Tag Archives: Nature

Green snakes and rainbows

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Happy mid August! We’re late with the podcast this week because I was traveling and helping host our big Ribfest event in town on Friday. Saturday we celebrated our 17th Anniversary by recovering from slinging beers at the concert until well past mid night. Both my husband and I have the same syndrome, we would much rather be hauling chairs, punching tickets or working the bar at these things, we think it’s more fun? Is that weird? It is fun though, to be a part of making the wheels of these community events turn ’round, even if it meant our idea of an anniversary activity was a nap.

(Cue pictures of the legendary BlackHawk and regional favorite tribute band Hairball…and all the thousands of People!!!)

Anyway, so I’m behind, like I’ve been all summer, but honestly, who isn’t? It’s a gift to not have enough time for all the things you want to do isn’t it? So enjoy last week’s column and if you didn’t yet, check out last week’s podcast (where we cover the snake situation). If you like to hear us chat in the kitchen while we intermittently get interrupted by kids and cats and company, tell your friends to like and subscribe to Meanwhile, back at the ranch… on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/veederranch

Green Snakes and Rainbows

My daughters brought a tiny green grass snake into the house recently. I was working in the kitchen and they excitedly called up from the basement with big news, but before I could turn around, there they were, standing behind me excitedly introducing me to “Greenie.”

Rosie, my five-year-old, fell in love with that little grass snake. She made a habitat for him in a cardboard box with rocks and grass, shade and a little dish of water. It would wrap around her hand and wrist and everyone who stopped by that day got an introduction. She was proud to have had a hand in discovering this little wonder, curious about its tiny tongue and what it eats and where it sleeps and, of course, how to tell if it’s a girl or a boy, which in case you’re wondering, is impossible, even if you Google it.

If she had a say in it, that little grass snake would have stayed with us here, in the house, in that box by her bed. But the rule about wild animals is that they just get to visit. No sleepovers. Rosie cried when her sister helped her release it that afternoon. Then, when I wasn’t looking, she caught it again. And so another round of tears fell when I helped her release it that evening. She held it close to her little chest before setting it free in the weeds and I lingered to be sure the snake didn’t make it in our family Christmas card photos. I didn’t point out the other tiny green grass snake I noticed had met its end on the road a few dozen feet from us.

The next evening the humidity brewed up a dramatic summer storm and as it moved across the countryside it left behind a rainbow that refused to give up. I drove toward it the entire 30 miles from town to the ranch and still it held onto its colors so I could see what it looked like against the backdrop of the old red barn. We need to tear that barn down, but it seems that everyone around here is waiting for the other to make the first move. It’s hard to let go, even to things made of wood and stone. In that moment though, I was glad it was there, quietly hanging on to the landscape, slowly and silently fading like old red barns and rainbows do.

A couple years ago, when Rosie was three or so, we were at the start of a long road trip and I asked her if she wanted to color or watch a show. “No,” she replied, “I’m just going to look out the window in case there’s a rainbow.”

I fixed my eyes on the road and the colors stretching over it. I just heard the news that someone I thought would live forever had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. And this sounds silly, but the news was the reason I stopped on my way home to get my favorite flavor of ice cream cone for the road. It’s the reason I drove a bit slower, a bit more carefully thinking about Rosie and the rainbow and the little green garden snake and the man I knew that was on this earth yesterday and somewhere else today, maybe somewhere rainbows go when they disappear if you want to get poetic about it.

And I did want to get poetic about it I think. I took a walk that evening as the sun was setting and the wind calmed down. I thought I would make it quick and beat the dark and the rain, but as I turned to head the half mile back to the house the sun sunk below the horizon and the sky began to spit rain. I lifted my face up and closed my eyes, trying to feel each drop hit my forehead and then my cheeks, my lips and my hairline and my nose and my eyelids.

In a few weeks I will turn 40 and I will wonder how it happened and I will wonder what I’ve learned in all these years and I will wonder where the time has gone.

But in that moment, on the dark road with my face to the sky, I was alive and breathing with my feet on the earth.

Look up. Look down. Look out. Look around. In case there’s a rainbow. In case there’s a beautiful little green snake.

