I went out yesterday morning to feed some babies. It was the first time the sun appeared after a few days of rain and it was fresh and crisp and lovely all around.
I had a major amount of work to do in the house. Like piles of notes and phone calls to make and stories to write. That’s the thing about working from home, when you’re home, that work waves to you all uppity like from that little nook of a desk that sits in the middle of your house. You can’t escape it, you know, unless you wander off.
So I wandered, me and big brown dog. (The pug? So glad you asked. He was snoring on the couch inside, avoiding mornings like the plague is his thing.)
Then I said to myself: “Self, you’ve got time. This is why you live here. To feed the animals and spray the weeds and unload the dishwasher and avoid the laundry and ride some horses and wander. There might be something in there that says write and be productive and make a living, but I can’t be sure right now…oh and look, how convenient, I have my camera with me! How did that happen? I think I’ll just climb up this little knob and maybe I can find something to photograph seeing as things are all showered up and sparkly.”
So sparkly.
I like sparkly.
I wasn’t expecting anything but a couple bluebells, some horse poop, maybe a dried up crocus or two and a little time to clear my head, but as soon as I hit the top of the first butte, BAM!
It’s wildflower season.
I think we’ve been over my wildflower love affair before so you will have to forgive me as I revel in my obsession and breathe in the colors I’ve been waiting for all winter, the colors I could only find briefly in the sky that touched the white buttes on clear evenings.
I love that sky and I’ll see it again someday, but you’ll have to forgive the fact that all I desire is to put my nose to the ground for a few weeks, to poke around through the tall grass, kick the mushrooms, smell those soft petals and take them home for my kitchen table.
You’ll have to forgive all the photos of flowers that will be covering these pages during this very fleeting time in this very fussy climate. Because I am simply amazed, year after year, that as soon as the ground thaws out a garden that no human person planted just appears out of all of that clay and mud and poop and rocks.
Forgive me, yes. Forgive my amazement and overt enthusiasm for tiny little miracles like this…
and this…
and these…
Because who wouldn’t be excited about their own personal floral shop, a small offering given to us out here for enduring all of this snow and rain.
Gifts like the smell of sweet peas on your kitchen table that make a deadline a little more attainable, something that the dried up Glade plugin that has been sitting in my outlet for months has never fully achieved.
So thank you for taking this little wander with me. I tell ya there is a lot more where that came from, but I’ll try to restrain myself to ensure that you get some of the other exciting news from the ranch. Important things like:
it’s wood-tick season
the pug currently still has all of his limbs in spite of his love for picking on things bigger and far more dangerous than him
Cowboy has been grilling the most delicious cuts of beef and venison, reminding me every day that I made the right choice in husband (even if he doesn’t do the dishes)
it has been too wet to get the cows home and
I am making to do lists for little sister to ignore when she comes to live at the ranch for the summer.
Oh, and I’m playing music with pops tomorrow evening in Medora at the Roughriders Hotel–Theodore’s Dining Room. I will also be onPrairie Public Radiotoday at 3:00 (CT) to talk about being a part of Dakota Air: The Radio Show at the Burning Hills Amphitheater coming up on June 4th. Due to flooding in the Medora area, this show has been rescheduled for September 17th! But I’ll still be chatting on the radio, so catch it if you can online or on your dial. They’ll be playing some of my tunes and I’ll be talking about new music, old music and what’s to come.
June 4, 2011 Rescheduled for September 17th due to flooding in the Medora area 2:30 PM Dakota Air: The Radio Show
Burning Hills Amphitheater
Medora, ND
It’s been raining at the ranch for the last few days.
Raining, and thundering, and pouring and flooding and rushing the creekbeds.
And smelling so sweet.
So although I’m an outspoken fan of the sun, I know this is necessary. I know this is what spring does.
So I say bring it on. Let the heavens pour down and wash that winter away. Wash it clean and squeaky. We’ve been frozen and thirsty and our hair needs washing…
the worms need air…
the lilacs need watering…
the horses need waking up.
Rain sky. Cry it out. Turn the brown neon and make the flowers hunch over under the weight of your necessary presence.
I don’t mind. Really. I will stand in it all day.
I’ll splash in your puddles, let it soak in my skin, slide down the clay buttes, jump over the rushing streams. Because I forgot what this feels like, being soaked to the core and warm in spite of it.
I forgot what it looks like when the lighting breaks apart the sky.
I forgot how the thunder shakes the foundation of this little house, how it startles me from sleep and fills my heart with a rush of loneliness, a reminder that the night carries on while I’m sleeping.
I forgot how clean it smells, how green the grass can be, how many colors are in a rainbow.
So go on. Rain.
Rain all you want.
Rain forever on this hard ground and turn this pink road red..
This brown ground green
Let your drops encourage the fragile stuff, the quiet beauty that has been sleeping for so long to wake up and show her face to the sky.
