Living room songs.

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I’m going to do something a little different here today and I hope you don’t mind. See I just returned from a trip to the mountains where I played in the snow during the day and listened to some of the world’s best musicians at night. It was a vacation full of refreshing things: mountain air, mandolins, whiskey drinks and my best friends in the world.

pixlr-3

And now I’m home at the ranch, catching up on a couple days of work and planning for some shows of my own in the coming days and thinking that isn’t it amazing how we all have stories in us, little quips of life that we get to share over dinner, shoulder to shoulder as we drive across Montana in a pickup heading toward a mountain or on stage to a crowd drinking beer and tapping their feet.

Trout Steak Revival. Big Sky Big Grass Festival

I’m thinking there’s so many ways to tell these stories and I have chosen a few, but my favorite has always been song writing. I love to sit down behind my guitar on a snowy evening or a quiet morning and work out a melody, pick out words to roll off my tongue, join together and send off into an empty room while my fingers search for the next chord and a soft place for the music to land.

To come to the end and know that it means what you meant, though you know nothing of where it came from is a quiet little satisfying mystery.

I write songs to fill forgotten corners of my life. I write songs to see if I might be able to add to the beauty in the world. I write songs to tell you something that might otherwise go unsaid. I write songs for the love of writing. For the love of singing my own words out loud.

I write songs for no reason but to sing them to the walls and the dog at my feet, songs that never touch another’s ears.

I wrote a song today.

After my coffee had cooled, my emails were answered and phone calls made, I sat down behind that guitar and listened for what might come from me.

Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes I hear it in pieces and sometimes it unfolds like it’s been waiting for me to come knocking.

Always I tuck it away for another day, another show, another time that might be better.

Today I decided to share it with you. A song. Just born in my living room on my lunch break with my laundry in piles and the dishes in the sink and no plans for supper or anything really because I wanted to sing something new, so I made this.

Please listen and enjoy and keep writing, singing, creating and sharing your own stories.

I used to be
Jessie Veeder Living Room Session
Listen here:

I used to be a summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I used to be a storm

I used to be a whiskey drink
Burning strong against your lips
Heating through your veins
Softening your fingertips
I used to hold you tight there
I used to make you sing
I used to make you brave
I used to be your drink

I used to be a fast train
Loud and steady on my tracks
Heat and iron and muscle
No promises of looking back
A heavy hearted stranger
Gone before I came
Like smoke on the horizon
I used to be a train

But that’s before I loved you
Before I ever knew
That no matter where you are now
I want to be there too
So I think I’ll be a bird now
With silver coated wings
I want to be your song now
More than any of those things

I used to be a summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I don’t do that anymore

Upcoming Shows:

February 14 & 15
Theodore’s Dining Room
Medora, ND
5:30 – 8:00 PM (MT)

February 22
O.N.E
Mandan, ND
7:00 PM

February 23
Studio 222
Fargo, ND
8:00 PM

More information at www.jessieveedermusic.com

Some things I know for sure.

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Sometimes life is just so unexpected, like the thirteenth rock flying into my windshield on my way home from town.

Those uncertainties make me nervous–I come up with worst case scenarios. Like now, for example. I got home from work this evening to say hello to Husband who also just got home from work only to turn around and walk out the door to go back to work again. I don’t think it was an emergency, but it was something important that sent him out there in the dark on the same scary road that throws rocks at windshields unexpectedly.

I worry.

So now I’m sitting here with the cat on my lap and the pug at my feet breaking all of the rules about pets on the furniture while I come up with a list of things I know for certain to help deal with that nagging little feeling of terror that at a moment it can all fall apart.

And that other worry about the aliens.

So here it is, my list of ten or eleven or twelve or however many things that I know for sure on a perfectly calm Thursday night in February.