Why we’ll never own a yacht…

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Listen to the podcast here or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

I could give you one hundred reasons that we will never be invited to lounge with rich people on a yacht, but probably the main one is that we are the kind of people who put up a hand-me-down, above ground, sixteen-foot swimming pool directly behind our house in July. And in order to enjoy it we first must chase the horses out of the yard because they keep pooping on our lawn and trying to drink out of it. And then we have to spend at least fifteen to twenty minutes fishing the horseflies and waterbugs out of the water with a net. And then we have to dig around the house for the right pairs of goggles so that our daughters can pretend they are mermaids in a fish tank, landlocked on the prairie with nothing but big, blue sky, nosy horses and a mom hollering  “Yes, I saw that!” and “Be careful!” while I weed the tomato patch.

Oh, and also, we have to watch the leak. Because, of course, there is a leak. It’s as slow one, but we need to make sure we top it off every few days. But don’t worry, we ordered a $30 pool cover off Amazon that’ll help with the bugs and the horses. Should be here by October…

It’s times like these we wonder why we’re not lake people. One of the answers is currently drinking out our redneck pool, but at one point, a few years back my mom thought we all might slow down a bit on the ranch and become a family that takes a pontoon out every once in a while. I mean, it wasn’t an unreasonable dream considering Lake Sakakawea is basically our backyard, but she forgot that three out of the four people running the ranch are also running businesses of our own. So the pontoon has spent most of its life waiting in “storage” (aka the driveway on the side of our garage) for a day like Sunday when it promised 97 degrees and the air conditioning went out in our house.

So we made a plan to take the pontoon and the kids and the cousins out to the lake, finally, at the end of July. All we needed to do was remove the ripped cover, scrub the seats and hose off the floor, find out the trolling motor isn’t working and neither is the gas gage, find out the battery isn’t charged and then charge it and find out it won’t keep a charge and then pack up the cooler and the swim bag and the snack bag while my husband takes a quick 60 mile roundtrip run to town to get a new battery and fuel and ice. Then get the kids in their suits, feed them the lunch I packed because everything’s taking too long, pack another lunch and fill the tires and fill the gas and transfer the booster seats from one car to the pickup and get the kids from the house to the pickup without any grasshoppers or toads in tow and buckle them in and then we would be on our way.

And when we got to the lake, all we had to do was unload the kids and the swim bag and the snack bag and ask if anyone has to go potty and then take kids potty and then back the pickup and boat down the boat ramp when it’s our turn and then check to make sure the boat actually started and then lather the kids in sunscreen and wiggle them into their lifejackets while my husband held the boat at the dock and I parked the pickup and trailer and returned and then wait for my husband to go get the phone he forgot in the pickup and then we were on our way! We were on the lake!

All we had to do then is take a boat ride across the bay and back to get the old gas through the motor and then pick a sandy spot to park and play but first someone had to pee so we stopped right here and we all jumped out for a swim a bit because it’s hot.

And after a few failed attempts, we finally did find the perfect spot to beach the boat and play for a bit. The sun was shining and the breeze kept the horseflies away. The kids were swimming and making castles, my husband was launching them into the water the way dad’s do and my sister and I were sitting in camp chairs chewing seeds and drinking red beers, living a midwestern mother’s dream ten minutes at a time because someone’s hungry, thirsty, hot, or really has to show us this big rock over here.

It was all glorious, until I went back up on the boat for snacks and heard a weird chirping sound coming from the canopy we decided not to open on the open water because we needed vitamin D. Which turned out to be the best decision of the day because when my husband opened it up, out flew (you’re never going to guess it) a swarm of wasps AND four baby birds!!!!

Apparently, our pontoon has been so idle it has become a habitat. And so I’ll leave the chaos that ensued on the wild shores of Lake Sakakawea to your imagination because whatever you’re imagining is probably right.

And I totally get it if you never invite us on your yacht. But we’ll have you in our hand-me-down pool anytime, just give me a minute to chase the horses and scoop the horseflies out…

Rescue Mission

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Listen to the poddcast here or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

My three-year niece, Emma has a bird book. She stands on the couch in the living room and looks out the window with that book in her chubby little hands and marks the ones she sees. It’s adorable, and that kid doesn’t miss a beat. She’s looking up at the sky whenever she can.

