Summer: A photo recap.

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

September is creeping in on us as summer draws to a close.

Summer.

It’s my favorite season, but this year it has definitely been a challenging one. So I’m sad to see it go. I haven’t enjoyed it the way I should have. I haven’t ridden enough horses, I haven’t taken enough walks. I haven’t basked long enough in the sun or written enough songs about the way the light floods through these windows in the morning.

So tonight I want to celebrate the moments of summer I was able to catch. We may not have had the chance to spend the time together, but the time she gave me was breathtaking and heartbreaking and awe-inspiring and peaceful and colorful and all the things summer is in my heart.

March 10. First ride of the new spring season.

March 21, my first crocus siting of the season…

April 17: My world starts to blossom

April 22: A spring joy ride…

with my favorite cowboy

April 25: Celebrating the green grass.

May 1: And the sky is a perfect blend of blue and white and fuzzy horse face.

: May 6: Paddlefishing season!

May 10: The wildflowers bloom.

May 14: And the ranch comes to life.

June 2: The river calls again and it’s my turn to catch something.

June 5: The babies arrive!

June 7: The rain soaked the leaves…

and the badlands…

and the horses…

and the pug.

: June 12: A country church along a back road…

June 17: And then there was the back road itself…

July 2: Summer settles in and we pick our favorite horses

July 7: We turn our faces up toward the hot sun.

: July 10: We welcome the friendly bugs and watch our garden grow

July 21: The hot sun sets on us.

July 21: Checking the cows.

August 7: We’re home!

August 16: Bullberries in the morning.

August 18: Husband got himself another big catch!

August 26: And then there’s the dogs again…

Ah, summer, if I could put you in a jar beside my bed you know I would.

Enjoy the dog days everyone!

If you need me, I’ll be out catching salamanders…

My weird and mysterious backyard…

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

When you live out here it is easy to see the big picture. All you have to do is climb to the nearest hilltop and take in the view.

From way up there you will see the Blue Buttes to the north, the creek bed lined with oak trees below, the rolling grasses and the stock dams under the big blue sky.

I like the view from up there, it puts me in perspective. It takes my breath away when I need something breathtaking and gives me a second wind when I am running low.

But for as much as we can all appreciate a great view from above it all, for me there has always been something magical about life on the ground level of the world.

I’ve written about it before, about taking a step off of the road to cut through the trees. I’ve written about looking down, about honing in on the soft petals of a flower or the way the dry grass glints in the sunlight.

All of those small things that live down there among the pebbles and budding seeds remind me that there is a world still unexplored and mysterious.

And kinda weird and disgusting.

I’ll tell you, out here, Husband and I are easily distracted by these sort of things. We spent this weekend cleaning up the construction debris that had accumulated in the yard of our new house. It wasn’t the most thrilling of tasks, throwing weathered pieces of broken siding, particle board and plastic warp into the back of the pickup only to unload it into the dump site and come back for another load, but Husband kept it interesting by hollaring at me to come and look at every creepy, crawly thing he found under the wood pile. He would take my guesses on what we would find as he flipped over big, heavy boards or moved sheeting.

I always guessed worms.

And hoped for something better.

It was like a treasure hunt, especially when we would discover a frog or a salamander.

Not so especially when we tallied up Husband’s spider count.

Husband hates spiders.

But the two of us share an affinity for reptiles and amphibians, both known to have kept lizards, snakes and frogs as pets in our lifetime. So when he yelled out “Jess! Found another salamander over here!” he wasn’t surprised that I was quick to throw down the current piece of junk I was hauling and drop to my knees to inspect the creature.

And then take some pictures.

I can’t imagine what Pops thought when he came into the yard to find me in the middle of our trash piling project pointing my camera into a dirt clump.

He did shake his head a little when I continued to interrupt our conversation with my obnoxious command at the pug to leave the salamanders alone.

My dad was so distracted by my break-up tactic that the man actually relocated the salamander to a safer spot to get me to shut up.

Pops is used to this sort of thing.

Anyway, this is the part where I ponder my fascination with the creatures that lurk and buzz and squirm below our feet. This is the part where I wonder why I’m so enamored with the tiny bodies and skeletal structure of the creatures who share my backyard.

But I don’t have much to say about it except that I know why I look down.

Because when I think all has been discovered, that there is no more adventure in the world, I just have to remind myself to look a little closer, to discover the barn spider and marvel at her web.

When I notice the perfect pattern on the salamander’s slimy back and the way the tiny frog blends in perfectly with the mud I am reminded that there’s always more ways to be in awe.

