Spring is slowly springing on the ranch and I thought I would send you off into the weekend to enjoy it.
Pick yourself some crocuses…
Climb to the top of a hill…
Count the birds that are finding their way home…
Search for green things…
Follow the winding, thawing, crisp cold creek…
Catch the sunrise…
Stay out until sunset…
And just live in it.
Happy weekend
So we’re in the middle of finishing that house that came down the road to our little valley at the end of December. And by finishing, I mean, we’re the ones responsible for the little things…like a floor, doors, steps, a master bedroom/bathroom and, well, a ceiling…pretty much all the basics that one might need to actually LIVE in a house.
No big deal right? I mean, I should have known when I said “I do” to a man who was raised with a father who had a collection of lawnmowers/washers and dryers/stoves/boats/kitchen sinks in his back yard in case he needed a part for the one that was currently in use in the house.
I should have known when my own washing machine went out that the options were not “get a new one,” but “call dad and see if he has any extra motors laying around.”
He did.
Four of them.
And I think three of them might still be in the basement.
"You know, in case we need 'em"
Anyway, that’s how things are around here. If you want something done and still want to be able to afford to buy Cheerios for breakfast, we do it ourselves.I’ve come to terms with this concept after completing a full out, strip down, shag carpet, hot-tub in the living room remodel that brought a 1974 Brady Bunch house up to the times of hardwood flooring and, well, no hot tubs in the living room. Yup, 200 hours of staining and varnishing, three hundred less brain cells and one head stuck in a ladder later, I was convinced.
I am the wife of a handyman.
And this is our project...forever...
So I went into it with a combination of confidence and dread. I mean, I knew my love in a tool belt (and oh how I love him in a tool belt) could get us living in a beautiful home designed by our two brains. I knew that under his direction I would hand him tools, saw a few boards, make lumber-yard runs, choose the paint colors, try to avoid my thumbs with the hammer, deliver sandwiches and beer and keep the music on the iPod flowing with motivational tunes. I had that covered. There are some things I can handle.
And really, it has been going good so far. If you ask my brave and fearlessly confident husband, he’s got this under control. Take out the minor incident where my three-year-old niece came to visit, decided she had to try out our new potty and plopped a little poopie in our unplumbed bathroom, and I’d say it’s been down right Bob Vila-esque around here.
Don't worry, we're still friends...
So why have I spent that last month fighting off night terrors you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya. Some genius decided to build a house with 20 foot ceilings. And that genius, knowing full well who would be praying to Jesus, Mary and Joseph while trembling on an 8 foot ladder on top of 10 foot scaffolding with her arms above her head, fears heights the same way most people fear plummeting to a bone-crushing, back-breaking, neck-wrenching, bloody, mangled death.
Yup.
shit
That’s what I pictured each and every time I walked across that homemade scaffolding, boards creaking and bending, the sound of someone hyperventilating in my attempt to bring a nail-gun (the one I am always sure is going to go off randomly, shooting a 2 inch nail through the top of my foot without warning) to my dearly beloved who somehow thinks positioning his ladder on the tippy-toe edge of the ledge, standing at the very top rung and then leaning out into the abyss of death that is one day going to be our living room, is an acceptable risk to take just to ensure that a board is secure.
I scream “screw the board, save yourselves,” fling the nail gun and run to the corner of the house, the corner far away from any ledge and plummeting death.
It’s ridiculous, I’m aware. And I feel sorry for husband who is just trying to make our vision for a beautiful cedar ceiling a reality. I feel sorry for him because I come by it naturally. It’s a hereditary condition spawned from my roots of prairie people who passed up the terrifying mountains to come to live in houses with one floor, low ceilings and a basement.
One of the first Veeder ranch dwellings. You see where I'm coming from?
I feel sorry for him because the only help he’s had at his disposal for this sky-scaping, death-defying, circus-act of a job is the two prairie people with the worst case of vertigo in the family.
Yours truly, and her father.
Yup. Pops has it bad too, and frankly, I blame him for all of these undesirable qualities I’ve inherited. The big nose, the fuzzy hair, the tendency to ramble AND the crippling fear of high places. All him.
I might just blame my unhealthy obsession with four legged creatures on him too...
But the difference between Pops and me is this. I avoid, complain, sob, tremble, look away and repeatedly tell my significant other to “be careful, watch where you step, hold on, hold on, don’t lean…I’ve got the ladder…shit…don’t fall…don’t fall…don’t fall…you’re killing me…”
But Pops, he just sucks it up, wipes the sweat that forms uncontrollably on his brow, suffers in silence as his son in law dangles with one arm from the rafters while he leans over the ledge, and then goes home to have vivid nightmares about people falling off skyscrapers.
