Tag Archives: North Dakota

From lost to found in the Badlands

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WATFORD CITY, N.D. — If you missed the news, I’m here to tell you that the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, located in western North Dakota, has been named as one of the Best of the World for 2026 by National Geographic.

That’s a big deal for us because we love to sing its praises. It’s a magical place indeed, because of its rugged and unique beauty, but also because somehow, it’s remained a bit of a secret. That means it’s a national park where you may be lucky enough to actually find yourself alone out there, which I consider a pretty special gift.

So to honor the honor, I want to share a piece I wrote several years ago when I went searching for a quiet moment in the north unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

And if you’re looking for a place to be inspired, make it the Badlands. Stop into the Visitor Center in Watford City before you go, we’ll be happy to sell you some treats and give you some tips!

From lost to found in the Badlands

Well, fall came dancing along in all its glory and we sure didn’t need the calendar to tell us so. Just like the uncharacteristically warm weather, the leaves on the trees were not about to take the subtle approach to the season change.

Overnight, the ash leaves turned from green to gold, the vines bright red, the grass and flowers exploded seeds, and even the slow and steady oaks began letting go of their acorns and turning one leaf over to gold at a time.

After a challenging week, I was ready to celebrate autumn the way it deserved to be celebrated. I was ready to let go of my agenda and frolic in it, climb a big hill and feel the warm breeze in my hair.

After a trip to the big town for an appointment, I pointed my car down the busy highway filled with lines of trucks, pickups and SUVs that moved humans at full speed along that paved ribbon of road that winds through buttes and half-cut wheat fields, across the Little Missouri River that sparkles and meanders under the big blue sky and slowly sinking sun.

I wanted to meander, too. I wanted to meander among the things out here that are allowed a slow change, a subtle move toward hibernation, a good long preparation for a show like no other, a recital of how to slow down gracefully.

And I couldn’t help but wonder while I tried to keep my eyes on the road despite the neon yellow trees waving at me from the ditches, if these people who were sharing my path were seeing this. Did they notice that the tree was waving to them, too? Were they commenting on how the crows have gathered?

As we came down through the brakes that move us through the Badlands, did they notice how the layers of the buttes — the line of red scoria, the black coal, the clay — did they notice how, in the late afternoon light, the landscape looked like a giant canvas created with wisps of an artist’s brush?

Did they see that river? I mean, really see it when they passed over the bridge? Did they take note of how it has receded a bit? And as they approached the sign that read “Theodore Roosevelt National Park-North Unit,” a sign that indicated they were indeed on the home stretch to their destination perhaps, only 15 miles to the town to stop for gas, to make it home, to take a rest on a long truck route, were they enticed like I was that afternoon to stop for a bit?

Because what could be better than breathing in fall from inside a place that exists raw and pure? A park. A reserve. A spot saved specifically to ensure that nature is allowed to go on doing what it does best while undisturbed by the agenda of the human race, which at that point I was convinced didn’t have a handle on how to live gracefully in a world designed for us, let alone accept and live harmoniously among what we can’t control or may not understand — like the change of weather and the seasons and the sun beating down on the hard earth.

And I was guilty as well of taking this for granted. I was guilty of driving by this spot time and time again as it called to me to take a rest, to visit, to have a walk or a seat or a climb.

But not that day. That day I needed its therapy. I needed to park my car and stretch my limbs and take a look around.

From the top of Battleship Butte. From the trail at the river bottom. From the flat where the bison graze.

So as I pulled my cap down and took to the familiar trail that wound up that big, daunting and famous butte along the road, I took notice of the breeze clattering the drying leaves together, the birds frantically preparing for the chill, the grasshoppers flinging their bodies at the dried grass and rocks …

And then I noticed I was alone.

Alone as I scrambled and pulled my tired body up the steep and rocky trail toward the top of my world as two bison grazed on the flat below the buttes.

Alone as I reached my destination with no other ears around to hear me catch my breath and then sigh in awe at the colors and solitude.

Alone as I watched those bison move and graze, a spectator in a different world, a spy on a giant rock.

Alone to take my time as I noticed how the trees sparkled on the river bottom against the sinking sun. No one to tell me that’s enough, enough photos, enough time, enough gazing.

Alone as I walked toward the river and there was no one there to stop me from following it a little bit farther, to see what it looked like on the other side of the bend.

No one there but me and a head full of thoughts and worries that were being pushed out of the way to make room for the scenery, the quiet, the wildlife tracks and magnificent colors and trails before me.