I will always worry
The pug, when left unattended and to his own devices, will always shit on the floor. Sometimes he will puke, but always he will shit.
I could eat guacamole with every meal. I should have guacamole with every meal. Avocados are a vegetable. It can’t possibly be a bad choice.(No photo available because I ate all the guacamole)
A climb to a good hilltop cures me. Every time, it cures me.
Spring will come. Spring always comes.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
It’s not the singing, it’s not the words, the guitar, the harmonies or the harmonica. It’s everything. Music. It’s just everything.
One day I will have pigs, I don’t care what you say.(no photo available because I don’t have a pig. Yet.)
If you call me I will have to call you back, because I never put the phone back on the hook, therefore I can never find the phone when you call. It’s a sick cycle that I am unable to break.(no photo available because I can’t find the damn phone. Again.)
This cat is crazy.
This puppy is cute.
So is this kid.
I am grateful every day to call this home.
It will probably, most definitely, very likely, I mean, I’m pretty sure, almost positive everything’s gonna turn out alright in the end.

Now you know what I know, what do you know for sure? Let it fly party people, I promise it will make you feel better.

Farmers at the Super Bowl.

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So you watched the Super Bowl. You saw the game, you saw Beyonce shake it, you saw the lights go out and, among the flashy messages, the advertisements for M&Ms and beer and phones and underwear and cologne, you saw this:

Another ad for another product, yes. But one that had a message attached to it that has sent my world into a humming since it aired.

Now it’s possible you missed it. It’s possible you didn’t hear it tucked in there among the baby Clydesdale and the elderly escaping the nursing home for a night at Taco Bell. It didn’t make the top ten commercials and didn’t get nearly as much buzz in other parts of the country, but it sure is buzzing here.

I don’t usually comment on pop culture or what ‘s happening on T.V. or in sports here because I’ve made it my mission to talk about different things: the way the sun shines on the back of a horse, how the wind blows snow across the prairie and what it’s like to be a woman connected to a place, but as a girl who grew up feeding cattle alongside her father in the coldest winter nights, someone who watched him doctor horses, bring new-born and frozen calves into the basement of the house and nurse them back to life, as a former FFA president and the 4th generation on my family’s ranch, I have to talk about this.

I have to tell you why people like me have been so inclined to share this advertisement, to watch it over and over again, to shout its praises from the rooftops and, well, post it on every social media networking site they can link up to out here in the boonies.

Because finally, among the hype of sports, the glitzy glam of pop culture, the humor and the ruckus and the fight to be the winner, right there in the most prime real-estate of prime-time television someone out there felt it might be important enough to slow it down and tell our story.

Now, I wasn’t at every Super Bowl party in middle America during the 2.5 minutes Paul Harvey’s message was pumped into millions of homes across the country, but I was at one, and as soon as that familiar voice spoke the first word, the room fell silent.

We held our breath in that moment we were certain we were looking at an image from our backyards: a black baldie cow near a barbed wire fence in a barren, snow-covered prairie.

We were quiet because we saw our church standing tall and worn beside a country road,

we saw our grandfather with callused hands and a face wrinkled and weathered from the long days spent in the elements.

We shushed our voices and choked back a tear for the colt our father couldn’t save, laughed a little because we’ve ridden a horse using a head stall made out of hay wire and smiled at the memory of our father’s stopping the tractor to move a nest of newborn rabbits out of harm’s way.

We saw ourselves standing in those fields, our grandmother’s eyes under that hat, our mother holding our hand, our father holding on hope.

We saw our children in the steady cadence of comforting words and a familiar voice that we’ve heard coming through the static on our old tractor radio for years.

The rest of the story.

Our story.

Some days I feel like we’re moving further and further from our connection to the land and the understanding of the dirt from which that potato was plowed. Farmers, ranchers and agriculturalists are not known to stand at the pulpit and tell their stories to the masses. No. Many spend long days working alone in the combine, on the back of a horse checking cattle or working fencing pliers in the deep brush.We share our stories by living them alongside our elders, hoping to learn something, dreaming that one day we might be fortunate enough to try our hand at tending the land.