Which brings me to last weekend where, after weeks of this type of torture, the end of this dreaded ceiling project was in sight. I was feeling pretty good about the fact that we had managed to nail approximately thirty -thousand boards to the rafters without anyone losing a limb, shooting an eyeball with the nail gun, cutting a finger off, or, you know, plummeting to a gruesome death.
But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Nope. We still had one giant task that included raising and nailing a 15 foot beam to the very, tippy-top, peak of our the ceiling of our new home. This was to complete the job, make it look finished, give us a place to hang our chandelier and get us moving on to the next task that required shorter ladders.
So I suggested calling the National Guard.
Husband took the phone from my hand and told me to go find my pops.
I cried.
And then did what I was told, because in the end practicality always wins over drama in my life.
Although you would never guess it by the looks of this outfit...but that was in my pre-husband era...
I found Pops in the shop, on solid ground, working on his beloved 4-wheeler. He followed me to the house to find husband waiting for us on the damned, creaky scaffolding equipped with two ladders and a nail gun.
The task? Hold the beam up to the top of the 20 foot ceiling while husband climbs and dangles and runs and jumps and back flips to get the damn thing to hold.
I trembled and felt a little of that morning’s eggs hit my throat. I held my breath and as Pops held the beam on one ladder I stayed on the scaffolding holding a 10 foot 2×4 against the middle part of the beam.
And there we stood, the two of us conjuring up new nightmares and worst-case scenarios as my Bob Villa Ninja went from one near death position to the next. Pops told me not to watch as husband stretched his ladder across the stairway and stood with nothing but a thin board between him and a 15 foot fall.
So I didn’t watch. And neither did Pops.
We held it together, the two of us. We only hollered “be careful up there!” and “don’t fall!” like fifty-five times during the course of fifteen minutes (although I would have been more comfortable with a number in the hundreds.) And we thought we were out of the woods, everybody’s head in tact, when husband climbed down from the ladder and put his hands on his hips.
“Looks good,” he said.
“YES! IT DOES. GOOD WORK,” shrieked Pops and I.
“I just need to nail one more spot,” husband said scratching his head. “I wonder how the hell I’m going to get to it?”
We followed his eyes to where they rested on a piece of the beam that towered past the edge of the scaffolding, too high for a regular ladder to reach. 20 feet up there, un-reachable unless you had wings.
Pops used our best material to try and convince Husband that a nail in that particular location was not necessary. We suggested putting more nails in other places to make up for it. But Ninja Bob Villa wouldn’t have it and before we knew it he had his ladder on the ledge of the scaffolding, his feet on the top rung, his back bent at a 90 degree angle out over the stair case with a nail gun in his hand reaching for the ceiling.
And it seems we lost it.
I whimpered and squeezed back the tears as I grabbed the ladder. And while I was saying fifty prayers to Jesus, Pops threw down his tools and grabbed on to his son-in-law’s belt buckle as my husband leaned further back over the abyss.
“Son, if you fall it would be sure death,” my Pops declared.
“And if either of you tell anyone that I grabbed your belt, I’ll kill you both…”
Well, I guess we all have to die someday…If you need me I’ll be around here somewhere…hiding from Pops.
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.
Some days I’m not sure why I bother. Some days I wonder why the things that are supposed to be simple, things that other human people seem to manage properly without much sweat or confusion, don’t come the same kind of easy for me. Some days I wonder how most put-together people go through most put-together days without worry or lost sleep, without poop on the floor, panicked hollers in the night, slow drives down a country road at dusk with binoculars, worried phone calls to neighbors or a wrestling match on the kitchen floor with your husband and that stupid black dog with a smooshy face and one eyeball that at one time three years ago you decided was a good idea.
No. Simple has never been a word in a vocabulary dominated by the words “where the hell are the dogs?”
Some days.
Today was one of them.
Today is the day that I ask myself what my life would be like without the two stinky fur balls who have taken over my yard, my kitchen, my couch and my life. Today is the day I ask myself who I would be without them, what I would do with the extra time I would be gifted by not having to pick off their ticks, pluck porcupine quills from their noses, rescue them from the cows and drive over to my mom and pop’s to pick them up after their daily jaunts to visit their girlfriends.
Today is the day I contemplate this scenario because, well, I was nearly granted it.
A dog-free life.
Can you imagine?!