I’ll be there waiting to gasp over it, to gush and smile and stick my nose in the sweet scents and return home to track your mud into my house where the soup is on.
I have a theory about this world we live in. I know I’ve said it here before, but it just proved itself to me again on Monday evening and I feel I have to share it once more.
Because there it went spinning outside the windows and walls of this little home in the buttes and I found myself catching my breath again…
because life is just one damn masterpiece after another.
And that is my theory, in case you missed it the first time.
Because on Monday evening after my day was coming to a close–a beautiful, 70 degree day spent cooped up in the house answering emails, scheduling, making phone calls, organizing and checking things off my list–I stepped away from my desk and moved to the kitchen to shift the cans in my cupboard and pretend to think about dinner–the next task. But just as I was giving up on the idea that I would come up with some sort of brilliant meal and heading toward the front door to fling it open and splay my body out on the deck to catch the last afternoon rays, I was met through the window of the door by pops, wide-eyed and looking urgent…
the first human person I had laid eyes on for a good twelve hours.
“Whew…hey there…you scared me…whats up?”
“There are elk on the hill right across from the house…just saw them as I was driving in…a bunch of them…”
“Really?”
Here is where I will explain that before I even uttered the word “really” I was already heading for my boots, snatching up my camera and throwing on a hat…
…and pops was already in his pickup, behind the wheel and shifting into drive.
That was all the exchange we needed right there.We knew what we were going to do.
Because elk are still a rarity, a treasure, a bit of an oddity on this landscape and we needed to witness this, we needed to get in close and watch them pass through our world.
So as the fluffy clouds rolled on over the farmstead, creating patches of shade and sunshine on the brown ground, pops and I bounced along in the green Dodge, turning off of the road and toward the elk herd–a site that would have gone unnoticed by eyes less trained and in tune to the landscape.
See, pops is the kind of guy who is always looking. After years spent as a rancher the man is always scanning the horizon for something amiss, something important, out-of-place or occasionally, if he’s lucky, something spectacular.
And Monday he found the spectacular and chose to share it with me.
So in the green Dodge pops drove toward where the wind was right so the elk wouldn’t smell us. And when it wasn’t advisable to go any further with the pickup we stopped, opened the doors and stepped out into the landscape. As soon as the doors latched, just like that pops was on the hunt and it was like I was twelve years old again walking behind his strides in his footsteps as he snuck up on a big buck–always so eager to come along, pops always so willing to allow me the experience.
Over the fence and along the side hill we reached a point where we had a spectacular view of the herd and I snapped some photos while pops counted and recounted under his breath…”three…four…ten…seventeen…I think there’s about seventeen, eighteen there Jess…”
We sat there watching the two bull elk as they moved toward the rest of the herd, discussing whether they had antlers, using my telephoto lens as binoculars. We watched them graze along the flat below the clay buttes as pops explained to me in a hushed voice the way elk graze and what kind of grasses they eat.
I am not sure how long we sat before pops made the decision to get closer, but seeing that the beasts didn’t suspect we were there he took off at his hunter’s pace down the steep hill and along the muddy cow trail before leaping, without pause, in his cowboy boots and spurs through the wide and moving creek.
I followed diligently, a good ten steps behind, wondering how close we would get, wondering if we would spook them, wondering if the herd would be there when my ponytail appeared over the clay knob.
Pops slowed his pace and stepped softer.
I did the same.
He crouched down.
I crouched down.
He stopped.
I froze and held my breath.
“The two bulls, they should be right over there. Right over that knob. Get your camera…go ahead…you should get some great shots…”
I looked at him, little sweat beads forming on my forehead, and for a brief second (because that’s all the time I have in situations like this) I wondered how he was so sure of the exact location. How was he so certain after a fifty-mile-an-hour trip through brush and mud and a raging creek?
But it didn’t matter. I believed him. Because in my experience with pops and things like this he is always right.
Always.
And he was right again as I flung my hat down in excitement and crouched and belly crawled and peeked my way over the knob to find before me something I had never been so close to in the wild of my backyard in all of my 27 years.
I was shaking as I pulled the camera up to my face, certain that the beasts were going to bolt at the first click of my shutter.
But it was as if I was just a little breeze, a bug in the grass as the mighty bull elk lifted their noses at the sound.
I clicked and took a few steps closer…
and clicked again.
The elk froze, looked me directly in the eye…and nuzzled each other.
I looked back for pops, whose black hat was peeking over the hill. He nodded.
Encouraged, I put my sites on a bald bump in the landscape, thinking if I could lean in on that I would be close enough to almost reach out a give their noses a scratch.
I snuck.
They stared and snorted a bit.
I crawled and crept until I reached my destination, laid flat out on my belly and clicked my camera in a panic, certain now that they were going to run from me at any moment.
But they stayed.
They looked.
I stayed.
I looked.