If I just remember to notice the small things.

When you take the time to fish…

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

North Dakota summers don’t last long.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again as I take notice of the days getting a bit shorter, the grass a bit more golden, the heat a little more dry and nights that cool us all down.

Today the kids of my community will be packing up their book bags and climbing on school busses and I will have the feeling I always get as summer winds down as fall waits around the corner.

I will miss my favorite season before my favorite season is even over.

I will wonder where the time’s gone, why my skin isn’t more tan, why the work isn’t finished, why I didn’t pick more wildflowers, why I forgot to plant cucumbers and why my requirements of summer have not been adequately fulfilled.

I think husband was thinking the same thing as last week drew to a close. He’s been spending every waking minute hammering nails, wiring something, tinkering with plumbing, sawing, planning and wondering if we are ever going to eat a meal before 10 pm again…

Because while my requirements for summer include a sun tan, evening walks to hilltops, numerous cocktails on the deck, floating in the lake and popsicles, most of the men in this area only have one summer dream…

Fishing.

And husband was wondering last week if that dream was ever going to come true.

Up the gravel road a ways my friend has her own husband with his own fishing dreams, but it turns out he’s a little more serious about them.

Because he has a boat.

So on hot summer evenings she has found herself sitting alongside her dearly beloved as he trolls through the waters of Lake Sakakawea searching for a monster walleye to bring back to the ranch and fry up for supper.

And while he scours the lake, she quietly hones her own skills, innocently and unexpectedly pulling in nice sized catches off of the back of the vessel.

While her husband theorizes about bait and tackle and the relationship the two choices have on his ability to catch a trophy fish, his wife chooses the prettiest lure, attaches it to her pink fishing pole, drops it in the water and pulls out a giant northern.

And then a walleye.

And then a bass.

And another northern.

And another walleye.

And another bass.

Her husband finds this amusing at first, until the tenth fish begins to inhibit his ability to concentrate on his own catch.

He re-baits his line to match her concoction: “A purple lure, one minnow and a half a worm.”

He drops his line in the water.

She follows.

He waits.

She yells “Oh, yep! Yep! Got one.”

He grabs the net, she reels in her catch and the cycle continues until the sun sinks down below the horizon and casts sparkling light on the waves of the big lake.

I’m not sure this story would have been told this way had I not seen it for myself this weekend when our friends offered to take us along on one of their epic fishing trips. Husband was glad to oblige and I quickly loaded up our Cheetos and cooler of beer while he dug around the graveyard of lonely and unused fishing tackle to find the poles we last touched on our unsuccessful May catfishing excursion.

We were happy to leave our work behind and glad to have friends willing to take us on out on the water.

I was prepared to lounge in the boat, soak up some sun, drink a few cocktails and probably not catch a thing.

Husband was prepared to do the same.

But three minutes into the fishing excursion, two minutes after we baited our hooks, my friend started her roll.

“Oh yep. Yep. Got one!” she hollered off the end of the boat just as I dropped my line in the water.

And she reeled in a great big northern.

I opened the bag of Cheetos and she caught another.

I took my first drink of beer and she reeled in her third.

We all changed our lures to match her sparkly green one.

And then we put on one minnow and a half of a worm.

And as her husband steered the boat along the banks of his favorite spots he worked to set the hook on his first nibble as his lovely wife reeled in her fourth catch of the day.

My husband got a bite.

She got another fish.

I got a snag.

My friend caught a bass.

Her husband caught a tree, my husband caught some bait…

and my friend caught another walleye.

I cracked another beer and her husband suggested that perhaps she should give it a rest so the rest of us might have a chance.

Oh, somewhere in there I caught a few fish of my own and so did the boys.

But really, despite the jokes about luck and timing and never taking his wife along again, it wasn’t about the fish at all, except I couldn’t help but hold my breath every time my friend dropped her line in the water. Because the excitement that flew out of her lungs with each nibble was bouncing off the buttes and energizing the water surrounding us. All I wanted was for her to catch more fish.

I think we all felt the same way.

Because the season is short and fleeting around here, the sun doesn’t shine forever and the fish don’t always bite. But watching my friend squeal as she reeled in fish after fish gave me something to keep in my pocket for those days when December feels like years.

So I think our neighbors have it figured it–that summer isn’t about the time, but how the time is spent…

And it turns out you just can’t go wrong when you take the time to fish.

Morning

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The morning is quickly becoming one of my favorite times of the day now that we’ve moved into the new place. I suspected this would be the case after we planned a house with big windows facing toward the hill where the sun makes her grand entrance each morning. I get out of bed, turn on the coffee pot and stand with my nose pressed to the sliding glass door and take a look at how the day might turn out.

