relief, that the funeral plans you made for yourself on the long, bloody trudge home can be written down and saved for the next near death experience…which you are certain you will never have because you are never leaving home again…

Home.

Where the horses and one mule are standing right in front of your door licking the salt off your car and laughing at you and your bloody, crusty nose.