And although I know it wasn’t possible, even from my ideal distance, I swear I could feel their warm breath…I swear I could smell the dust on their shaggy coats…I swear I could hear them sniff the air as I held mine.
I swear I have never been so close to something so wild.
We sat there like this, the three of us looking at one another, and the magnificent elk posed for me, taking turns walking in an out of my shot until I exhausted all possible photo opportunities and the elk were no longer curious.
And after hours, or minutes, or seconds, slowly and reluctantly we turned away from each other, sneaking glances back over our shoulders, wondering what we had just witnessed…
…wondering what the other was doing out here in a world that, just moments before, belonged only to us.
When I was growing up out here I never laid eyes on an elk on this ranch and as pops and I walked back to the pickup he informed me that, until recent years, the beasts never passed through this place at all.
And it makes you wonder where they are going, what the grass was like where they came from, how many women with wild ponytails they have watched sneak up on them…
and how long they will stay.
But mostly it makes my jaw drop in awe that while I am busy living my life between walls and windows and the nook of the barnyard, these creatures are living their lives, grazing, snorting, shedding, pawing, living and moving on through my backyard, into my life and out again, free and magnificent as the wild wind.
I may never be that close to the nose of an elk for the rest of my life and I could have very well missed it, just as I have most certainly missed them passing through dozens of times before.
But I didn’t.
I was there.
Pops was there.
We were there.
Right smack in the middle of yet another masterpiece.
And I feel there’s so much to be said about it as I sit here in this house plunking out words surrounded by this open space, this landscape that cradles me, hills that gently roll, creeks that babble and trees that reach up to the sky and dig their roots in the gumbo soil.
The fog has settled in, the rain is misting on my window, the last snow drifts are hanging on for dear life and I feel like telling you something about what a day like today means to me. Me, a woman who leaves footprints in the mud, catches dust in her hair and steps out for kisses from the wind. A woman who recognizes the smell of each season rolling in and celebrates it with a walk, a listen, a photo, a good deep breath.
A woman who was raised in a place that depends on the sun, the rain, the snow, the wind to nourish the earth to feed the animals to feed our bodies…our souls.
I want to tell you how I came from the greatest stewards of the earth, people who have sacrificed and worked long hours through winter nights and hot sunshine to plant, to water, to feed, to fix, to take good care of this acreage that has been in the family for nearly 100 years. I want to tell you that nothing was more important to them than the land. Nothing had more of an effect on the lives that they led and nothing was more important for the generations to come.
Because long before Earth Day was established, my relatives were establishing their lives here and instilling in their children how to care for their world, how to encourage it to thrive, how to take from it and how to give back.
And I want to thank them for holding on so tight, for their children, for their children’s children…
for mine.
But most of all I want to thank them for giving me the opportunity to hold this dirt in my hands, to frolic in it, to spread my wings and dig my roots in deep. I want to thank them for passing on something to believe in so strongly that I would give any material thing to belong here and work hard to make plans for it to remain in tact–the most fundamentally miraculous gift.
Yes, today the calendar says Earth Day and the people on our the planet are asked to take pause…
But out here our feet have always been planted like trees with our branches exposed standing in the face of the storms that pass, the ground that shifts and the soil that dries up, freezes, thaws and floods…
so we dig our roots deeper, reach up closer to the sun, pray harder, take good care…
I see you through cracked windshields
my dark sunglasses and
prairie grasses
trees that cannot hold their leaves
and drifts that will not stay…
dirt roads that carry on that way.
You wave to me
through barbed fence wire
old tractor tires
and houses with nobody home
things that could not be repaired…
things that were left sitting there.
We stretch along horizon lines
and dip below the buttes
your mud stuck to my boots
a piece of you you’re pleased to share
a piece I’m pleased to take from you…
your sky an ever changing hue.
And you see me through rearview mirrors
windows down and open doors
places I have gone before
my headlights through the dust I stir
how quick I am to roam….
NOTE: What you are about to read was written yesterday afternoon with every optomistic hope that it would indeed make it to the internet and to your supportive and beautiful eyes before the day was over. What I didn’t expect was a morning blizzard that turned into an afternoon with no power that carried its party on into the night, only to jolt me out of bed at 3 am with “SURPRIZE! Power’s back and I left every light in the house on. Idoit.”
So good morning. I’ve never been so happy to see the sun and to hear that damn bathroom faucet (the one we need to fix) drip.
But you know, little experiences like that, the ones where you can’t bathe, or watch television and surf the internet at the same time and then plop a hot-pocket in the microwave, toast a waffle and reheat soup from last night (I must be cooking in this scenario) while turning the lights off and on at your own free will are good for a couple every once in a while. It forces you to be innovative and creative with your forms of entertainment and heat sources. It makes you light candles and wear that fashionable headlamp you usually only get to wear camping. It gives you a chance to practice those shadow puppets and still make it to bed by 7:45…
This is what I saw when I tried to look at husband last night...And "Tell it to the light" was his response to everything I said. Hilarious. Just. Hil.Ar.Iou.s.