It’s different every morning, sometimes a little dreary, sometimes crisp and calm, sometimes the sky spits out rain and sometimes the sun comes up with a promise of a beautiful day.

I’m blessed to be able to watch it from a few different angles behind my coffee cup. And I’m even more blessed to be able to pull on my jeans and shoes and step out in it if I so choose.

This morning I chose to pay it a visit. Lately I haven’t had time to be anything but be a spectator as the grass grew and dried up, the birds took their morning bath in the dam and the clouds rolled over this house. But I had a moment this morning where I felt there was nothing more important than to be a part of the world outside my window and beyond the road to town.

So I grabbed my camera, my coffee cup and the dogs and took a stroll toward the dam. The lab was thrilled at the chance for a quick dip in the water,

the pug kept busy chasing field mice through the tall grass…

and I worked hard to capture the way the light filtered through the thin skin of the bull berries…

the way it kissed the tips of the wildflowers at the end of their season…

how it made the tall grass glisten

and my world look fresh before the heat of the day.

I am in love with that brief moment where the sun makes my shadow long and tall when I stand with my back toward the light.

Because the wind will blow today. The dust from the trucks will fly.

It might even rain.

But I had my morning.

I will have my evening.

And I’m at peace knowing they will come around again and again outside my windows.

The sister situation…

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this with as much enthusiasm as I feel in my heart about the news, but Little Sister has recently moved back to the area to work as a teacher in a neighboring town.

My built-in-best-friend is now my neighbor and I couldn’t be happier. And even though our lives are currently in two completely different states of chaos, when we get together it seems like we do a pretty good job of zoning out everything else in the world and concentrating on the things that matter.

Like the movie she watched last night, the new boots I’m thinking of buying, what we should drink for happy hour and how we are going to pull off the next waterballoon ambush on Husband. The first and second were not so successful.

I heard third time’s a charm and we’re counting on it.

Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to confess here the level of worthless we are when we get together. And nothing exemplifies our incapabilities more than when we so generously volunteer to help our father move cows in the early morning and then linger in the house just long enough over a cup of coffee, a piece of toast, Little Sister’s missing boot and the a.m. hairdo I can’t fit under my hat for Pops to get out the door, up the road and into the barnyard to locate our saddles, sort out our bridals, catch our horses and assume the position of waiting patiently while he listens to our jabbering as we finally make it out of the house and to the barn to meet him.

Pops is patient. He’s had to be out here in the wild buttes of Western North Dakota surrounded by girls. Sometimes I wonder if his life on the ranch as a father would have been a little easier if he would have had a few boys tossed in the mix. But he’s never once complained and you gotta love him for it. Pops is just grateful for the help, even when his help is riding a half a mile behind him talking over how weird it would be if we rode cows instead of horses as he works to keep the herd from the black hole that is the brush patches in the hot 10 a.m. sun.

We were supposed to be out there much earlier you see, but we were a little late because Little Sister and I had to finish watching the story about Michael Phelps on the Today Show. By the time we made it to the barn to meet Pops he was deep in the middle of a nasty battle with Husband’s horse who decided over the summer to become wild and un-catchable. We sat in the tack room for a few minutes before we realized that perhaps the stampede of horses and Pops’ cursing coming from the other side of the hill indicated that perhaps he could use our assistance.

Because we really are a lot of help, with one of us ducking, swatting and screaming at anything that resembles a bee and the other one tripping over anything that resembles the ground.

A half-an-hour later we got the damn horses in and took a moment while Pops assessed the sweat dripping down his back and we assessed the bur situation tangling in the manes of our beautiful horses.

A girl cannot be seen on a horse with a bur situation.

Three gallons worth of Show Sheen, two curry combs, seven curse-word combinations and another half-hour later we had the hair situation under control.

And once we got past the missing reign situation, the stirrup situation and the fly spray situation we were finally on our way to moving some cows in the heat situation.

Little Sister hates the heat.

She’s also the one, if you didn’t guess it, who hates bees, or anything that looks like it might belong to the bee family.

Anyway, the rest of the roundup went something like this:

Girls: “Where are we chasing them? Which gate? That gate? Where are you going? What? I can’t hear you?”

Pops: “Just stay there, I’ll head up over the hill to look for more then we’ll move them nice and easy.”

Me: “I think we missed one. Should I go and get it?”

Little Sister: “Should I come with you? I should probably come with you. I’ll come with you…eeeek! A bee…I hate bees…eeeeeeeekkkkkk.”