The other day I was walking with all the girls, my two daughters, who are five and seven, and Emma and her sister Ada, who is also five and probably loves animals the most of any kid I’ve ever met. Like, she has a gift with them, truly. Now bear with me here, this all matters because as we approached my house I noticed Emma stop dead in her tracks to stare intently at something way up in a tall tree by the road. When I caught up to her I looked up too and realized that what had her attention was a bird, about twenty feet up in an ash tree, flapping and panicked, trying to escape the small piece of twine that had somehow wrapped around its leg and attached him to a small branch. I later learned it was a cedar waxwing, which explained why other cedar waxwings would occasionally fly in to check on it, wondering why it couldn’t join the flock.

It was heartbreaking to watch, and even more heartbreaking to watch these four little girls discover the bird’s misery. Edie, my oldest, looked at me with urgency and, of course said, “We have to help it! Hurry!” Which is exactly what would have been going through my mind as a 7 year old, and, actually, it was going through my mind as a mom then too, but with a little more apprehension because I was home by myself and I’m afraid of heights and, frankly, a little unnerved by flapping birds. Also, so many things could go wrong in this situation if I actually figured out a way to get up there. Like I wouldn’t make it in time for one, or if I did, the bird might be gravely injured. Or, maybe of more concern, I could be gravely injured, I mean, I don’t have a great track record with ladders.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been in an urgent situation where four innocent and sweet little animal-loving girls are looking to you to SAVE A LITERAL LIFE, you can’t blame me for trying to do something. So they told me they’d keep watch while I ran to the house and got the ladder…and the pickup… because my plan was to, you guessed it, back the pickup up to the tree, put the ladder in the box, climb up there with my scissors and bibbidi bobbidi boo, release the wax wing like a Disney Princess Superhero.

But first I needed to call my sister to hold the ladder, grab me those gloves, and, in case it all went south, divert the attention and call the ambulance. Only a sister would come tearing in the yard in minutes flat after only being told, “there is a bird situation here.”

Turns out, once I got the ladder in the back of the pickup and got to the third rung, I also needed her to give me a pep talk. “If you’re going to do this, you just gotta commit” she said handing me the scissors and then wrapping a tight grip on my leg because even though we both knew that wasn’t going to keep me from falling to a bloody death in the name of a tiny bird, it made us both feel better. Oh, and also she needed to call off the dogs that suddenly came to investigate, both of us imaging that unfortunate scenario.

Anyway, if these girls ever say I never did anything for them, I’m documenting it now in this publication that me,  their mother, who is indeed truly afraid of heights, backed our pickup up to that tall tree, placed the ladder in the bed, climbed it, pulled the branch attached to the bird down to my level and detached it, untangled the tiny little bird leg from the twine and didn’t scream once (or at least not too loud) in front of my audience of little girls. In fact, I held that bird long enough for all of them to get a quick, closer look and then let it go, off safe and sound into the trees.

And then I sopped the sweat from my face and calmed my shaky legs and we all went on with our weird, wonderful little lives feeling good about the one we all saved. And Emma marked Cedar Waxwing in her bird book.

The Girls of Spring

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This week on the podcast we catch up on getting back on the horses in the spring, my dad’s horse-whispering skills and some of our epic horse wrecks. Which brings us to wishing we didn’t know how it feels to hit the ground when we watch our girls ride the big horses by themselves. We also catch up on my Nashville plans and how Chad had to rescue me once again from the side of the road. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Today it’s raining. Not a winter rain, but a true spring rain, one that smells like dirt turning to mud, one that lingers to soak the ground, not a lick of wind, it feels warm even though it’s barely above freezing.

Last Sunday I took my daughters out to the hilltops to look for crocuses. I knew it was probably a bit too soon, but when the first calves of the season are born and the snow disappears from the high spots, it’s time to check. And we did find some, though they were still sucked up tight into their buds, not quite ready to open up to the sun. But that was good enough for us. We’ve waited all this time, we could wait one more day. These are the rituals that come with the seasons, and they take patience.