And because I was alone, I was able to notice that after a few weeks gone missing, I was becoming myself again. The self that understood this was my habitat and my home. The self that knows the seasons will always change, the leaves will dry up, the acorns will fall, the birds will fly away from the cold or prepare for it, the grasshoppers will finish their rituals, the snow will come and coat the hard earth, then melt with the warm sun, changing the landscape, as the water runs through and cuts the cracks in the earth.

And the bison will roam, and the antelope will, too, and the prairie dogs will burrow, the pheasants will roost, and the bugs will hum and buzz and disappear, knowing, or not knowing, that their lives are fragile, just like ours out here where we can find ourselves alone.

The wheels of the past

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Fall has settled in at the ranch and we’ve been spending some time working the cows and moving the cows and contemplating the market and thinking about next year’s goals. With the crisp of its arrival comes the regret of not accomplishing all we set out to accomplish in the warmer, fleeting, summer months. It’s always this way on the ranch, and I would argue, gets worse as we get older and so do the fences and buildings that need to be repaired, rebuilt or torn down.

Like most farms and ranches, we have a couple places on our land that have become graveyards for old equipment, cars, campers, boats or mowers. They sit in the draws as a reminder of a part of your life you used to live. When I was a kid, these graveyards were full of my great uncles’ fancy old cars, my great grandpa’s pickup, dad’s snowmobiles and dirt bikes and machinery that at some point was declared beyond repair. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe they just couldn’t get to the repair part, or didn’t have the tool or the money and there it sat. The issue of time has always been an issue of time out here, no matter the decade.

As a kid I used to love to snoop around in these places. I would sit in driver’s seats and play with the shifter and the push the pedals and the buttons on the radio and pretend I was speeding down the road, my imagination somehow in the past with a future me at the wheel. I loved the smell of the dust that puffed up from the ripped and cracked seats and the sound the rusty springs made under the weight of my ten-year-old body bundled up against the bite of the wind. And I liked feeling like I was discovering a secret about these things and inventing the characters they might have driven along the backroads.

Old Truck

Most of my memories about visiting these relics take place in autumn when the heat has blown off making way for the frost. The burdock has headed out and the pig weeds and creeping jenny’s growing up and around the running boards and wheel wells is dry and stomped out by the cows. The flies and wasps have gone to their graves and so sitting in old cars doesn’t feel sweltering, but sort of haunted.

October 9, 2010. Rearview

Haunted. This season will do that to a person. Last week after a particularly windy and chilly morning spent moving cows with my dad and my husband, I sat on my palomino in our corrals along the edge of the west pasture while my husband worked on connecting a tired old gate to its latch and my dad tested the fussy water system in the tank. I was the kind of cold that got to my fingers and toes and turned them the same numb they used to get when I was a kid in this very same corral, in this very same wind, waiting on dad.

I looked over at that wooden chute standing weathered and worn connected, just barely now, to old posts and deteriorating rails. These corrals hadn’t been used in years, but the cold stinging my bones brought me back to the time I was a kid in this very same spot, bundled up as much as a kid could be bundled up, waiting on Dad to fix something. Or maybe we were running calves through that chute, vaccinating or doctoring and I wasn’t being useful after dismounting my horse and so I was colder than everyone else. And I remembered then how I disappeared from the bite of the relentless wind by laying my entire body down in the corner of those corrals, low, low, low enough to bury me in the grass. I remember the smell of the dirt and the way the clouds looked moving graceful and alarmingly quick across a sky that was deceivingly blue for such a brutal day. In my memory I was there for hours, cold and bundled and huddled and waiting for the job to be done. But time isn’t the same when you’re young. It moves slow like the water through a creek in the fall. Even slower when you’re cold.

These days feel more like the clouds in the wind.

I’m no longer the little girl I used to be out here. But how could it be when my bones are the same kind of cold? My fingers. My toes. This tall grass. My dad in his scotch cap. These old corrals. The smell of this horse and the dirt.

I looked up then and noticed those clouds flying and I felt the way I used to feel sitting those old cars so long ago.  Haunted.

Only the nostalgia is mine this time, not someone else’s mysterious story. That future is here now and she’s’ holding tight to the wheel of the past…

What’s Better?

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What’s better than a slice of garden tomato on a slab of fresh, homemade toasted bread? With a little mayo mix spread and a sprinkle of salt? Well, maybe if you add a fresh cucumber to the mix. That’s the best. And crispy bacon too, if you have it, but you don’t need it. You really only need that fresh tomato and that crusty bread.