Pops (as he races through the brush and up the hill): “Just stay there!!! Girls! Stay there! I’ve got it!!!”

Little Sister: “I’ve never really liked chasing cows…I mean, I like it when things go well, like we can just ease them along, but they start going the wrong way and it stresses me out.”

Me: “Ooo, chokecherries.”

Little Sister: “Where’s dad. Maybe we should go find him. Should we take these cows with us?”

Me: “Oh, yeah. We should get going.”

Little Sister: “I think my horse runs weird. Look at him. Does he look like he runs up hills weird?”

Me: “That horse is weird. Look at his hair. He reminds me of you.”

We finally catch up with Pops who is behind twenty-five head of cows and their calves.

Little Sister and I have brought along four, who are currently headed toward the wrong gate on the wrong side of the creek.

Me (hollering across the pasture to Pops): “Oh, there you are. We couldn’t find you. We’ve got these here…thought we were going to the other gate…”

Pops (hollering from behind the twenty-five head of cattle and their calves he’s just moved through a half-mile brush patch on his own): “No problem, actually you’re going to have to turn them or leave them because they’ll never make it across the creek and through the trees…”

Me (running toward my small, straying herd who are eyeing a brush patch) “Oh shit, oops. I’ve got em. Sorry. Wasn’t paying attention.

Little Sister: “Do you think my horse runs weird?”

Pops: “I think you’re horse is just fat…Jess, you’re never going to get them. Just leave them. I’ll get them later.”

Me, hollering to Little Sister: “Whhhattt? Whhhattt did hee sayyyy?!! Ask him? Should I leave them???”

Little Sister, hollering to Pops: “DAAAADDD, SHOULD SHE LEAVE THEM?”

Pops, hollering to Little Sister: “Yess, ssheeee ssshhoullld lleeave them!!”

Littile Sister, hollering to me: “HEEE SSAAAYSS LEEAAVEE THEM!”

I leave them and point my horse in the direction of Little Sister, who has now decided her stirrups are still too long.

We meet up behind Pops’ herd and discuss the matter while we walk with the cows toward the gate. But our conversation about leg length is interrupted as we hear Pops calling from the fence line and turn to notice our herd is heading toward the trees again.

“Girls, I need you to actually CHASE them.”

“Slap”, a branch hits me across the face as I manage to distract the lead cow from her destination and back toward the gate.

The rest of the herd follows and we proceed to do the same.

Pops informs us we’ll just push them over the next hill…

Five giant hills and three miles later we’re on the opposite end of the pasture where the stock dam is located and where Pops had intended to lead us all along.

Little Sister has melted and seriously considers joining this cow for a swim while I scope out any signs of wild plums and wait for Pops’ next move.

It appears that it’s toward home, so we follow along as he thanks us for the help and stops to take our picture.

He said he couldn’t do this alone.

We argued that he probably could.

He argued that it wouldn’t be as much fun.

And we all had to agree as we moved slowly across the pastures turning gold in the late summer sun, happy to be together out here again with the burs, and the chokecherries, the sun and even the bees.

The prairie’s gift…

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The sunsets on this prairie are nothing short of a gift.

After a long day working under the hot summer sun, or inside the walls of buildings that make us feel small, we understand that if we look up towards the heavens to catch the sun sneaking away, we may be rewarded with a splash of spectacular color.

I’ve seen sunsets in other parts of the world–across the vast ocean, peeking over the mountaintops and at the edge of rolling corn fields, but there is something about the way the sun says goodbye along the outskirts of my own world, against the familiar buttes and grain bins and horses on the horizon that puts me at ease and thrills me at the same time.

I have theories about things like hail storms and tornadoes and blinding blizzards, that they’re a way of slowing us down, reminding us to surrender to an earth that spins no matter what our plans are for crops or hair-dos or making it our Christmas party on time.

The storms are unpredictable, but the sun is always there.

And it will always set and rise again.

And sometimes as we put the burgers on the grill, close the gates for the cattle or put the lawn mower in the shed we will find ourselves bathed in yellow, gold, purple, orange, pink and blue and hues we cannot find in our crayon box. We will look above the oak groves or down to the end of the pink road and we will find that sun playing and bouncing against the clouds that roll over the prairie and buttes that we know so well.

I tilt my head up and run to find the nearest hill so that I may watch how this landscape looks under the different shades of light.

Under these prairie sunsets I am a spectator on the familiar ground of home.

A tourist with my mouth agape in wonder.

And thankful for a world that’s round and a sky so vast and forgiving.