Our hike around the hilltops on that 60-degree day found us next in the barnyard to greet the horses. After winter months out to pasture and bribing them in for scratches with oats and sweet feed, it was time to put on their halters and brush off their thick coats and get reacquainted.

In these moments, it seems like last fall was a lifetime ago, back when their coats were sleek and shiny and us humans were confident on top of them. It’s been months since we last saddled up the girls’ old geldings. Seven months now that I’m counting.

Seven months is a long time in the life of these little girls. Since then, both have turned another year older, they’ve stretched out inches, they’ve built new muscles and found the answers to new questions. They were ready to see what they could do with these horses now that they were all grown up.

Seven months in old-sorrel-horse-years has made them better, more understanding, a little more gray around their muzzles, and just fine with the task of trotting and turning around the still-sorta-muddy-but-dry-enough arena.

My husband and I stood shoulder to shoulder in that dirt watching our daughters get tested for stubbornness and will by their animals. I think we both held our breath, equally excited for the months ahead and lonesome for those springs that have passed, replacing our tiny, chubby, giggling daughters being lead around the pony pens with these creatures, lanky and independent and capable enough to do it themselves.

Oh, I know from experience, there’s nothing like being a young girl out here on this ranch in the spring! Nothing. The possibilities stretch out before you like that creek full of spring runoff, winding and glimmering and equal parts rushing and patient. Everything around you is waking up, and you can go out in it because you’re a part of it, reaching your bare arms up to the sun, unfolding out of your winter bud like that crocus today.

This spring, my daughters will take to the trees behind the house without having their mother as their guide. They will find a favorite, secret spot, they will wear down their own trails. They will take their baby dolls along and pretend they are mothers out in the wilderness. They will build forts and bring picnics and pick ticks off their jeans and drag mud into the house, and the world outside these doors will turn green as their skin turns brown and their hair turns gold.

They’ll scrape their knees running too fast on the scoria road, they will slap at mosquitoes, they will fight about silly things that are their most important things, and they will come in crying.

And they will have each other and their horses and the hilltops and the budding wildflowers blooming along with them. That’s all I ever wanted.

That’s all I ever wanted to give them.

Stuck Season

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This week on the podcast we talk stuck stories and I share a rough cut of a song from the new album. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.


I don’t know what comes over us when the snow melts and forms spontaneous rushing rivers in the barnyard, in the ditches, and through the trees, but I will tell you it’s not exclusive to the kids. I heard my neighbor’s grown man son took his kayak out the other day to see where the water would take him and I was immediately jealous that I hadn’t thought of it.

Yes, the first day the weather hit above 50 degrees my daughters were out chasing the runoff in their shorts and rubber boots and skinny white legs. And I was following right behind on the same mission, only in long pants because I have learned some lessons in my advanced age.

Like no matter your careful intentions on this mission, you will always wind up with the entire creek over the tops of your boots. Not a soul can help it after months and months in a deep freeze. We always go a bit too far.

And it seems the same goes with the mud. It could be. Or it could be hereditary, or it could be that I just really wanted to get closer to the first new calf of the season on our way home from celebrating Easter in town with my husband’s family. Turns out the sight of a cute calf makes you forget that just 24 hours ago that little mud puddle was a snow bank. Turns out off-roading in a SUV/Grocery Getter on the first warm day of the year with two kids and everything the Easter bunny could fit in the back is a dumb idea. I sunk into mud half up my tires immediately. It was only by pure willpower and utter embarrassment at the thought of having to call my brother-in-law to pull me out that I was able to maneuver out of that sticky situation. I counted that as a bullet dodged and moved on with my life.

The next few days were warmer yet, like 70 degrees! We hadn’t seen this since the Middle Ages! My little sister called to see if we wanted to go walk the creek bottoms and float sticks, even though our darling daughters were plumb happy with the little rivers forming puddles and running in the ditches in our yards. But the responsible adults in this relationship, that was not going to cut it. With one whiff of melting snow my sister and I were transported to our childhood, knowing the window of opportunity for this sort of dramatic landscape change around here is fleeting.