What’s better than a fluffy, tiny kitten snuggled in the nook of your arm on a rainy Sunday when the tasks you had to do have been done or saved for later and the only real pressing issue is this nap you’re about to take with this kitten purring and safe. And maybe it’s quiet in the house, but maybe you have kids and so the chatter of their pretend play is in the background as your eye lids get heavy. You might only drift off for a moment, but everyone’s home. Everyone’s safe. It’s Sunday. You can relax. What’s better?

What’s better than soup on the stove? The kind you put together with the person you love hovering in the kitchen to tell you about their day, or tease you a bit about the mess, or add a few more sprinkles of garlic and another bay leaf when you turn your back. What’s better than the smell of a recipe you’ve made together for over a decade, knowing you all love it. Knowing you’re all about to dig in and be full. Maybe adding a cheese sandwich, I guess. That could make it better. But you don’t need it. The soup stands on its own.

What’s better than your old ranch dog sitting next to you on the bench seat  of an old pickup in the crisp cool fog of a fall morning as the sun is starting to appear?

What’s better than that dog eagerly awaiting the work ahead, coming to the call to push the cattle out of the brush or pull the strays back in with the herd? What’s better? Maybe that old ranch dog gets let in the house by your young daughters to be called up on the couch to watch “Peter Pan.”  And he won’t look you in the eye when you admire the scene because he’s nervous that you might blow his cover as a house dog now and make him go out. But you don’t. You couldn’t. He’s a good boy, and not too stinky tonight. He’s mellowed out with his old age, and he’s earned it. He sleeps in your daughter’s bed now and you can’t help but notice the funny juxtaposition of his job as ruthless cattle hound by day and stuffed animal at night. This dog too, contains multitudes. What’s better?

What’s better than laying down next to your seven-year-old at bedtime and listening to her read you a chapter out of her favorite book? What’s better than her little voice swelling with inflection as she notices the exclamation points and quotation marks and so she becomes the character. It’s been a long day, but her bed is cozy and you drift off a bit until she stumbles with a word and you wake up, sleepily correcting her. She shuts off the bedside lamp because her eyes are sleepy too and in the dark she asks you a question about the stars that you can’t really answer because who really knows? Who really knows the depth of the universe and if there is anyone else out there, among those stars, who might be wondering too…

What’s better? What’s better?  

In October

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You can see your breath in the morning now. The grass is still green as can be out here, but at 6 am it’s covered in frost. I’m hoping the cold kills the flies soon. One just divebombed into my milk glass right as I was lifting it to take a sip. The fall afternoons warm up nice enough for them to come alive again.

And I feel that I guess.

I took my evening walk to the fields last night. The moon was coming up huge and bright over the horizon and against the pink of the setting sun. That lightbulb of a moon woke me up at four that morning, beaming through the window to wash over my face in the dark and make me restless. But, I was happy to have it following me as I made my way home in the dark. My timing of the daylight was off a bit. Supper should have been on the table earlier.

Last week we rounded up our cattle to vaccinate the calves before sale day. They were spread out in all corners of one of our big pastures and so we called in help and saddled up our horses. My yellow horse, Gizmo, was my choice for the day, and, per usual, he wanted to make sure I knew he didn’t agree with the morning’s plans by trying his best not to be caught and bridled. And then, when we were out trying to get through the brush and around the cattle moving in the wrong direction, he decided to test what would happen if he didn’t move at all. Turns out, much like my daughters, Gizmo doesn’t really care how many times I say, “Come on!” and “Hurry up for before I reeettttiiiirrreeee…”  Horses, like kids, sometimes forget who’s supposed to be the boss around here and neither really like to acknowledge it could be me. That horse and I were happy to eventually be the designated gate-watchers, hanging out to ensure nothing gets by that’s not supposed to get by, a job my little sister and I have had at roundups since I was eight years old.

Anway, the calves, they look good. They’re big and healthy and shiny. Three by three we ran them through the chute to check their health and administer shots, then ear tags or medicine when necessary. I’ve always liked the assembly-line type of task that is working cattle.  Everyone has a job that sinks into a rhythm and it generally goes pretty smooth, until it goes awry. And when it goes awry, as any cattleperson can attest, it usually does it’s very best to nail it. Turns out you can never have too much help when it comes to trying to figure out how to get a very stuck 400-pound calf unstuck without having to use a metal cutter on the chute.