Whew, am I rested.
Anyway, read on to catch my perspective of what I was sure to be a dire situation that wasn’t meant to end well yesterday afternoon.
Today seems a bit brighter…mostly because I think my body temperature is back in that normal range again and I have lived to tell you about it…
From spring fever to no heater
We had a glimpse of spring here this week. And when I say glimpse, I mean snow melting, water rushing, big huge puddles, mud, wind, sunshine–the whole thing. It was a little freaky.
I mean, I could see grass on the hills. I haven’t seen grass since Halloween!
I was so excited about the whole thaw thing that I attempted to go out walking in the hills yesterday, figuring I could balance on top of the shoulder-high drifts long enough to get me to the open spaces and up and on with my life without my trusty snowshoes.
I was wrong.
And found out about how wrong in the first three seconds I veered off of the exposed scoria road, (oh dirt how I’ve missed you) climbed up the first bank and fell into snow up to my crotch…
with both legs….
I was utterly stuck. …
Damn those cookies.
Damn the cream cheese I smear on everything.
Damn the butter and the frosting and the chips that taste so much better with guacamole and cheese…
Anyway that was that. At least now I know I have a little more “Lassie” style training to do with the dogs to get them to assess these types of situations and then go for the rope …or at least to the neighbor with a couple barks signifying that, “What Chug the Pug? Jessie is stuck in a, uh, snowbank?”
Yes, this snowbank. The one I thought was no big deal. They are laughing at me. LAUGHING!
We will have to work on that.
So, with no help from my companions, I pulled and dug and scrambled and panicked and sweated and kicked and cussed and wept a little until I got my sorry ass, attached to my jelly legs attached to my wool stocking-clad feet shoved into major moon-boots up and out of there…
…whew….
I decided to continue my walk on the road.
The glorious road that was clear and dry and winding and pink just the way I remember it. No traffic. No dust. No ice. No snow. Just me in my ten-pound moon boots and my worthless pups clumping along like the old days of summer (give or take a few layers).
And just like that I decided I could get used to this spring thing.
Before the thaw...
After. Ok, ok, not a huge improvement, but this girl takes what she can get...
And just like that it all turned on me as I rose from my slumber this morning to prepare for my 75-mile trek to get to a meeting by 9:00 am. And you might think that’s a long way to go for a meeting, but I must remind you that my beloved small town-hometown is 30 miles away. The nearest Wal-Mart? 75 miles. My meeting was not in Wal-Mart, but it’s the best I can do get it across that 75 miles is nothing for us and our road weary vehicles with the dirt caked bodies, cracked windshields and missing headlight (well, maybe that’s just my vehicle…)
Anyway, these types of regular trips have been particularly trying this winter with the uncommon weather we have been experiencing here. But this morning I wasn’t thinking anything of it because my spring fever had carried over from the previous afternoon you see. Nothing could stop me. Not the icy fog. Not the freezing rain. Not the chilly, snow infested 50 mph wind, not the zero visibility or the big truck in the ditch, not…wait…what the hell? Why are these people in the ditches? Why can’t I see? Why am I driving 5 miles per hour?
Where am I?
Well, almost a good half way to my destination that’s where. Half way there and this girl with the tulips and green grass growing in her brain had to turn her frozen ass around in order to hold on to hope of ever seeing the pug…I mean her husband again…
Don't worry. I'm coming for you!
So I did.
And stopped in town along the way to have my pops drive me the rest of the way because I was tired of seeing my life flash before my eyes.
It’s exhausting.
And it’s the least he could do for his daughter who has to stay here to hold down the frozen fort while he traipses off to Jamaica with his dearly beloved.
Bitches.
Anyway…
…so now I’m home.
Whew.
And it’s 1:30 in the afternoon.
Perfect.
And the power’s out.
Wonderful.
So I did all of the things a woman can do to stay relatively productive in a primitive situation like this…like unload the dishwasher and catch up on Glamour Magazine and play some tunes on the guitar and say a prayer to the heavenly father that I wasn’t born during homesteading, pioneer, no flushable toilet days….
And I am now under the blankets wondering if the wind could actually blow this little house away….
So if you’re reading this at any point today, Thursday, it’s because the light and heat and water and telephone to the house that has been out at this point for a good two hours has finally been restored and my laptop battery lasted to the end of the point I am trying to make….
If you are not reading this I am frozen in my bed, cradling the pug for body heat, the cats are licking the remnants of the chips and salsa I ate for lunch off the front of my shirt and the lab has undoubtedly gone for help (because we had a discussion about never leaving me stranded again).
But you won’t know that until it hits the papers…because you are not reading this…
Oh, I hope that’s not the case, but oh, my fingers are starting to get a bit chilly and I’ve resorted to wearing my beanie indoors.