My husband was busy digging out things that had been lost in the snow banks for months and so I told him that we were going to load the girls in the pickup and head for the creek. He suggested we take the side-by-side instead so we wouldn’t get stuck. I ignored him.

And so off we went to find the creek as big as it’s ever been, rushing and flowing and cutting through ice and snow along its edges, melting and forming a new river right before our eyes. This was no stick-floating situation, we should have brought the kayak! We stood on its edges a while with our daughters, mesmerized. The we pulled them some good walking sticks and I held the big girls’ hands while we waded in a bit along it’s edges, until, inevitably, Edie got two boots full of ice cold creek and we hauled them back through the snow bank and up to the pickup to make our way back home.

It’s here my husband showed up with the four-wheeler. I dumped a gallon of water out of our daughter’s boots and we loaded our soggy selves into the pickup. From the driver’s seat I told my dearly beloved that we were heading home, put it four-wheel drive and crept toward my fate. In the rear view mirror I saw my husband on that ATV quietly watching to see how I was going to turn this big ‘ol pickup around on a skinny scoria trail surrounded by snow banks and mud and icy puddles.

And I could go into the step-by-step details here, but I think you’ve predicted it. Not only did I get stuck, I nearly landed the whole pickup in the creek. I did a number that not even my husband could undo. And the man, he didn’t even say, “I told you so” when I profusely apologized. He just poked his head in the window and replied, “We all gotta learn our lessons our own way.”

And then my sister called my brother-in-law to come with the towrope.

Oh, Happy Spring! If you need me I’ll be ignoring logic and the mud in my entryway. 

Rosie’s Spring Song

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On this week’s podcast episode I have a short visit with Rosie before preschool about her new song and why spring is her favorite season. Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.


Rosie wrote a song about spring to sing at open mic at my mom’s coffee shop in town last week. Her first experience a few months ago singing her own song in front of a crowd gave her the confidence she needed to do it again. She’s only five, let me remind you, but no “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for her. She insisted I get out my pen and my guitar and help set her idea to music. “Spring is the best time of the year. It’s so happy and full of cheer.”

Yes girl, yes it is. The snow banks are melting and the creek is rising and the mud on our boots is sticky and tracking into the house and everything is dirty and a combination of brown and blue and gold. And so these suddenly become our favorite colors when white has been our existence for all of these long cold months.

“Easter comes by and it’s so fun. Because there are Easter egg hunts,” she sang, her little legs dangling off the chair, the microphone in both hands held up close to her mouth so we could all hear her words.

Rosie’s my hero. It’s possible I’ve said this before, but in case I haven’t, I am saying it again. She has been since I met her. Her very existence was improbable given the fact that I struggled for so long to keep a pregnancy. We had our first daughter and thought that might be it for us, but we tried again anyway thinking it could possibly take another ten years. But Rosie was ready to be born and so she didn’t make us wait. She came to us quick and easy at the height of one of the most difficult times my family has endured, my dad clinging to life in a hospital bed in Minnesota and his future so unsure. We gave his name to her, Rosalee Gene, because the belief that he would ever meet her was nothing but a faint light. She was a sweet distraction, a quiet force for hope that can come even in the most desperate and dark moments. She made no fuss about it. She just breathed and sucked and pooped and lived and as she grew my dad grew stronger and here we are with both of them at the ranch waiting for the snow to melt off and the baby calves to be born. Spring is hope and renewal and so it reminds me of my second daughter, singing so confidently this song about her favorite season.

“Outside the window spring is here. Bunnies and chicks and baby deer.”

The elk take a stroll through our horse pasture

Lately there has been so much tragedy exploding from the news feed, and our small communities here in western North Dakota have not been immune to it. Renewal and hope aren’t easy words to sit with when loss and uncertainty sit heavy in your guts. But time continues to change the season. Time continues to move, eventually bringing with it a thaw. The water breaks free under the ice and rushes the draws.