I know my grandfather’s story. I see the old equipment that couldn’t be repaired breaking the wind from the hilltops on this place. I find little pieces of wire, old engines, scraps of leather, worn coveralls and other little pieces of a life spent scraping and saving and getting by in the old out buildings, in the 100 year old barn, in the fences that need to be repaired. My father keeps the same collection, adding to it at will in case he might need to patch something up.

I know my father’ s story. I know that on Sunday mornings he will knock on the door of my house like he does every weekend for a cup of coffee and a chat between chores. I know he will take off his boots, un-do his silk scarf and leave his wool cap on his head. I know he will keep his Carhart jacket on because he won’t stay long, just long enough to wonder out loud what might be wrong with the old tractor this time and discuss some plans about buying cattle, fixing the corrals in the spring and making things work better out here.

I know that tractor’s story. It’s been on this place for decades, bought used when my father left for college in the 70s. I know the only thing wrong with that tractor is that you can’t stop time, and we could not afford to buy a new one.

Each day my father has been the caretaker of the family’s ranch it has been an adventure to get that tractor up and running.

Every day it has been worth it.

Somewhere along the line a company like Dodge took notice of the kinds of people buying those trucks they were selling, not for the paint job or the heated seat, but for the horsepower and the muscle that it takes to haul a trailer full of bulls to the sale barn, a couple of priceless horses and a teenage daughter to her first high school rodeo, or through a snowy trail as your grandfather scoops grain for the cattle in the winter.

Somewhere in their marketing plan Dodge thought it might be a good idea to mention those farmers and ranchers out there throwing bales and feeding the country, because quite frankly, they have helped keep them in business.

So they declared it the “Year of the Farmer” and are working their marketing plan so that spreading the word means supporting the FFA.

That moment a company like Dodge took to tell our story while they had the world’s attention gave us–the farmers, the ranchers, the corn growers, bottle feeders, chicken-coop cleaners, post-hole-diggers, pig-sloppers, 5 a.m. cow milkers, –a little reminder that ours might not be a glamorous story, but it is one worth living.

Click here to watch an interview with the Montana ranchers featured in the commercial.

Winter crazy.

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I know I’ve been talking about the weather a lot lately, trudging through the snow, climbing to the top of it, bundling up and taking it on by looking for the beauty in 30 below.

Well, we’re at the end of January now so I would like to take this opportunity, in the midst of another dangerous wind-chill advisory, to say ‘good riddance’ to the hardest and most brutal month of the year up here in the great white north.

Yup, that’s a little negative sign right there next to the 20. This is before the windchill. But hey, the sun is shining so what the hell, let’s just call it a beautiful day.

I think we made it through just fine admiring the sundogs,

and the fluffy puppy,

eating egg rolls, throwing sledding parties

and climbing the frosted badlands.

But I feel now it’s time to confess the fact that all of those things did their best to distract me from going crazy in this cooped up state, but they did not succeed entirely.

No.

I am afraid I might have hung on to a bit of that inevitable winter insanity.

But please, don’t judge me. Let me remind you that I’m still a woman living in an unfinished house, sharing my winter space with a good number of power tools and using a shop vac to complete the majority of my cleaning. And in a situation like this, unexpected additions to the decor and atmosphere pop up unexpectedly.

I mean, you try staying sane when you can be jolted from your sleep at any given moment by the excruciating and terrifying gun-shot like sound of the air-compressor shaking the house as it recharges in the loft.

You try remembering to unplug that thing when the only time it makes itself apparent is at 2 am! The dogs wake up and start a barking frenzy right before one of them pukes on the floor. The cats in the basement cling to the ceiling and you shake your husband, telling him that this time, you’re sure it’s a robber.

Or an alien.

You try keeping your cool as your knight in shining armor rolls over and falls back to sleep.

I mean, I always swear I”ll unplug that thing first thing in the morning. But in the morning all I can think of is coffee, and so the cycle continues as I make my way from the coffee pot my favorite chair, but not before I trip over that stack of cedar my husband decided to place in my path, sending me flailing forward as my coffee splays across the floor and I invent thirty-seven new curse words.

And those words are in addition to the ones I invented yesterday when I tripped over that same stack of wood three times.