This season, it’s over in a cool breath. In a month we’ll load these calves up to the sale ring and tally what a year’s worth of feeding and caring and gathering will have done for us. But ranching is a heart business as much as anything. I think of this as I watch my dad inspect each calf. He’s spent a lot of time watching and worrying over these growing babies.

There are two nice heifer calves in the herd with crazy markings, one is red and white and one is black and white. The look of them isn’t ideal when it comes to building a breeding program, but my daughters who sat on the top of the fence behind me that day beg to differ. “Where’s Oreo? Where’s Ginger?” These are the heifers they’ve picked out to keep back. They will become their cows because they think they’re pretty and they remember when they were born. Ok then. What a gift these little calves will be to them someday.

And today. Today the sun will burn the frost off the green grass in our yard and the black flies will pop against our windows, some trying to get in. Some trying to get out.

Next week it could snow. Or it could shine. As with cattle and kids and horses, anything can happen in October.

Emma’s Dills

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I hope everyone has that one aunt or gramma or neighbor who has a coveted item they make and distribute to their loved ones that you all fight over.

In our lives, her name is Aunt Kerry and she comes bearing gifts. And those gifts are jars of her Aunt Emma’s Dills, a family recipe that she saved from being lost to the generations.

Aunt Kerry was out to the ranch last weekend to visit and make the delivery of her wares. She’s my dad’s big sister who married and relocated to a ranch near Lemmon, SD, but this ranch is where she grew up and learned to make those pickles from her aunt Emma or her mother in the tiny kitchens of the ranch houses where they raised kids and fed them and fed them and fed them.

I’m a woman who returned home, but growing up I wasn’t naïve to the fact that it was more likely I would become a visitor to the family ranch, rather than an inhabitant of it in adulthood. It’s because of the generosity of my extended family and their strong belief in this generational ranch that my husband and I get to raise our daughters out here. In my life, aside from the ten-or-so-year-stint-away during college and young adulthood, I’ve never really had to miss this place.

But I know Kerry has. And I’ve always been sort of taken by that kind of nostalgia and what that might be like for her, having grown into a young woman out here among these buttes and fields that shouldn’t have been fields, on the back of horses, in the milk barn and gardens and that tiny kitchen eating side pork and pancakes every morning with her little brothers until one day the time came and then suddenly she was just, away. I’ve never asked her if she thought she might return one day to live here. With two brothers behind her, I don’t think that was ever in the realm of thought the way it was allowed to exist in mine as the next generation. The story about a daughter taking over doesn’t happen as often, and less often still as the years tick and often split the family land. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t always belong here.

I think back on my relationship with her, and I hope we’ve always made her feel like when she arrives home, she arrives to fanfare. And it’s not just because of the pickles and the homemade tomato soup and now, the gift bags full of stickers and candies and art projects she brings for her great nieces. It’s because, at least to me, and probably my dad too, it feels like a little missing piece of a puzzle comes with her too. Her mother’s good humor and warmth puts it back in its place for an afternoon. We feel the same way about their little brother too. Uncle Wade. A celebrity looking more and more like his father with each passing year.

I don’t know if this is going to come out right, but I’ve always believed we carry pieces of the landscape that raise us in our membranes. The dirt and the air and the pollen and the dust kicked up from the heels of horses and cows and fallowed fields become the very makeup of who we are.

Lately I’ve found myself homesick, not for this place, but for moments in time here. Ten channels on the TV and two on the radio. Summer days stretching long ahead of me. Oreos in the visor of grandpa’s feed pickup and grandma in her beanie with the ball on top driving as he shoveled grain out the back. Daily chores like rituals, like magic, like aces in our bike tires humming down the center line of the highway turning us into outlaws at only ten-years-old.

None of us can really stay. None of us can go back.

None of us can truly come home again.

I suppose that’s why we covet “Emma’s Dills” written in our aunt’s handwriting on the label of the Ball Jar, hand delivered with her laugh. I hope everyone has someone like that.
I hope you have it.

Bullseye Season

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It’s bullseye season here at the ranch. The leaves start changing, the air cools down, the black flies find their way into my kitchen to make me crazy and my husband and daughters take out their targets and bows and get to practicing shooting arrows.

My husband has been into archery since he was a young kid. His most shared stories of his childhood are of him sitting alone in a hunting blind for hours without anything but those swarming flies to entertain him. The flies and the snacks and lunch he always finished eating well before noon. When the girls dare say they’re bored around here, the hunting blind stories are the stories he pulls out.