And so it seems I’ve made it to my point:
Sometimes the universe drops in your lap one single situation in which you have to search for an excuse NOT to take a nap.
And that, my friends, is the up-side of this situation.
We’ll, it’s officially 2011. Like three days in. And while people all over the country were ringing in the new year in fancy outfits, clinking classes filled with bubbly together, wearing cardboard hats while kissing lovers or strangers and then screaming “Happy New Year,” with flushed cheeks as the band or jukebox or the random guy on the saxophone played the appropriate song, I had been sleeping a good 12 to 16 minutes already.
Because apparently that’s what happens when you have enjoyed one or two glasses of wine with the in-laws and then sit down in the living room on the big, fluffy couch with three snuggly, blonde, pink fleece PJ wearing nieces who are undoubtedly on the edge of sleep (I mean really, look at their little faces) and pop on the DVD player to enjoy the gripping, thrilling tale of Tinkerbell and her friends.
And then shut the lights off.
Yup. In about 4.5 seconds father-in-law was snoring so loud I missed the explanation of how Tinkerbell actually wound up trapped in the doll house, so I turned to husband, who surely was following along, and found him in a full on, head tilted back, mouth wide open, fly catching slumber. I looked around the room for any kind of explanation and it soon became clear that all adult bodies had given in. And poking out from under the blankets were three sets of big, blue eyes that appeared to be glued open, careful not to blink because blinking could result in snoozing and they would stand for none of it.
None of it I tell ya. Because Tinkerbell was about to make friends with a real live human girl and they were taking notes, you know, in case they should happen upon a similar situation where they were greeted by a fairy of their own.
Yes, I bought them tutus and ballerina shirts for Christmas...I'm weak, I'm weak...
Yeah, they were so focused on the staying awake thing I guess they couldn’t hear me when I said “Psst..psst…how did Tinkerbell get stuck in there? Where is she taking her? Can she talk? Why can’t the girl hear her? Oh my gosh! I can’t take the suspense….”
And since no one was talking to me in fear of missing a thing and all hope of following a storyline this complicated was lost, I gave into the sleep thing too, drooling a bit on husband’s shoulder and as niece number two laid her head on my lap we became a regular, cuddly pile of love and pink and sweatpants and pajamas.
Best New Year’s I’ve ever had.
Which got me thinking about moments like these, you know the quiet, simple, wonderful, uneventful events in which we exist. See I have had a great year. A full year of hammering and climbing and packing and unpacking and chasing cats and cooking…uh, I mean eating and welcoming babies and making cheese balls and not doing laundry…you know, we’ve been over this. I’ve told you all about those adventures. But as I am thinking back and looking through the three thousand and some photos I have taken over the course of seven months, it occurred to me that I have failed to share with you a few things–a few good stories, a few simple moments, a few of my favorites. Neglected because of their lack of climactic adventure, gripping saga or sentimental story attachment, these snapshots, these breaths of life, these characters surrounding me got filed away under the “August 2010” or “Family” or “Music” folders to be saved for later, saved for another time when they become important to me again.
Well, today’s the day people. Today I present to you my top five favorite moments of 2010:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
There, now I’ve told you everything….good day to ya.
Bwahahahahahaaa….
I kid, I kid.
Sorta.
But really, there are some things I failed to share, (that surprisingly didn’t involve that damn pug) even in the middle of every intention to tell you the story…
…of the turkeys I attempted to sneak up on this fall while the boys held my horse and watched, and probably laughed,un-beknownst to me, as I crouched and stepped lightly, moving toward the flock, sure to go unnoticed by the feather brained poultry if only I just stayed low and kept quiet…
…thinking to myself that I gotta get more life in my photography, more game, more feathers, more adventure and less dog…more wild and less flower…more movement and less tree branch…more…more…wow, my legs are burning…I’ve been walking a long time and I’m not getting any closer…
“Hey Jess! Jess!”
A faint voice called my name from the furthest butte…
“Jess..Hey…”
Sounded like pops…
“What, shhh, dad, shhh….”
“Yeah, how far ya gonna go?”
“Shhh…I don’t know gosh…”
I turned around.
I was all alone
Except for the turkeys, who are apparently deceivingly fast, having already taken flight…
…and that voice calling from somewhere…saying something about a horse…
Anyway, so there are the turkeys, in case you were wondering why the only wildlife you get from me wore collars and bridals and had weird names.
Which reminded me of the elk.
The elk that you can’t see here, but is here…
…yeah,way out there in the middle of the shot, a little brown dot in the clearing between the two coulees of bare trees.
Turns out these boys, the ones I rode behind faithfully all the non-snowy season, have eyes, good eyes…
…and I need a longer lens…
…because there were elk all around us that fall evening. We rode a good portion of our land and were kicking them up left and right like cumbersome giants dwarfing the buttes that look so majestic under the hooves of the measly deer.