I’m serious. It blends in. I get comfortable in my environment and I don ‘t find it necessary to look down. It’s a defect that I blame for the multiple times I’ve stepped the wrong way off of our front step and into the pit that will become our garage in the spring.

These types of outcomes are precisely the reason I’ve never been a furniture rearranging kind of person. Because I strongly believe that if you put something in its place, it should stay there.

Forever.

My life, limbs and coffee, depend on it.

Anyway, I am blaming those miseries on my husband. But I will tell you, I’ve created plenty of my own this winter, starting with allowing our one and only barn cat to take up residence in our basement. I mean, it’s so damn cold out there and now that we’re not in the barnyard I felt she needed to be close by, you know, to take the pressure off of the dogs to keep wild cat occupied while keeping her diet in check by batting her away with a vengeance if she dares get too close to the food.

I’ve been questioning this arrangement, but it seems it’s too late. Last weekend I attempted to put that barn cat outside to enjoy the 40 degree day and before I even opened the door she managed to claw her way out of my grip and up to my shoulder before flinging her body off the top of my head and running for cover.

And so I’ve been warned. There’s no way in hell that cat is every leaving my basement–rain, snow, forty below or 80 above.

Shit.

Allowing another animal into this house is not the weirdest mistake I’ve made this winter. No. A few days ago in my attempt to reach Husband I dialed the wrong number and asked a complete stranger if he planned to come home tonight. The man on the other end of the line sounded a lot like my husband, and, well, I didn’t appreciate his tone.

Turns out he didn’t appreciate mine either.

And then there was that time my car was making weird noises as I drove through the neighboring town, forcing me to pull over in the parking lot of Runnings where it became evident that when I put the thing in park it was going to ignore me and just kept rolling…and when I put it in reverse it sounded like it was going to blow up.

So I sat there with my foot on the brake for a half an hour while I waited for a tow truck to bring me to the mechanic and for Pops to come and save me and take me grocery shopping before bringing me 60 miles back home. I waited, car-less through the holiday season, only to get a call informing me they couldn’t find anything wrong with the vehicle, except, well, you know the thirty-seven rock chips in the windshield.

Yup, that really happened. It was an annoying Christmas miracle and I have spent every day since driving that car just waiting for it to blow up or something.

Oh, I know we all have little mishaps and results of poor judgement in our lives, I just think the annoyance is multiplied out here by the fact that we’re also cooped up and freezing. So I guess I decided to share them so we could laugh about while we dream about summer.

But I’ll I make sure to roll my eyes first.

And sometimes I might hollar “Really?! Really!” so don’t be alarmed.

Happy last day of January. I hope you made it through with your sanity.

If you need me, I’ll be looking for mine…

Goodbye Summer

Seeing it all.

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We’re finding our way to the end of January, and around these parts that’s a huge relief. I’ve been keeping busy playing music, writing and eating carbohydrates, and after a Friday evening spent singing to a full house, I was thawing out and happy with the way life gives you gifts, like 40 degrees on a January weekend.

Funny how a little warm up can turn an attitude around. Suddenly I was in love with winter again and while Husband worked on hammering and nailing and putting up walls in our master bedroom, I worked on ways I could sneak out the door unnoticed.

Because I decided it was of utmost importance that I load up little Juno and give her a tour of her new home turf.

Because we needed to check on things, ensure the gears were grinding right, the snowbanks weren’t too deep and the view was still as beautiful.

We needed to make sure those weird clouds weren’t storm clouds above us.

We needed to introduce her to the horses.

We needed to play…

and run…

And do whatever Tucker was doing here…

That looked like fun.

See, around here, if we chose to look, we can see things like this every day.

And although winter gets long, it’s one of those seasons that changes the landscape constantly. And so I suppose I’ve made it my mission here to keep tabs on the way the horses grow beards to ward off the chill…

The way the clouds roll and shift and change directions and colors…

How the light hits the grass and makes it sparkle…

How the horses settle lethargically into a pile of grain…

and how their noses feel under our hands.