Yes, archery is a sport of patience and calm and, most of all passion. It takes a special kind of mindset to stay completely still and quiet for hours on end, often in the freezing cold or wild wind, or, my nightmare, way up high in a tree stand.

I’ve accompanied my husband on bow hunting excursions around the ranch in the past, before the kids arrived. It was one of my favorite things to do with my him because I could get out in the hills, photograph some wildlife, get some air in my lungs and get in quality time while he scoped the draws and skyline for bucks.

 And if you’re planning on doing the same with your husband, may I suggest not wearing swishy pants and only humming the song that’s in your head in your head. Turns out unwrapping a candy bar while he’s glassing the horizon isn’t good protocol either. 

But, what do you call a man who isn’t a comedian, but doesn’t take anything too seriously?  Like, oh well, you swish-swish-swished your way across two miles of pasture and scared everything wild and living away within earshot, but I’m glad you’re here and glad you wore enough warm layers and glad you brought snacks. That’s the guy I married. Turns out being married to me was just preparing him for a lifetime of raising daughters.

He’s unflappable, that man. And our daughters adore him. And I love to see it because when they’re out there shooting bows at that target with him or leading the way on a dirt-bike excursion to the alfalfa fields, it reminds me so much of the reasons I adored my dad as a little girl. The way he continued to enjoy life and pursue his passions even in the thick of the responsibilities of middle age and ranching and professional obligations somehow wasn’t lost on me, even as a kid. He liked deer hunting? I was going along, rain or shine. Playing guitar? I’m sitting at his feet watching his fingers. Training horses? Put me on the next one.  The same didn’t apply to him teaching me to drive a stick shift, but I would like to continue to repress that memory.

From the archives

We’re in the season of parenting where our kids are getting older and beginning the phases of coming into their own. When they were babies, it was fun to dream about the interests they may have or the talents they would develop, and now, here we are, watching who they are becoming right before our eyes. There have been many times in the past year or so that I have second-guessed if we are doing enough to help them cultivate their passions. We’re in the generation of parenting where there is a lot of pressure to sign kids up for extracurriculars at a younger and younger age to help them hone skills as early as possible. But if I’m being honest, my instinct has always been to try to give my kids more free time, not less. Now, all the sudden I’m feeling like maybe my almost eight-year-old and almost ten-year-old should be mastering more skills and honing in closer on their passions. Is it this age where they start becoming a little obsessed with things they love? Would they ever be obsessed enough to sit in a hunting blind for eight hours with nothing but the flies and the bag of snacks to entertain them?

I don’t know. And, honestly, I don’t know if obsession/extreme passion for rodeo or goats or basketball or archery or hockey is always the ultimate goal for every kid. Maybe for some it’s just about doing it and having fun and learning something, although I have tried to sell that concept to my youngest and most competitive daughter and it didn’t land well.

In the meantime, it’s bullseye season at our house and a reminder that the best thing we can do for our kids is to show them what it looks like to enjoy something and to work at it and how to learn and improve.

And then, when it comes time for them to accompany their dad on a hunt, I will remind them to skip the swishy pants, although I doubt he would mind, as long as they’re coming along.

And to me, well, that’s what I call a parenting bullseye.

The bull curse

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This spring toward the end of calving season I remarked about how well things seemed to be going after my father himself remarked how well things seemed to be going. And then, even though I knew better, I dared to add, “No bottle calves yet,” and he told me, quite seriously and repeatedly that I had cursed the entire ranch.  

My dad, in case you missed it, is one of those superstitious ranchers.

What was I thinking?

Fast forward a few months and we had a nice young Angus bull go missing, as bulls tend to do. Dad finally caught up with him in our neighbor’s pasture hanging out with his pretty black cows and enlisted the help of my sister to go round him up. Now, if you have any experience in the art of chasing cattle, you know that trying to break one lone male bovine away from a herd of females is not a task for the armature or the faint of heart. It usually never, ever goes well or smoothly or without cussing and sweat, prayers and thorns and then more cussing and in that order. But that evening, my dad and my little sister hit the trail horseback, miraculously found the stray bull and even more miraculously were able to walk the big guy back to the adjacent pasture so he could finish off breeding season with his betrothed cows. The plan in Dad’s head had come to fruition, things went smoothly and from what was reported there was no swearing and no praying and no thorns.