Maybe I should start from the beginning. See, its been on my radar for a while, the idea that these dogs of mine need to lead a much more civilized life. And by civilized I mean locked up behind bars in order to keep them from going wherever they have been going to snack on something rotten enough to cause gas emulsions that force husband and I out of our own home.
So when I received a call last week from a voice on the other end of the line telling me that two overly-friendly dogs had wandered three miles up the hill to an oil drilling site I did not hesitate to believe my ears. One whistle out the door revealed there were no dogs in site, so I pulled on my muck boots over the skinny jeans I wore to work and squished a beanie on my puffy town hair and drove my pissed off ass up to that site to retrieve them.
Now, a girl in skinny jeans and oversized boots with a Bozo-esque hairstyle in giant (but glamorous) sunglasses pulling onto a rig site is not a glimpse into womanhood these hard-hat wearing men see every day…nor was it a pretty glimpse. And if the outfit didn’t label me crazy, questioning these men in the middle of their work day about the whereabouts of a wandering one-eyed pug a giant brown lab sealed the deal.
Especially since not one of them knew what the hell I was talking about.
Shit.
It wasn’t until I made my way back down the hill that I realized I should have probably checked mom and pops’ place for the dogs before subjecting myself to a situation in which I could be labeled “crazy lady” in bar room conversations. Hindsight was a clear 20/20 as I pulled into their drive to find that sure as shit they were there. And judging by the relocation of pops’ work boot collection on the front lawn, they had been there all day.
Flash forward to yesterday when I came home to discover the dogs were again missing in action.
“Typical hooligan behavior, low life, vagabond rascals, curse word, curse word, curse word,” I muttered to myself as I got back in my car and drove down the pink road to mom and pops’ to retrieve their wandering, misbehaving, rebel-dog asses. But when I pulled into the drive something seemed fishy. All of pops’ boots were in place, his two dogs were laying lazily out in the sun and my dogs? Well, they didn’t come running out of the trees to greet me.
I stopped cursing and then I said “What the hell?” (Ok, I stopped cursing for a second.)
Gone.
The dogs were gone.
Shit.
I headed back home slowly, windows open, whistling into the wind, hollering their names, squinting into the hills and the trees, waiting for them to come flying out of wherever that smelly dead thing they like so much is lying.
Nothing.
I parked in our driveway to find Husband home and soon my string of cursing blended in harmony with his.
But we weren’t worried yet. We were just pissed. There was still time for them to climb out of whatever stinky hole they had found themselves in on purpose and make an appearance.
So we had supper, whistled for them a bit more, called my pops to check the status, wandered around the yard and then went to bed.
I asked husband if I should worry. He told me it would be a waste to worry about two dogs who have stupidly escaped a life of luxury to roll around in cow shit, munch on rotting rabbits, dig giant holes, and chase innocent deer over miles of rolling landscape.
Husband told me that we could worry tomorrow if they don’t show up.
So we went to bed pissed.
And I woke up worried.
Because when I opened the door to the morning air there were no dogs waiting on my stoop. Just three hungry cats meowing for food when they should be mousing.
So I drove to work slowly with the windows open, whistling into the frosty air and stopping into mom and pops’ place just to be sure they didn’t shack up with their girlfriends’ last night.
Nope.
No dogs.
I said a little prayer for the wanderers and went to work.
And when I got home the results were the same. No dogs and a pissed husband who hadn’t started worrying yet, but decided it might be time to go looking for them.
We got in the pickup and chose a direction, the first guess being a place where a pair of mis-fit dogs might wander in search of the affection and table scraps they have so unfortunately been denied in the home we’ve created for them.
So we headed to the drilling rig site a half mile from our house, a place I was fooled into thinking they were smart enough to avoid (But this time I wore a less ridiculous outfit, and brought a man with me.) When we pulled onto the site husband rolled down the window and asked one of the men if they have happened to see a couple canines roaming around.
I held my breath, certain I was going to get the same look I got last week when I asked the same question about the same damn dogs.
But I was pleasantly surprised when the man smiled and said something like “Oh, that round little black thing and a lab? Yeah? They’re around here somewhere. They’ve been here for a couple days. We’ve been feeding them. They should be over there….”
He pointed in the direction of three men working the platform of a giant piece of drilling equipment and our eyes followed the tip of his finger and settled angrily on the two banes of our existence who were staring up at the workers, tails wagging, ears perked, waiting for one of them to drop a piece of jerky or something.
Husband called out their names.
Nothing.
He moved closer, yelling a little louder.