And I decided I hadn’t really lived until that moment I heard them crashing and clambering through the trees like dinosaurs tearing up my favorite coulee and coming to pose on the skyline on the other side.
Nope, I’d never seen life that grand spring across our humble piece of the prairie…
…a piece of prairie that rang with laughter and memories and children’s footprints this summer as the Veeder family gathered to share the stories these hills could tell, to pick her wildflowers, to roll in her grasses, to feel her heat and let the wind whip through their hair…
…and that ground had never been more alive, the leaves more boastful, rocks so proud. Our little world never felt more love.
So as we reminisced in the summer sun, thinking of our grandparents and aunts and uncles who spent their childhood here, who worked the land and called this home, we felt sure we could feel them there with us as we grabbed at the same earth, smelled the yellow roses she planted and visited the homestead shack where they first settled this place…
So I coaxed Pops to stand in the very same spot, the very same way his father had stood next to the homestead shack in a photo I recall tucked away in an album somewhere.
And here I touched the handles and levers of the old stove and imagined cooking supper between these walls, under this sky…
…and so it was a summer of reminiscing and moving on as I stood under the same sky to say goodbye to a piece of our world, a piece of history that holds the story of this small farming and ranching community who found faith and fellowship under this humble roof in what was sometimes an otherwise lonely existence.
Yes, the summer of 2010 held the last service for our little church along the gravel road, in the middle of the wind swept prairie. And with no hurrah, no confetti or drawn out hymns, the neighborhood gathered in jeans and boots and their Sunday best to say goodbye, have some coffee together and take some of the dishes for crying out loud…
…so I took a chicken shaped sugar dish and wiped my eyes, cause I think I got some dust in them.
Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about it, but I think it was because there wasn’t much to say except sometimes it seems this world has grown a bit too big for the small things–the things that are too good and pure to make a fuss about the situation…
…like the mist that fell on a summer morning bike ride, clouding my vision enough to convince me that I may have found myself lost…
…lost somewhere a little more magical…
…a little more mysterious…
…a bit more innocent.
No, I didn’t tell you about that either. I didn’t show you what it looks like here when the clouds drop down. I kept it for myself.
Like this wreath I made on my birthday out in the heat of the summer sun using an old rope, fencing wire and grass….
…and these fragile spider webs that were quietly woven in the cracks and crannies of the old red barn, waiting patiently to be discovered by a crazy haired woman with a new camera…
No, I didn’t share these with you either and I don’t know why. But I think it was because I felt like a secret, VIP guest in a microscopic world that I was welcomed into through the lens of my camera and the right kind of light shining through the cracks in the weathered barn.
And maybe I wasn’t ready to admit that I found this sort of thing, the thing we usually swat away with disgust, fascinating and breathtaking…
…and how could I convince you that this commonplace act of preparation and tradition and hard work, is comforting and hopeful to me? How could you possibly understand?
And maybe I just didn’t know how to explain that this, as much as anything else in the world, means home to me…
…or that North Dakota has mountains and they sometimes touch the clouds…
…or that when I came upon this in the pasture one afternoon all I wanted in the entire world was to be one of them…
…to know what it is to appreciate the warm sunshine touching my back and melting the snow…
…and have nothing to do but soak it up.
So there you have it. I didn’t want you to miss a thing, but I know I failed us all on that one. Because no matter how much we try, there is so much we miss.
Even when we work so hard to capture it, to see it, to remember the stories that go along, to remember what your father told you about your grandmother’s cooking, to never forget the day you saw that big buck on the skyline or the name of that wildflower or what your niece’s hair smelled like when she was still four and not quite five no matter how much she wanted to be five, we forget. We tuck those things away telling ourselves we’ll get back to it, but if the story is never told, it cannot be heard.
It can not be passed along.
And maybe that’s ok.
Because we know our stories, the ones we tell about ourselves that are funny and embarrassing and heroic and dignified and dramatic, in the end become a piece of us, a part of who we are.
But those moments when we are alone, where we hold our breath or sit down to make something with our hands, or wipe a tear that no one will ever see–the moments where we are quiet in a world that puts on a show and performs for us every day, how we applaud those small moments, how we exist when no one is looking, those moments matter more than we think. And maybe we don’t have to pass them along to everyone, but maybe we should try to keep those memories of the non-eventful events so we can go back there sometimes, when we need to…
…because maybe that’s what peace is…not the act of searching for a moment of silence or a butterfly in flight or a chance to float on a tranquil sea, but recognizing in your everyday life the small seconds and minutes when your mind is free…and then knowing where to find that memory when you need it.
And if those small seconds and minutes are buried too deep to find right now, don’t worry, I have gathered here for you some of mine…and you can use them anytime…
Wow. It’s December 30th. I just looked down at the little calendar icon thing at the bottom of my computer screen and it screamed at me–“It’s almost the end of a whirlwind year lady! It’s almost the beginning of 365 days of new adventure ahead. You should probably reflect on this!”