I watch it all because I don’t want to miss it.

Because I like the way a puppy kiss looks.

And the sound of snow melting under a blue sky.

And the tree rows planted all those years ago? I like that they’re scraggly but standing still under a slow to rise winter sun.

I like the idea that this all will be green again, but first it has to be blue and white and brown.

I like that I’m here for all of that changing.

And I like the feeling, that like Juno, I’m hearing it all, seeing it all, discovering it all for the first time…on a 40 degree weekend at the end of January.

The beautiful things.

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I have a good life. Not much to complain about when it comes down to it really, except for a weird tail-less cat trying to climb up my leg, not enough hours in the day, unfinished projects and cold toes.

But some days, during a break in the morning news, I cry at the Walgreens commercial.

And the commercial for a web browser that tells the story about a dad sending his daughter off to college. And then they video chat.

And anything with a cute baby or a puppy or a grampa or a soldier coming home.

And lately I cry at the weather report.

Now, don’t get all worried about me yet. I’m not sure I would be diagnosed with any emotional disorder, although Husband has diagnosed me simply “emotional.”

And he’s right.

I spend quite a bit of my life laughing though, so I figure I’m balanced.

But I admit, some days are worse than others. I admit it because I’m human and I know you’re human (unless you’re a dog and humans haven’t discovered your abilities to access the web without thumbs) and we all have days like these.

Days that send me running for the hills.

I’ve learned over the course of my nearly 30 (gasp!) years alive in this breathtaking and heartbreaking place it’s the only thing to do to recover my senses and gain my balance and center myself once more.

I remove my body from the television screen, the radio, the music, the computer and all of those heartbreaking, heartwarming and heart wrenching stories and just try to live in my own for a moment.

It hasn’t been easy to do this lately, between the life-threatening cold temperatures, scheduled meetings and darkness that falls too early in the winter, I’ve had to make a special space in my day for clarity.

It’s why I keep an extra pair of snow boots and a furry hat in my car just in case. You never know when you might have a chance to escape.

I found one yesterday afternoon. I had a few of those teary moments over coffee and the news while I moved through my morning trying to pull it together, get to the office, make it to the meeting, keep up on emails, plan for an event, meet a deadline and live comfortably in pretty work sweaters between four walls.

4:30 came around and I had a meeting at 6.

An hour and a half hours would do it.

I got in my car and pointed it toward a favorite refuge, the only other place in the world beside the ranch where I can look winter in the face and call it truly beautiful.

The Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

I’ve taken you there before on similar weepy days in the fall when I’m overwhelmed and worried, on summer days when I’m tan and moving to the next adventure, and winter.

I really love it in the winter.

And it never lets me down.

So in 15 minutes I was there, turning off of the highway and following the snow coated road toward the river and the buttes,

stopping to capture how the sun looks above the frozen water and if I might catch the bison grazing somewhere in the snow.

I drove slowly to admire the lighting. I rolled down my window a bit to feel the fresh, 20 degree air and pulled over where the road ends, next to a trail that can take you to the top of it all.

I checked my watch. I had 20 minutes before I needed to turn my car around and head back to my other world. I was in my town coat and dangly earrings.

I switched out my fancy boots for snow boots, covered my hair with a beanie and trudged on up there, slipping and sliding and panting because, well, I just felt like it.

I felt like climbing.

Because this is what winter looks like in the badlands.

This is what it looks like from the top of it all…

all 360 degrees of it, surrounding me and telling me it’s ok to cry.

Especially for the beautiful things.

Summer horses.

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I miss my summer horses. I miss the way their coats lather up under the saddle after an evening ride to the east pasture.

I miss the way that smells and the way it feels to see them grazing on the green grass of the season–admiration and beauty and peace and home all wrapped up in their breathing and munching, snorting and fly swatting.

I even miss those damn burs I pull out of their mangled manes every evening.

I miss my summer horses because they have turned into winter horses, wild and free in the big pastures chewing on hay bales and hiding from the wind in the coulees at night.