In a week or so we will have baby calves on the ground, still wet out of the womb. In a few more the bravest flowers and buds will start to emerge at the coaxing of a warm sun. The pair of geese will return to the stock dam outside our house. The wild plum blossoms will dot the brush with vivid green and we will climb to the top of a hill to find a dry spot and lay down in it, knowing well that it could storm again the next day, burying the ground and the new buds and babies in the chill of a white blanket. But it will be hard to imagine it then with the warm spring sun on our bare arms. If you’ve forgotten what hope is, nature can remind you.

“A big blue sky and bumblebees. Tweet-ely birds and green green trees,” Rosie sings into the microphone to a small crowd of community members gathering for coffee. They tap their feet and hum the tune on their drive home…

Notes from the road and the top of the hill

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Well, I made it home for Elko on Sunday after a 17 hour straight drive. Turns out it takes a couple days to recover your sleep equilibrium after a trip like that. It also takes a few days to come back around to the real world after an experience like the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It was such an honor to be a part of it.

Click here to read an interview with myself and poets Yvonne Hollenbeck and Patricia Frolander about opening up the festival with our “Welcome to Elko Town” Show in the Elko Daily News.

This week’s podcast I sit down with my husband and rehash all the highlights of the trip while he patiently listens, covered in sheet rock dust from holding down the home construction project and keeping the kids alive while I was away. I am lucky to be able to be gone, and even more lucky to have place like this, and people like him, to come home to.

So that’s what the column is about. Finding refuge and grounding in my walks through the hills, where I’m most inspired. Most lonesome. Most nostalgic. Most myself.

Photo by Sweet Light Photography, Charlie Ekburg

From the top of the hill
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Listen to this week’s column here or on Spotify, Google or Apple Podcasts

Sometimes, when the day is coming to a slow close and my head is spinning — with worry and lists, schedules and as the dishes sit waiting on the table, the kids playing in the yard, desperately needing a bath — I slip on my boots and head out the door.

I’m usually not gone long, and my 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 I need to put a flush in my cheeks and make sure I’m 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 corrals where the yard 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, goes quickly to the other side of the world.

Sometimes if I get out early enough, I head a little further east to check out how the light hits the buttes in my favorite pasture, making the hills look gold, purple and so far away. Sometimes I just keep walking until dark. 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 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 — the sections of our fences that have been washed away by the melting snow, the old barn that needs to be torn down, the threshing machine looking ancient and ominous in the shade of the hill — I’m 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.

This understanding is neither comforting nor nostalgic. It just is. Time builds roads and oil wells, new houses and fences and bigger power lines stretching across a landscape. Time grows the trees, erodes the creek banks, crumbles the hills with the weight of the snow, puts blooms on the flowers and withers them away just the same.

I climb that hill, 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 dad 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 the work that needs to be done on the fences, the water tanks, roof of the shop and the crumbling barn.

From the top of the hill, that yard light is still glowing the same color it was when I would come in from an evening chasing cattle with my dad or catching frogs with my cousins to a yard 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.

The Layers of Fall

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We don’t give this time of the year much recognition because we’re all scrambling to get work done before winter comes, so on the podcast I sit down to recognize it and talk it out with my husband. The conversation turns to fall work and food, naturally, because we’re up north and we’re getting cold and we’re starving for carbs and cream. Hear why I thinks Chad would be a good contestant on reality game shows and learn why my all time favorite meal was after I jumped out of a plane over the beach. 

There’s a moment between summer and late fall at the ranch that’s so good at being glorious that it actually makes us all believe we could last forever under a sky that’s bright blue and crisp and warm and just the right amount of breezy all at the same time.

Up here we’re easily swayed to forget about the drama that is our seasons. I imagine it’s a coping mechanism we develop that gets us crazy stoic people through -20 degree temperature snaps.

It’s forgetting that gets us through, but it’s remembering too. The combination is an art form.

Because at -20 degrees we remember that one-day it will be sunny and 75.

And when it’s sunny, 100 degrees and 100% humidity and there’s not a lake in sight, we remember the -20 degrees and somehow find a way to be grateful for it all.

Yes we keep taking off layers and putting them on again until we make ourselves the perfect temperature.