Their stares were affixed.
He stormed toward them whistling.
The lab turned his head in acknowledgement.
Husband screamed their names.
The pug didn’t move.
He stomped his feet and clapped his hands.
The lab turned his head back toward the anticipated jerky….
And so you understand now, I hope, why I have been daydreaming about a simpler existence. An existence where I am not responsible for Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dumb and their appetite for adventure and tasty treats, but one where I am a proud owner of the more appealing and lower maintenance goldfish, small monkey or circus elephant.
But in my self-assessment about why and how I get myself into these situations when I am certain dog ownership isn’t as much of a debacle for regular human people as it is for me, I have come up with a solution that I am certain no regular human person would come up with.
Doggie prison.
And I’m open for business if anyone needs a rehab facility for their canines. There’s two overly friendly dogs waiting there to hand them their matching orange jumpsuits.
It was this kind of day
a hug and kiss kind of day
a put your pole in a puddle
and fish kind of day
You ran down the big hill for fun
basked in the warm pre-spring sun
It was a big stick kind of day
a muddy crick kind of day
a ketchup and mustard
picnic kind of day
You took the hand of your best friend to hide
beneath oak trees and sky blue and wide
It was your best horse kind of day
a no-chores kind of day
an open the windows and doors kind of day
you used your paint to you let your art spread
to your cheeks and, oops, the dog’s head
You found renewed energy
forgave your enemies
noticed the small things you’ve missed
like a spider’s spun web
brighter thoughts in your head
the way that it feels to be kissed
It was a day made for races
in wide open spaces
a good day to climb way up there
the best way to tangle your hair
Yes, it was a day just like this
short sleeves, walking sticks
the only place in this world I would wish
to spend next to you in this gift.
Ahhh, March. You bring us one month closer to the promise of spring with your wild and unpredictable snow storms, your extreme warmth, your puddles and mud, little bit of rain, thawed out cow plops, cloudy and sunny and then cloudy again skies. All of your personalities keep us on our toes and undecided about appropriate footwear and jackets and I like that about you.
I like that you bring on the wind and the mud, the fifty-degree temperatures and the blinding blizzards, the rain and the ice.
Yes March you’re a little ambitious. You get up a little earlier and go to bed a little later. And that suits you fine, all of that light reminding us that soon we will be able to stay outside until 10 pm and wake up with you at 6.
Soon our days will be full of warm sunshine and green grass sprinkled with flowers…
I am looking forward to it, I am. But truthfully March, right now, it doesn’t appear that all of us are on the same page. You know, the page we turn to take us from hibernation, head under the covers, groggy, snugly evenings that meld into dark and lazy, robe wearing mornings spent shuffling around the kitchen with our eyes barely open to the place where we crack open our windows and let the warm breeze sing us to sleep after a day spent under the soul-refreshing spring sky only to be wakened by the sliver of sun peeking through the window in the early morning hours, prompting us to pop out of bed and greet the chirping birds and fresh green grass poking through the earth…
Nope.
Some of us are not quite there yet.
Some of us are caught in limbo, the place between holding on to our winter coats and throwing caution and our fur, to the March wind.
Some of us are still sleepy.
Some of us aren’t quite ready to trade in our flannel p.j.s for nothing but the sheets.
Some of us haven’t shaved our legs for months.
Some of us wouldn’t mind another extra hour or so to finish up that reoccurring dream about Ryan Renolds.
Some of us need three to six cups of coffee before the day can start.
So March, don’t take this the wrong way. Realize it’s still early, the pug’s still snoring and I have yet to change out of my robe. March, I appreciate the little glimmers of hope you create and I expect that whole “Lion/Lamb” thing. I appreciate your puddles and the way you warm the hilltops. I like the vibe you’re throwing this week and what you’re promising for the weekend: 50+ degrees and a chance to ride some horses.
But I know your good mood won’t last. It never does.
And that’s why I haven’t packed up my furry vest and slippers that might as well be boots.
Nope.
I don’t trust you.
And neither do these guys.
They’ve been burned before.
So we’ve come to an agreement to milk it. To call it winter and sleep in. To lay down in your sunshine and put on another pot of coffee just in case.
We love your face March. We do.
But you can’t trick us. We’ve learned and we’re going to stay tired for a while longer.
So we aren’t moving, we aren’t shaving, we aren’t opening these windows, packing up the down coats, or looking for our short sleeves until at least mid April.
Yeah…when April gets it together, maybe we will too.