We don’t ride much in the winters, the ground’s too hard, the wind too bitter, the hills too slick, so we give our working animals a much needed break during the coldest months and in no time they turn into a sort of wild and wooly that always amazes me.

On the coldest days they find their way to the barnyard and I bury my face in their thick coats where they keep the summer,

feed them grain from the buckets in the tack room and watch as they argue over the first and last bites.

You have to have respect for the animals that bear the burden of this extreme weather on their backs. I know the white tale deer that bed down on frozen hillsides or in a bull berry patch, the grouse roosting in tree tops and the wild elk competing for the same domestic feed as our horses are built for endurance with instincts that save them, but I still wonder if their noses get cold.

On frozen days like this I go looking for them, as if catching a glimpse of how they’re surviving this season might help shed some light on how I might do the same.

There are bison that live on the land next ours. I catch a glimpse of them when I’m on the highway, stopping to watch as the young ones run and the old ones nuzzle the ground for grass. Frost forms on their muzzles where they breathe in the cold air and on days the ice settles in on our world those creatures wear it, unassuming, as just one more layer of their being.

I wear my sweaters like the bison wear the weather. I cannot grow a wooly coat, so I wrap a scarf around my neck and lean into the cold.

I wonder if those bison miss the summer grass.

I wonder if those deer bedded down in the oaks behind this house notice the lights in the bedroom and dream of coming in from the cold.

I wonder if they know I would let them if I could. I would let them all in to warm by the fire if animals were meant for houses.

But I’ve said it before. Houses are for people and this big wide world is meant for deer in the bull berry brush, grouse in the tree tops, elk in the hay bales and horses in their wool coats waiting for a girl who’s waiting on summer to come and drop them some grain.

Sundogs and some things to warm you up.

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Good Sunday to you. I thought I’d pop in this weekend to honor the coldest day on my planet.

Yup, we are in the middle of a good old fashioned “Wind Chill Warning.”

Check it out.

55 BELOW ZERO?!

That can’t even be real can it? I mean, once it hits a certain temperature we should just call it pain.

PAIN.

Now I know that most people living in this world are not acquainted with a “Feels Like” forecast, but there it is up there warning us that our noses are sure to freeze instantly upon exposure, turn black and fall off if we dare to go out uncovered. The “real” temperature is probably only like -10, and, well, that’s doable I suppose.

But yesterday I went from my house to the pickup holding on to my coffee mug and by the time I shut the door on the passenger side I had added about fifty-seven new curse words to my vocabulary, my hot coffee was iced and my fingers were blue.

So I brought the puppy in from Mom and Pops’ garage, called Little Sister, poured a glass of wine, made some soup and we played dominos.

And today it’s even colder. I’m looking out the window at the sun shining on snow banks that were melting on Wednesday now frozen solid today as that wind pushes ribbons of fresh snow along its surface like rolling smoke.

And even though I knew I’d be risking my cheeks, I had to get out there for a moment to capture it.

Because only in cold weather like this do we get a halo around the sun.

A frozen rainbow without a drop of rain.

A sun dog.

A little gift of beauty as a reward for suffering frost bite.

Take a look. That is cold.

Hair freezing cold.

Snotsicle cold.

Get in through your Carharts, jeans, long-underwear, leather boots, wool socks, cotton socks and to your pasty little toes cold.

So let’s warm up shall we?

Here’s a few options to make you feel warm and fuzzy and get you through this frozen Sunday.

First, listen to “my attempt at making winter sexy” song Winter’s Sweet and get in the mood to make this soup:

Read more about cow dogs and the new puppy in today’s column ‘Coming Home’ published every Sunday in the Fargo Fourm.

Read this blog from fellow North Dakota writer, Ryan Taylor who has compiled a series of his late mother’s columns, also titled “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” from their local newspaper in Towner, ND. Her wholesome perspective is sure to keep your mind off the weather.

Then, check out this cute illustration of the one-eyed pug from my friend Cheyanne,

go shopping on her Etsy site, “Hang it on the line” and let me know if you want your own “A Girl Needs a Dog” t-shirt.