The other miracle? The fact that, after years of being traumatized in her childhood by helping Dad chase bulls, my little sister actually agreed to go along.

It was a brag-worthy experience and we all heard about it that evening. What a great bull. Can’t believe it. He worked so nicely. Went smooth. Easy as could be.

But the rancher’s dream was cut short when Dad went out the next morning to find the bull was gone again.

Vanished.

And so, this time Dad enlisted the help of my husband and me (because my sister had fled to Arizona, probably to avoid this very situation). Off we went with horses, back to the neighbor’s pasture to, sure enough, find that bull hanging out with his preferred herd of ladies. As we approached him, Dad talked through about ten difference scenarios and tactics we could employ to get this bull back into his rightful spot. Again. We could take him with a small group of cows to the pen by the road and then load him into the trailer. We could take him with the herd toward the gate and then break him off. We could go take what we could get with him to the northeast gate or we could just… ope…there he went, walking right at that bull and breaking him from the cows who went running in all directions. And so that’s the plan we landed on, all three of us pushing that bull alone, up over the hill and through a school section alley, slow and steady and easy in one gate and then another and to our pasture, all the while Dad saying, “This is great! What a nice bull. This is how easy he went with Alex. I can’t believe it. Look at how nice he is.”

And me? Well, I didn’t say a dang word. Because I knew better, having cursed the entire ranch and all. And I know from experience that, with bulls, well, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

But that experience has shown us that once you get a bull in with all the cows it is over. That’s the task. Uniting/Reuniting is the goal. And so, once we successfully achieved that, we all sort of sat back and carried on with the next mission of pushing those cows and that bull into the next pasture.

But it turns out Dad’s out-loud-positive-affirmations was going to do a number on us as I suspected, because I looked over to right to notice that bull veering from the herd suspiciously. So, I followed him with the plan of turning him back, which should have been easy, but the veering continued. I sent the dog in, which made the veering continue faster toward the kind of thick and thorny brush patch on a cliff that bulls tend to love. Cue my husband and dad flying in from both sides hollering, “We have this Jess, go watch the cows.” And so, I did what I was told but found a perch nearby to see if I could watch how this was going to play out.

It was about fifteen minutes into peering from the hilltop down into the winding, deep creek that cuts through the big brush in the corner of that pasture, the absolute worst place to find an animal or yourself for that matter, when I finally got eyes on them. My husband, off his horse on the edge of a brush patch rubbing his hand and my dad standing next to the fence staring over at the bull on the other side who was standing up to his neck in the water, staring back.

“Well, it’s over now,” I thought to myself as the two men came riding back toward me and the cows.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” my dad exclaimed. “The thing jumped off a cliff and into the water and then swam under the fence!”

“I thought I heard a splash,” I said.

“He actually went under the water!” my Dad said as we retold the story to my mom and the girls over a 10 pm supper when we finally got home. “I can’t believe it!”

“I didn’t know bulls could hold their breath,” Rosie said.

“I wonder if it was my curse or yours that will keep that bull at the neighbor’s for all eternity?” I asked my dad between bites of casserole.

Anyway, if you need us, well, my husband will be digging the thorn from his hand, Dad will be looking for that bull and I’ll be keeping my mouth shut…

Frog Crop

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I know nobody’s wondering, but the frog crop at the ranch is hopping these days. A thunderstorm every day will do that to this landscape. From the window of our kitchen I can see the stock dam and when that window’s open in the evening the croaks those little frogs are croaking fill the air with the sound of sweet summer nostalgia.

Needless to say, the little girls on this place are thrilled about this development in the frog department, because finally there is something in that stock dam to catch (because, no matter how they tried to imagine and finagle it this spring, there are still no fish there).

There is a sort of art to catching frogs that I tried to master myself growing up out here next to the creek. You must be quiet and quick and confident, and none of these qualities ever came naturally to me. My oldest has always had a knack for it and a real admiration for slimy, scaley creatures. I caught her once at the playground in the yard when she was around four-years-old, dressed as Cinderella and planting a big of smooch on the nose of her tiny captive frog prince. “Don’t actually kiss frogs,” is not something I thought I would have to say in my life. Also, I didn’t predict how upsetting that rule would be.

But even that wasn’t as country as having to break up two little girls in fancy dresses fighting over who got to hold the garter snake. “Snake Tug-o-War” was also not on my parenting radar.