Maybe
If you give a pug a home he will probably want full reign of your couch to go with it. So you will move over to clear the area for that smooshy nosed, squishy, cuddly animal to lie down next to you. When you’ve helped him to his spot and sufficiently scratched his ears, he will circle and sniff and roll around to get comfortable. And when he finally finds an adequate spot under your arm, sprawled out along your body, nose three inches from your face, he will sigh, blink and ask you for a blanket.
Slowly, so as not to disturb his rest, you will move off of the couch to fetch your favorite fluffy blanket from the closet. As you close the closet door you will turn around to find him staring up at you from the floor with those adorable eyes. He will ask you, since you are up, if you happen to have a hamburger or a steak or something in the meat family in the house. He could really use a snack after that rest.
As you dig in the refrigerator to find some leftover sausage or some sandwich meat to satisfy him you will offer him a piece of jerky and notice then that you have a little refrigerator cleaning to accomplish. While your pet enjoys his snack you will decide to take a look at the contents of an unidentifiable specimen that is growing in a Tupperware in the back of the fridge. You will pull off the lid and promptly fling the container across the room, an understandable reaction to the stench of decaying meat.
The pug, who has remained in the kitchen, not quite satisfied by the slice of dry jerky he inhaled, will investigate the stench coming from the steaming brown splatters on the floor. And while you’re gagging and writhing and scrubbing your hands in the sink, your back will be turned to the pet who has decided that the contents of the smelly Tupperware are really quite satisfying.
Hearing the snorting and slurping behind you, you will turn around, horrified at the thought of your adorable pet consuming the poison that somehow developed over time as a result of your refrigerator negligence. To keep him away from the danger you’ve created, you will place his fat little body outside.
Still hungry and with the taste of rotting meat on his tongue, the pug will decide to go on a mission for more stinky culinary experiences, following his nose to a nearby coulee where an unfortunate deer lost his life in the cold snap of the previous month and is now thawing out nice and fast and stinky in the unseasonably warm late winter weather. Catching sight of his small and weird-looking companion and wind of the stench coming from the direction he’s heading, the big brown dog who lives outside will follow in his friend’s path.
Meanwhile, inside the house, you will pull out your best mop to clean up the mess you made on the floor. While you are mopping you will decide that you might as well scrub the cupboards. And once the cupboards are clean, you will notice that your oven might as well get a polishing. And if you’re going to clean the oven, you ought to do the stove and the microwave. It’s been a while since they have seen a good disinfectant spray. Speaking of ovens and microwaves, you will decide that you had better put supper on the stove, but not before you clean out that ghastly refrigerator that sent you on this mission in the first place.
You will open the fridge and remember the pug.
Realizing he’s been away for hours, you will step outside and call his name.
You will hear silence and then catch sight of big brown dog running towards you from over the hill. You will stand in the doorway, waiting for the black dot of a dog to come running on his trail. And as the big brown dog get’s closer you will notice that he has something large and furry in his mouth.
A rabbit?
No.
A cat?
No.
A giant furry hat?
No.
The brown dog will come closer with no sign of the pug behind him. Bringing the mystery item toward you he will drop it at your feet. You will screech as you identify his proud find as nothing other than the head of a deer, ears flapping, eyeballs missing.
A familiar gag reflex will again be engaged as you run inside the house for the bathroom.
And while you collect yourself, again scrubbing your hands under the sink, you will light your favorite lovely smelling candle to help cleanse your palate and your husband will walk through the door. His presence will remind you about the supper that didn’t quite make it to the now-shiney stove. So you will ask for his assistance in the process and the two of you will whip up something that resembles a noodle hot-dish that needs to bake in the oven for a good hour.
When you pull the hot dish out of the oven you will be reminded of the pug again and you will inform your husband about the missing pet.
He will suggest that the pug more than likely made his way over to his girlfriend’s house down the road at my mom’s and pops and that since it is so late he is certain they won’t mind keeping him overnight.
Meanwhile, at mom’s and pop’s, the pug, who indeed did make his way to his girlfriend’s house down the road, will be jostled out of his snoring sleep on the fluffy dog pillow under the heat lamp in my parent’s garage by the howling of a nearby pack of coyotes. Not to be outdone by their wild calls into the night, the pug will feel compelled to throw his head back and take a shot at the howling thing. After a weak start, the pug will get his rhythm and be so pleased with his performance that he will have no intentions of letting those coyotes take the solo.