While you’re shopping, buy my album so you can learn all the words to that song!

And if cute fuzzy puppies, music, reading, cooking and shopping don’t warm you up, just pretend you’re here in the summer.

Wishing you love and a good pair of mittens.

Your frozen friend,

Jessie

To be a human in winter.

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Mid January in Western North Dakota doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s indecisive. One day it’s a kind, 20 some degrees,

the next a bitter, chilling 20 below.

Then, just when you find peace with your wedgie-inducing long underwear, it decides to warm up enough to melt the snow. “How nice!” you think to yourself as you get in your car to drive to town. “I think I could get used to this winter thing if it stayed like this…”

But you know better and you should have never taken off those long underwear, because as soon as you get far enough away from home that turning back wouldn’t make much of a difference, the wind picks up and drops the temperature enough to turn that once slushy highway into a long and lethal ice-skating rink where a constant stream of semis and oil tankers are your competition.

And you’re no Nancy Kerrigan.

Ah, shit. I admit, January and I are enemies. I try to stay positive, keep my guitar out and my snow-shoes and neck-warmer handy. I try to do some sledding or walking or make a snow angel or something…

but mostly I wind up in my sweatpants under the John Wayne blanket reading a book about someone near the ocean before I turn out the light for the night and prepare to tackle mid-winter in the morning.

White knuckle driving, the “arms-out, it’s icy out,” sidewalk shuffle, an intimate relationship with Henry, the morning weather man, phone calls to Pops and Momma and Husband and Little Sister and my friend down the road about whether or not to believe the storm report, feet shoved in slippers and then in boots and then in slippers and then under the covers, soup and coffee and tea and some sort of disgusting warmed up cold medicine because everyone’s sick around here….and a constant craving for pastries.

Yup, that’s January.

And although it comes every year, I’m always surprised how this month seems to suck the creative light right out of me and makes me question the practicality of packing up the pug and heading south.

But I’m not leaving.

Well, there’s the Vegas thing in February, but as of today, I’m planning on coming back. Because I’m here for the long haul, and the longest haul of them all just happens to be winter.

I was thinking this last night as I sat behind the wheel of my four-wheel-drive and turned up the volume on some melancholy music, singing along soulfully and feeling frigid and uninspired and hungry for carbohydrates. I put my foot lightly on the brake to navigate a snowy curve, when up ahead, about five mils from home along the side of the road I noticed a large, tall, dark figure moving slowly toward the white ditch.

I slowed down as a few hundred scenarios whipped through my mind as they do when you see something unexpected on a very familiar path…to big to be a deer…

A grizzly bear?

A tall, scary, insane hitchhiker?

Bigfoot?

An alien? Probably an alien.

No.

I pulled a little closer until the length of my headlights revealed the figure: two massive and stunning bull elk moving with ease and confidence across the road toward an oak filled coulee on the edge of the badlands.

I stopped in the middle of the road and looked around. Not much traffic meant I could relax and bask in this mysterious moment for a beat. And apparently those elk felt the same way, not the least bit intimidated by the flare of an oil well behind them casting light on their bodies and transforming them into beautiful silhouettes.

They stood still in that warm glow on a flat, snowy patch of ground and stared at the metal contraption lit up in front of them.

An alien.

I rolled down my window to hear them breathing, to hear their hooves squeak in the crust of the snow. As they moved along the highway I lightly pressed the gas pedal and moved with them, imagining I was on my way to the oak grove on the edge of the badlands, imagining my body was held up by a set of massive, hoof-clad legs.

Imagining my coat was thick and my head was held high and I could run like that.

Imagining I was one of them.

But people were made for houses I suppose. Houses and words and questions and the wisdom and thumbs to make wool caps to protect us from the cold.

And of all the qualities a glorious North Dakota elk possesses, I don’t imagine he can be inspired.

Although perhaps he is the definition of the word standing magnificently on a snowy flat, staring into my soul.