Funny then how we’re not really good at giving the in-between moments the credit they’re due around here. We usually grab them up and soak them in just enough to get some work done on a horse, paint the house, wash the car or get the yard cleaned up for winter.

Because we’re taught up here to use those perfect moments to prepare us for the not so perfect ones that are coming.

That’s why fall, though a romantic season for some, gives me a little lump in my throat that tastes a lot like mild panic.

Because while the pumpkins are nice and the apple cider tastes good enough, I can’t help but think that autumn is like the nice friend who slowly walks over to your lunch table with the news that your boyfriend doesn’t want to go out with you anymore.

And my boyfriend is summer. And when he’s gone, I’m stuck with the long and drawn out void that is winter promising Christmas, a hint of a sledding party and a couple shots of schnapps to get me through the break-up.

Hear what I’m saying?

But the change is beautiful. I can’t help but marvel at it no matter its underlying plot to dry up the leaves and strip them from their branches and jump start my craving for carbohydrates and heavy whipping cream in everything.

So I always decide to give it the credit it’s due when it starts to show off in full form, taking a break for the office and house work to marvel at the leaves, collect some acorns and walk the trails the cattle and deer cut through the trees during the heat of summer.

I will never call this moment a season, it’s too fleeting and foreboding for that, but I will reach out and touch those golden leaves and call it a sort of magic.

The kind that only nature can perform, not only on those leaves, but also on the hair on a horse’s back, the fat on the calf, the trickling creek bed, the tall dry grasses, used up flowers and a woman like me.

Yes, I’m turning too. My skin is lightening. My hunger unsuppressed. My eyelids heavy when the sun sinks below the hill much earlier than my bedtime.

My pants a little tighter with the promise of colder weather.

Ok. I’ve been reminded. Summer–a month of electric thunderstorms and endless days, sunshine that heats up my skin and makes me feel young and in love with a world that can be so colorful– is over.

And so I’m thankful for the moment in these trees to be reminded that I have a little time yet, but I best be gathering those acorns.

And pulling on my layers.

The Promise of a Greener Summer

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This week’s column on the rain and the rain and the rain. It rained almost five inches over the course of a couple days out here last week, filling the dams, pushing the river over its banks, sending creek beds rushing and greening up the grass. There are places that were flooded in the state and it got a little scary, but out here we opened up our arms, lifted our faces up to the sky and said a prayer of gratitude.

The Promise of a Greener Summer
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It’s been raining at the ranch for the last few days.

Raining, and thundering, and pouring and making puddles and filling the creek beds. It’s been a while, a couple years maybe, since we’ve seen a long, soaking rain take up the entire day, followed by another and then another, so I didn’t believe the thunder when it was threatening my walk in the hills the other night. I thought it was bluffing the way it did all last spring when the sky refused to open up and the wind howled and the prairie was burning. So I carried on like the superstitious kid I am, the kid raised by a rancher whose never owned a rain gauge for fear that if he ever put one out, it would never rain again.

My dad, he judges the amount of rain by what’s sitting in the dog dish or the buckets outside the barn or the puddle that always forms in his driveway. And then he calls me, just a mile down the road, to take a look at my gauge. Because up until a few months ago, I didn’t know the reason my dad never had gauge himself was so specifically calculated. I just thought he never got around to it or something…so maybe it’s been our fault, this drought?

Anyway, it seems the sky has had enough of its silent treatment and just as I got to the gate a half a mile from home, it opened up and started to really pour and so I pulled up my hood and hoofed it toward home, turning my stroll into a jog into a full-on run when the thunder clapped again and the rain turned to little pieces of hail.

My kids were standing in the doorframe watching the drowned rat that was their mother struggle and puff her way back to the front door, laughing and thinking, well, maybe I was right to ignore it, to have low expectations so I wasn’t disappointed.

That evening a double rainbow appeared right outside our house looking to have sprung up right at our kids’ playground set. I called the girls out of the bath and they left little footprint puddles on their way to patio doors where we all stood with our noses touching the screen, breathing in the scent of the rain and counting the colors.