And so, I wasn’t surprised when I looked out the window a couple weeks ago to find my daughters and their two cousins at the stock dam with a couple feed buckets and giant fishing nets on a frog-finding-mission. Rosie had been at it in the yard for a few days, searching the tall grass and puddles with nothing but stories of near misses, escapes and the report about our border collie and a snake in the dam eating two of her potential catches right in front of her very eyes, which might have been pretty traumatic for normal kids, but mostly she was just mad they got there first. Again. Country.

And I would say she was unreasonably disappointed in her lack of success if I didn’t remember being the same level of obsessed with frog catching when I was her age. I think the first poem I ever wrote was a poem about frogs. I typed it up on the computer in my second-grade classroom and printed it off with a fancy border and everything. Catching frogs at the creek was my main reason for living for one entire summer of my young life, so I understood. But I had minimal success, so my expectations for my daughters weren’t particularly high.

But as it turns out, a little teamwork goes a long way. About an hour or so in to their mission at the dam, I caught them trekking back up the road to the house, two girls holding nets and the other two with both hands slogging a six-gallon bucket. Somewhere along the journey, Rosie lost her shoes, but who needs shoes when you’ve found yourself a bucket-full of frogs.

“Rosie caught ten frogs!!” my niece proclaimed. “And I helped!”

“We’re bringing them to the bathtub,” declared Rosie confidently. “That’s where we put the toad last week.”

And look, we’re country, but a woman must draw the line somewhere.

“How about the old mineral tub in the backyard instead?” I chimed in. And they agreed happily, making a habitat and obsessing the proper amount before digging a little hole and holding a long and dramatic funeral for the one frog with the missing leg who didn’t make it and then ceremoniously releasing the lot at dark so they could do it all again the next day.

So yeah, I know nobody was wondering, but the frog crop is good out here in the middle of nowhere. And the kids? Well, they’re growing up good too.

The Lemonade Stand

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I came home from town yesterday to find that my daughters and their cousins had set up a lemonade stand on the ranch-approach facing the gravel county road. They had been there for an hour or so waving and yelling “Get your lemonade!” to the big blue sky and the wind and the cows munching on sweet clover in the pasture on the other side of the road.

They had big dreams of making enough money for each one of them to get a new pet. As if four dogs, eight cats, two goats and a pasture full of horses between the four of them isn’t enough, we need to add a hamster and a lizard to the mix. We’re dreaming big out here.  They even brought their plastic cash register.

Country kid lemonade stands are the epitome of patience and rural acceptance. There are just some things that aren’t as successful out where the cows outnumber the people by like 3,000 percent. Well-manicured lawns, rollerblading and getting away with sneaking out to a party are some other examples, among others.

Anyway, the lemonade stand, it was impromptu, as most kid-run businesses are. As a result, my sister didn’t have time to rally the neighbors to casually drive by and discover the oasis of slightly chilled refreshments, a variety box of single serve chips and four girls waving handmade signs and spouting unreasonable prices. This is when grandparents and dads on their way home from work come in handy. The girls made $15 off their family.

A text just chimed on my phone. “Ada made chocolate chips cookies. She wanted to make sure you don’t make the same thing.” It’s my little sister. Today the girls are going to head back out there, this time with better treats, bigger signs and a chance for us to call my brother-in-law who works on the oil sites out here, to bring cash and call his people.

On Sunday I took my daughters to the home pasture to check on the wild raspberry crop, a tradition that can’t be skipped this time of year. But, much like a lemonade stand on a rural road, planning and timing is everything when it comes to raspberry picking. Get there too early and they’re not ripe. Get there too late and the birds beat you to them. My summers of experience and all the rain that’s fallen this July gave me the hunch that we were going to have some success in finding raspberries (and horseflies) that day, and boy, was I right. And boy, there is nothing better than a ripe wild raspberry picked out under a big prairie sky. A tiny, delicious little treasure hunt. I looked over and my oldest was neck deep into the thick brush, putting three berries in her mouth for every one she put in her ball cap to “save for dad.” As you can imagine, that ball cap was empty by the time we moved to the next brush patch and the only one saving any for dad was me, his loving, selfless wife with willpower of steel, which is what you need in order to leave any wild raspberry uneaten.

We caught up with my husband moving dirt with the backhoe on our way back to the yard and surprised him with my cap full of berries. The way the grown man transformed into the ten-year-old version of himself, popping those treats in his mouth five at a time, well, it made my sacrifice worth it.