The obnoxious whining and screeching coming from the garage will awake your pops who had been sleeping soundly on the couch inside of the house. Curious about the creature responsible for the chaos, your pops will open the door of the house to find your pet putting on his best performance. Realizing that the ruckus was not about to end as long as the pug can hear the competition, your pops will let him in the house to spend the night.
Once in the house the pug will spot the couch. Understanding that this is not his home and getting the vibe that he might not be welcome on the furniture, the pug will wait until your pops starts snoring and then assume his position under his arm, sprawled out along his body, nose three inches from his face. The pug will sigh, close his eyes and ask him for a blanket.
At the sight of that adorable smooshy face, your pops will decide that he likes the company and slowly, so as not to disturb his new companion, he will move off of the couch to fetch his favorite fluffy blanket from the closet. As he closes the closet door he will turn around to find that the pug (who suddenly realized his mighty dead deer feast may not have been the best food choice) mid-squat, mid-diarrhea, squirting shit in the middle of my momma’s favorite leather rug.
And that’s what happens if you give a pug a home.
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.
Well the wind blew winter in this weekend and I breathed in the frozen air, a kind of sigh of relief that the season didn’t skip us altogether. Nope, the snow and the cold made it just in time to keep us wondering if there will be lions or lambs trotting in for the grand opening of March.
Oh, it doesn’t really matter much anyway. Around here we can’t trust in spring until the first weeks of June no matter how easy the winter season was on us. But on Sunday morning I was reminded of how much I missed winter all of these months when it was supposed to be snowing. The months I have come to call the extended fall…the early spring…
But we had winter yesterday and I couldn’t wait to get out in it. I squeezed into my long underwear, pulled on layers, tied my scarf around my neck, made sure my wool cap covered my ears and zipped my coat to my chin. The snow was fresh and the wind was blowing it in sparkly swirls around the barnyard. The hay bales were adequately frosted in neatly stacked white drifts, remnants of the small blizzard that blew through the ranch in the evening and was lingering into the late morning hours.
I stuck out my tongue to taste the snowflakes and snuggled down into the collar of my coat like a turtle as I walked toward the horses munching on hay below the barn.
I wished I had their fur coats, thick and wooly and brave against the wind.I wished I had their manes, wild and tangled and smelling of dust and autumn leaves, summer heat and ice. They keep it all in there, all of the seasons.
They nudged and kicked at one another, digging their noses deeper in the stack of hay, remembering green grass and fields, tasting warmer weather in their snack. I lingered there with them, noticing how the ice stuck on their eyelashes and clung to the long hair on their backs.
I scratched their ears and pulled some burs out of their manes and imagined what grove of trees they picked to wait out the storm last night, standing close and breathing on one another’s back. A herd.
I followed them out of the protection of the barnyard and into the pasture where the frozen wind found my cheeks and the dogs cut footprints in the fluffy snow in front of my steps. They played and barked and jumped and sniffed and rolled in the white stuff, like children on a snow day.
I found the top of the hill and remembered that I hadn’t felt this cold for months.
I had forgotten how my cheeks can go numb, how my fingertips ache, now my eyelashes stick together at the close of a blink and how the wind finds its way through the layers of clothing and freezes my skin. I forgot that sometimes it doesn’t matter that you took care to wear wool socks and three pairs of pants, we are never as prepared as the animals. Sometimes the weather just wins.
I wished I had fur on my ears, tufts on my feet, whiskers to catch the snow.
I wished I had hard hooves to anchor me in the snow, my own herd to lean against, to protect me from the wind.
I wished I was part of a pack, chasing and jumping and rolling through the drifts.
Oh, I would have stayed out longer if I had these things. I would have explored how the creek had froze, stuck my nose in the snow, walked along the banks of the coulee, leaned against the buttes and followed the indecisive sun.
But my scarf wasn’t thick enough, there was snow in my boots and my skin is fragile and thin. No, my body’s not wooly and my nose is not fuzzy. In fact, I wasn’t sure if my nose was still attached to my face. And my fingers? Well, I decided then as I turned my body back toward the house with a billowing chimney that there was a reason for those fingers I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep. Yes, those fingers knit sweaters and sew together blankets, our hands build fires and houses to protect us, our arms wrap around one another, our feet propel us toward shelter or sun and our brains invent things like warm, spicy soup and hot coffee and buttery buns.
No, we might not have fur coats, but we have opposable thumbs.
I pointed my frozen feet toward the house and flung open the door, stripped off my layers and stood over the heater vent, happy to have experienced winter, happy for my warm house and man-made blankets.
And happier still for a promise of spring that isn’t too far away on this winter day…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 