Now girls, this is what spring is supposed to do. Bring it on. Let the heavens pour down and wash that winter away. Wash it clean and squeaky. We’ve been dusty then frozen then 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 to neon green and make the flowers hunch over under the weight of your drops.

I don’t mind. Really. I will stand in it, I will run in it all day if it means it will fill the dams and grow the grass.

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 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 that rainbow.

So go on. Rain. Rain all you want.

Rain forever on this hard ground and turn this pink scoria road bright red, his 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 now. It’s time.

I’ll be there waiting to gasp over it, to gush and smile and stick my face up to catch the drops on my tongue, and return home flushed and soaked and tracking mud into my house where the soup is on.

Rain. Rain. Rain. You fill up the buckets and gauges and puddles and tap at my windows… and promise me a greener summer.

Spring cleaning gives time to reflect

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My sister’s husband is working on building a chicken coop today and so my niece, Ada, spent our ride to town telling me how many chickens she’s going to get.

Sounds like hundreds. And I’m thrilled for them. Because it means that I don’t have to get chickens ever in my life. It’s kinda like the boat thing, you know, the only thing better than having a boat is having a best friend with a boat. That’s what I think about chickens. Eggs for days and no poop to scoop. I’ll save us all the cartons.

Building something like a chicken coop is a typical spring task at the ranch. The sun warms the ground and we’re ready to head outside to thaw out all of those ideas we conjured up while eating carbs and pulling our beanies down over our ears. But it also means cleaning. Oh, the cleaning. I’m always amazed by the amount of mud, random screws, mismatched gloves, beanies, boots, neckerchiefs, and, because my husband’s a carpenter, random electrical wires, plumbing parts, tools and hardware store receipts that accumulate in our entryway over the winter. I spent all morning Sunday trying to arrange it all so I could mop. And by the time I got to the mopping part, the kids had come in and out of that door 37 times, dragging more mud and dolls and winter clothes and random twigs with them.

My daughters were busy driving their kids to Hawaii in the little hand-me-down electric car that always gets stuck in the scoria halfway up the driveway. And the disagreement about who’s turn it is to push and whose turn it is to drive derails the game for a spell, although it does make it a bit more realistic. Adulting comes with all sorts of obstacles and predicaments. Like making the choice between spring cleaning and pouring a Sunday margarita….

Most of the time, I chose both. I’ve always been good at multitasking.

Anyway, the mess here is endless, between the ranch and the garage and the house and the yard, I’m fully committed to the idea that I’ll never catch up. And I know I’m not alone in it overwhelming me sometimes. If I dedicated every minute of my waking life to trying to control it, I still don’t believe I’d fully dig us out. Because, we just go on living, don’t we? Do the dishes and your husband comes in to make a sandwich. Clear the kitchen table of Play Dough to turn around to the kids making Barbie Doll phones out of tin foil and puffy paint. Get to the bottom of the laundry hamper and you’re still wearing clothes, aren’t you? Fix the fence and watch a bull jump right through it. Living’s messy. It requires lots of chores…

Last weekend my husband was also committed to clearing some clutter, so we were, as we usually are on the weekends, busy bopping around the place to see what tasks we can get checked off the list. This leaves the kids within earshot, but to their own devices, with a few tattle tale moments, skinned knees or request to help push the blue car out of the ditch sprinkled in. I stood in the driveway procrastinating sorting 1,000 gloves and watched as my daughters pretended to be mothers riding their bikes and changing diapers and, as I said, making plans to head to Hawaii.

And then I had a flashback of when they were smaller, just a few short years ago, at age 1 and 3, then 2 and 4, when my children required so much more out of me in the entertainment department—to peek-a-boo, to pour the paint, to rattle the rattle or build the blocks.

Now look at them, they’re in the sweet spot of sisterhood and childhood and play, immersed together in a world of their own creation. Rosie stopped her bike/car and her eyes caught mine, “Mooommmmaaa, you can go now! You don’t need to watch…”

And so this is the phase we’re in. Maybe I’ll get a duck or something and add it to my sister’s coop. It seems, with my kids in Hawaii, I might need something new to fuss over this summer, because I’m already sick of cleaning…