I jumped right out of my neckerchief at the thought, and since I’m not going anywhere today because nature is ringing in the New Year with yet another blizzard and more drifts of snow blocking my driveway, I figured now is as good of time as any to let you all know something about me.
I am a grateful, frizzy haired, pug loving, frozen and slightly more squishy thanks to the holiday cookies lady.
I am thankful.
I am thrilled and hopeful and full of love and nerves and excitement and overwhelmed…not only at the thought of a year full of changes and decisions and heartbreak and joy and manual labor at my back, but for the one ahead.
The one ahead that is sure to bring all of those things and more…especially that manual labor stuff.
But before I look ahead with you all, ahead to a year where I hope I will see the dust from your car trailing behind you down our pink road and onto our doorstep, I want to look back.
Because looking back always helps remind me, especially when I am in the middle of shoveling away what the blizzard brought us, or sweating and cursing the burs of summer, or trudging through the gumbo of the buttes after a wayward cow, that I am here.
Right back where I started from.
Right where I belong.
See, I’m not sure if I made this clear in the beginning of this little project I started (which I simply refer to as “writing it all down,”) that last year at this time I was living alone. I was living alone in a big house in a town an hour and a half away from the ranch–an hour and a half away from where my husband had just moved to take a job.
And I couldn’t go with him because I too, had a job to do. And together, we had a house to finish–a house we purchased on a good five year plan to gut it all out, put it all back together nice and shiny and live there, working and saving and making our way back to the ranch in good time.
But the fast paced industry in which husband is employed sent to him an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up–an opportunity to continue work with his company and live where we wanted to live. For a good long time.
And we were looking for some permanency, because we had spent the last five New Years in different houses.
Whew, were we ready to be home.
So this couldn’t be passed up. Because ten years ago, when we graduated from high school, together, we would have never guessed that we could be out here in our mid-twenties and starting the life we always wanted.
So husband packed his bags and I kept my job and my stuff in the house that was torn apart from wall to wall. And on the weekends, along with our wonderfully helpful family members, we hammered and nailed and painted and sawed and planned and stained and varnished and cleaned and one of us may or may not have gotten her head stuck in a ladder.
I can’t remember.
And I was exhausted. And I missed my husband. And I was lonely and felt like the winter was never going to end. I cried a bit and then looked on the bright side and then cried a bit more.
Then I went to Vegas.
Me, not winning...
And I met big Elvis and saw Bette Midler and won a dollar and wore my fancy outfits.
Then it was back to the real world, more snow and more building and more missing each other and more tears until one day I finished a job that was challenging and good for me, we cleaned up the sawdust, packed up my shoe collection and the pug, shut the door and put out the for sale sign.
For Sale To the Highest Bidder-the last two years of our lives (and some of husband’s blood with my tears splashed in).
And down the road we went, all of our earthly possessions crammed in husband’s pickup, sweat trickling down our faces, paint on our clothes. Here I would like to say the sky opened up and the sun shone down on us and all was right with the world.
But I am nothing if I’m not real and so I will say instead, I was scared to death. Because I had major plans. And I told people about them. I had this vision of living and having a family and sharing this place with others since I was a little girl.
And here I was and all I could hear in my head, over the birds chirping and the cows mooing and the coyotes howling was my voice…”now what?”
But after a mental breakdown, which I’m sure I’ve told you about, that husband of mine found me out in the grass, and told me to do it already.
And I guess all I needed was permission, because in the last seven months, from day two of dropping my bags on the floor of my grandparents’ home, I picked myself a welcome home bouquet and began the journey of telling you all about it…
…and damn it if you didn’t listen and cheer me on as I kicked off my work shoes and postponed showers and my daily grooming habits to roll in the grass, to walk down the pink road, to bury my face in the neck of a good horse, to climb to the top of every hill on this place and take a good look at it all.
To really see it.
And you laughed with me as I danced in the pouring rain and then shook your heads when I came up with the brilliant idea to fling our bodies down the side of a slippery, deadly, bloody clay butte, defying death and acquiring a nasty case of butt burn.
Good Lord.
You listened as I suffered from the nostalgia a childhood home cultivates and nodded your head as I told you about a youth spent in the dirt and mud and hills of this place, hair wild and dreams big. You helped me welcome my relatives for a family reunion and remember my grandmother, make her jelly and imagine her life here.
You shared your memories as well and I thank you for that.
You came with me as I jumped in the cool North Dakota Lake Sakakawea…
Which is more than I can say for some members of my family. So thank you very much.
We rode our bikes through the summer when we weren’t on the backs of our horses.
You walked with me down autumn paths and got in close as I took my time examining the mushrooms, and stems of flowers, and acorns buried underneath the leaves.
You helped me appreciate the small things–the small things that sometimes go unnoticed. I noticed them because I wanted to show them to you.
And you wanted to see them.
So I thank you for that too.