Anyway, the raspberry-picking was impromptu, like most of the best memories are, and, unlike the lemonade stand, it’s one activity that does work best out in the hills where the cows out number us. After their dad had his fill of raspberries, the girls climbed up in the buttes to sing and throw rocks. Then, coming from another butte about quarter mile away they heard tiny voices yelling, “Hello! Hello!.”  It was their cousins of course, news travels fast out here where the wind carries giggling and chattering voices.

“Hello!” they yelled back, waving their arms, thrilled to have been discovered. “We love you! Can we come oveerrr?!!!”

“YEESSS!!! Come ooovvveeerrrr!!!” replied the tiny voices far away.

And so they did.

This is summer on backroads and I just don’t think you can beat it.

UPDATE

Since this column published the girls did indeed have their lemonade stand, but this time next to the highway for better visibility. As planned, we called in my brother-in-law and he called his staff who work on the well sites near us on Wednesdays and they showed up for these girls in waves. And so did the rest of the community traveling that highway to get to work, or an appointment or to go visiting (and the neighbor girls, who made a special trip, bless them.) They would pass by from every direction, check the center counsel or the glovebox or a wallet or purse to see if they had cash and then hit the next approach to turn themselves around if necessary.

The girls quickly got into their respective roles and routine, one at the cash register, one pedaling free cookies, one scooping ice and one organizing and putting stickers on the cups. Between my sister and I we had to go back to the house twice to refill lemonade, ice and the cookie stash!

When I tell you there’s nothing more wholesome than a lemonade stand on a hot summer afternoon, well, this experience proved it.

“What are you raising money for?” one man asked the girls lined up by the window of his pickup.

“A hamster,” said Rosie

“A lizard,” said Edie

“A puppy,” said Ada

“A big Lego set,” said Emma.

“Here’s my wallet!,” replied the man, shifting his cookie to his lemonade-holding hand. “Take all the cash out of it. It’s yours!”

And that was the sentiment for a good three hours that afternoon, before it started to sprinkle and just as they ran out of cookies.

So anyway, if you need us, we’ll be shopping for tiny pets, which may or may not be the worst idea we’ve had yet.

Thank you brother-in-law and crew and to everyone who stopped for the girls that day. You truly made a sweet memory for all of us.

Sweet Clover Season

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

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

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

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

This summer my daughters and their cousins have lived on this landscape, on this ranch, the way kids should. Spinning on the tire swing, hiking up to the top of Pot and Pans, trying to catch fish in the fishless stock dam, zooming on dirt bikes, pushing baby doll strollers in the tall grass and skinning knees on the scoria roads. There was a time when it was quiet out on this homestead place, back when my sisters and I left for the big towns and didn’t dare turn to look back over our shoulders, leaving my parents here to wonder what happens next to the place that has raised us when there is no one left for it to raise.

Fast forward twenty years and the ranch, well, now it’s buzzing, laughing, full of life like I remembered it when I was growing up and our grandparents were alive and serving us push-up pops from the small front porch of their small brown house. Weren’t we all just five years old running through the clover, itching our mosquito bites, begging for popsicles and just one more hour to play outside?

Now we are the ones on the other side of the supper bell. As I type this my daughters are over the hill at their aunt and uncles’ lighting leftover 4th of July smoke bombs on the gravel because it rained. I needed a few minutes to collect my thoughts and it is mid-summer and the smell of that clover makes me lonesome somehow for a life that I am currently living. Do you understand what I mean? That feeling of knowing that it’s fleeting? The clover reminds us and so do the limbs of my daughters stretching up and reaching closer to the sky every minute now. The chubby gone from their rosy cheeks. How many more summers will that clover feel magic? 

All of the summers I hope.

Because I know being here like this, reflecting at my kitchen counter while our children stay up past any reasonable bedtime because it’s summer on the prairie and the light lingers, I know it didn’t come without a cost for our family, keeping it here for us…

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

Pride?

Work?

Home?

A place to belong?

My uncle Wade stops in on his way back to Texas and I live to hear the two brothers remember what it was like to be young out here. Young Wade always found hanging back on a roundup, eating on a Juneberry bush. Dad as a kid getting bucked off on the road when his little brother popped over the hill on his tricycle. Milking cows and riding broncs and chasing girls and growing up together out in these same hills…

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

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

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

I’ll take that clover. I’ll breathe it in, and I will remember when it itched our bare little legs in the summer while we searched for kittens in the nooks of the red barn. And I’ll be thankful it itches my legs still… because they’ll grow up too fast you know. Just like we did, out here among the clover.