So I’ll take it. I’ll take the ice and the fur lined boots and the hot cup of coffee because being human on a cold January evening means the ability to become breathless and warmed clear through and falling in love, over and over again with our big, wide, white, frozen, wonderful world.

How to warm up.

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s no secret, winters in North Dakota are long and cold. We always know they’re coming, but still they surprise us as we lean into November with brave faces and feed our bodies with soup and turkey and hot dishes (that’s Lutheran for casserole). We wait for the snow as we prepare our Thanksgiving meals and watch it fall as we wrap up presents, bring in Christmas trees, snuggle our families and ring in the New Year with champaign and a bit of dread, not necessarily about the year ahead, but the month we’re staring down.

No, the initial blast of holiday cheer can’t trick North Dakotans into thinking that winter is a party.

Oh no.

No.

Because we still have January. And January is just the beginning really, marching in on us promising unpredictable, below zero temperatures, blinding blizzards, snow drifts, icy roads, and then usually a nice little thaw to tease us before it starts all over again.

January scares me. It always has. And I know it’s coming, I do, but for some reason I find myself worrying that I might not come out of the deep freeze with the rest of the furry animals tucked away tight for the winter.

I worry I’ll start eating hot dishes (Lutheran for casserole) and never stop.

I worry I’ll grow too comfortable with the extra padding on my rear-end and the bulky sweaters and the scarves that hug me and hide me from the elements and I will decide not to emerge with the warm sun.

I worry I might just turn into a hibernating bear-like creature who never shaves her legs or takes off her beanie and walks all hunched over and shivery if she ever decides to move at all.

This kind of paranoia is not healthy. Fear is not a good place to be. So this January, instead of bidding farewell to the holidays, packing out the gigantic Christmas tree and pulling on the wool socks with no intentions of removal, we decided to keep the party going.

We decided to leave the Christmas tree up. We decided to buy more groceries, turn on the oven, pull out the crock pots and paper plates and keep on eating.

We decided to dig out the schnapps.

And the snow pants.

We decided to call our friends and neighbors to see if they’d like to join us as we flung our bodies down the giant hill outside our window.

We decided to clear off the stock dam and turn it into a curling rink.

We decided to use icicles as stir sticks,

drink hot chocolate, sit close together on the couch,

play some games, tell some stories and sing a little.

I decided to make a chocolate cake.

From scratch.

We decided to build a fire and stand around it and then head inside to eat some more.

We decided to laugh in winter’s face.

Take that winter.

And that.

And this.

And that.

And…

Ummm…

Well…

ooooo…

I think winter won there.

But I’m not scared anymore.

I just forgot for a moment what it is that really gets us through life in one piece. And it’s not just the special occasions that are put on a calendar reminding us to love one another, to be thankful and to celebrate.

No, it’s the every day and the way we chose to live it.

It’s the phone calls that we make that turn into plans to sit next to one another and eat dip and chocolate cake. It’s the way we bundle up against the cold and scream as we push each other down hills, remembering what it’s like to forget everything but the world you just climbed to the top of and flew down.

It’s remembering that sometimes we need someone to pull us up there.

It’s clearing a space for games and music.

It’s the invitation into one another’s homes, into our lives, to sleep on the couch or on the air mattress in the next bedroom and wake up for bacon and coffee and a recap of how someone nearly killed the pug in a sledding rollover.

Because we are made for so many things–work and worry, fear and bravery, singing and listening. Our lungs are made for breathing, yes, but they also work for screaming as snow sprays you in the face while you fly 25 miles per hour down a hill in a sled with your father and your friend.

How else would you find out a brain freeze can start on the outside of your head?

And our fingers are made for working and typing and pointing out things that are wrong with the world, but they also fit really nicely in mittens, as you pull each other up.

I mean, sure, it’s damn cold out there, but our legs are made for walking, hiking, climbing, jumping and standing on the top of things, we might as well use them properly.

See that’s the thing about us northerners. It’s not that we have found a spot in our hearts for the blinding snows of winters, the icy wind or temperatures that dip so far below zero that I don’t even want to mention it. It’s not that we ever get used to the deep freeze.