Together we marveled at the changing of the leaves…
…and welcomed, bravely with teeth bared, the first snow…
…in September?
Wow.
So I took you along, trudging through snow banks, examining the contrast and the shapes the flakes make on their own and piled up like that.
I flung our bodies down snow covered hills and to a screaming stop in a big pile of family at the bottom.
Then you helped me say hello as we welcomed my new nephew into the world with open arms and came with me to Texas, where part of my heart lives…
…and of course suffered through my home movies and maintained your patience as we kneaded the dough in our tiny kitchen.
And, again, didn’t judge as I continued my study on his strong jaw line, masculine silhouette and dark, mysterious eyes.
Which is, again, more than I can say for some members of my family.
So, you know, thanks!
So as the new year rolls in and my plans to make you all a place to stay, a place to hike and bike and ride horses and take pictures continue I know the challenges are ahead. I know this. But it is because of you and your appreciation, your enthusiasm and support and thumbs up and kind words that I was able to see this place again–not only through my eyes, my grown up eyes, but through your eyes as well.
Because this year you know I didn’t scale mountains, or travel the seven seas, or save the world in any way.
But I saved myself.
In 2010 I saved myself by finding within me the spirit of a little girl who fell in love with this land and possessed the gumption and nerve and energy and wild-hair-up-her-ass ideas to maybe make them work someday.
And I have you to thank for that.
So I raise my cocktail glass to a Happy New Year friends.
And to more good stuff, hard stuff, muddy and snowy and annoying and furry and lovable stuff ahead.
Oh, and my New Year’s resolution? To finally get to that damned laundry already….
In honor of the first day of winter yesterday, nature did what was expected of her around here.
She opened up the sky and let loose a bazillion-trillion tiny little snowflakes, each unique and sparkly and white and cold, to make their way down to the frozen, tired, cold, white earth–an earth that seems to me to have had enough already.
But Mother Nature knows best and she just looked at us and said: “Oh, the party has just begun folks. It has just begun.”
And then she proceeded to sprinkle in some of those giant flakes for good measure.
The result?
Cars stuck, shovels out, snow blowers tuned up and turned on, roads blocked, offices closed…
…school cancelled.
SNOW DAY!
Oh, I love a good snow day. I love everything about it. I love waking up the morning after the warnings on the TV and radio and running to the window to see if the weatherman’s a liar. I love pouring my coffee in a big mug and staying in my slippers, knowing nobody expects me anywhere. I love gauging the height of the drifts and waiting until the last flake falls before I bundle up and get out my shovel. I love my wool socks. I love the card games we play and the movies we watch because there is nothing else to do. But most of all I love that snow days remind us (because we all need reminding) that sometimes we just need to pack it up and call it a day.
Some things are out of our control.
When we were kids there was nothing better than a snow day. Snow days meant imagination stretched to the furthest extent, pent up energy from hours behind desks and indoors released onto the cold, white world in screams of glee and snowball fights. Snow days meant no school and no school meant the entire day to spend in our snowsuits, searching for the best and biggest hill to fly down, building and destroying snow forts, collecting a stash of snowballs to prepare for the inevitable invasion of the neighbor kids, digging tunnels in the banks the plow or your dad’s tractor made along the roads. A day like this meant scarves and makeshift sleds and hot cocoa and the reason God invented little brothers and sisters.
Snow days meant that, when we had exhausted all of our snow-game resources, when our cheeks were rosy and frozen against the cold, our mittens crusted with ice and the sun began sinking over the horizon, turning the landscape a little more blue than white, we would walk off into a spot in the yard or on the playground where we had yet to make tracks and plop down on our backs.
And we were quiet for a moment as we stared up at the evening sky and watched our breath make smoke-like puffs into the crisp air.
We were quiet as we lived within this childhood right, basked in the simplicity we were not yet old enough to appreciate, and then, before the cold soaked through our fluffy coats, we moved our arms back and forth, our legs followed and we sunk our heads into the fluff just to make sure we made our mark on a world that was too big for us to conquer any way else.
With that we popped up off of the ground and stood, with hands on our hips taking a brief moment to see what our little bodies looked like with wings.
And then we flew away to the next daring adventure and soon the snow of the season turned to water and the water filled the creeks and we turned another year older. Another winter passed and another and before we knew it the snow days that once filled us with anticipation for hours of freedom and play turned to cussing at the weather report for halting deadlines and creating obstacles that stood in the way of progress and timing.
And so we sigh in the face of a day wasted, reminded that, like time passing and the changes of weather, there are some things we cannot control.
But there are things we can.
Like how we spend a day given to us free and clear by nature herself.
So, inspired by all of the kids who I am sure were jumping in snow banks and catching flakes on the tips of their tongues, I decided to push my adult attitude aside and find myself a nice, clear patch of snow too.…
…because it has been a long time since I’ve seen what I look like with wings…
and this…
and these…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