I could be a bird…

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

My world is packed up in boxes in my parent’s garage. Stacks of important papers and photographs, hats and shoes, books I’ve never read and albums I haven’t listened to in years. We pulled these things from a home that was threatened by flames and forces we can’t control.

We did not grab one another when the wall of our home was smoking from the inside out into the night. No, we placed our arms around computer screens and television sets, guns and guitars. We threw our possessions on the earth to be saved and to save us from the need we might feel to replace them.

What it would cost us to purchase another would mean time and money, the things that take up the biggest part of us some days.

And now here it all sits waiting for us to use it. To go through the books and read the stories inside. To listen to the music, to watch others live their lives on the television screen, to step into our favorite dress or shirt and go out into the world to show it off.

Some days I don’t want all of this shit. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want a choice between red boots or black, I don’t want the papers reminding me to pay, I don’t want the movies suggesting I should stay in and watch a world that doesn’t exist for us.

I don’t want the memories waiting in boxes for me to recall what we were when we were sixteen and sun kissed and scared to death.

I don’t want it weighing on me.

Some days.

Yesterday a wise voice coming through the radio on my car spoke to me.

He told me that we do not have a soul, we have a body.

I pause to think of this today when my clothes feel heavy against the wet sticky heat of the summer and the body that houses my soul is feeling tired at the thought of moving through the tasks we’ve laid out for the day.

And I think about where my soul might live next.

Perhaps in the body of the yellow bird that returns to the feeder outside of this office window, concerned with nothing but her next bite, spreading her wings and cooling herself in the puddles left from an early morning rain.

A bird attached to nothing but the sky.

Or maybe a long living oak with the mission to reach my branches out to the sun in the summer, to release them in the autumn chill and sleep until the spring sun asks me gently to bloom again.

I would have roots that would keep me grounded and grass and branches from the aspen or the birch to keep me company, to lean on, to protect me from the wind.

Maybe a wildflower, a thistle or a cricket screeching my song into the night.

I could be all of those things.

But today I don’t want to be attached to anything…

I have felt like this as a teenager, before I understood what I was so anxious about, what it was that was worrying me.

Why I suddenly had so many emotions pulling at my skin.

I remember walking out into the rain on a cool late summer evening. I wasn’t upset or worried or milling anything over in my mind. I just wanted to be out there, away from the four walls of a house, away from the telephone and parents who wanted to talk, things that needed to be thought through. I don’t know why, but I felt heavy that day with the business of being human and I wanted nothing more than to be a blade of grass, grounded and soaked in this rain.

I walked further into the protection of the oak groves and stepped off of my path, then slowly out of my shoes and finally out of my clothing. I stood there in the lush green of the weeds and wild fruit bushes, under a canopy of leaves dripping the rain down through their branches and onto my bare skin. There I was naked and caught in the moment of what it feels like to be so alone and so exposed and so unbelievably grateful for the silence and familiarity of nature.

I was comfortable like this for only moments before I glanced down at my pale skin and recognized that imperfect body once again as my own. But for a moment I was there, holding my breath, and I was the rain and the clouds and the dirt. I was the grass and the still, damp air.

I wasn’t my body.

I was my soul.

I know I am blessed as a human, blessed to have this soul in this body with a voice that can sing out loud, arms that I can wrap around the people I love and legs capable of moving me to hilltops to get closer to the sky. I understand that those boxes are stacked high and filled with things that many people would love to possess. I am not taking them for granted and I am not wishing for the reminders of a good life that are held in those albums to disappear. I am not wishing them away.

Today I am just asking to not be held accountable for my possessions or a body that doesn’t do much to hide the relentless emotions of a soul that too often crinkles up my nose when it cries, bites the scar on her lip in worry, screams air out of her lungs in frustration and laughs with an enthusiasm that sometimes cannot be contained.

Today I am just taking a moment to remember that someday my soul may have wings…

Riding Horses

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

There’s something about the view between a horse’s ears that makes a woman forget that she can’t stay up there forever.

It’s the same way she feels watching a man catch a horse. It’s the quiet and gentle approach, the soft way he whispers and coaxes…

And she remembers the good ones.

And it’s how he wears his hat, how his shirt’s tucked in and the way he sits so sure up there next to her riding along.

The way the breeze moves through that horse’s mane before brushing her cheek.

The way the sinking sunlight hits him just right.

How the grass sparkles under that sky.

And all of those things that make her happy to be alive out here…

riding horses.

The long way home.

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Sometimes in the middle of an ordinary weekday, one filled with spilled coffee, peanut butter toast on the run, meetings, missed phone calls and long-lost plans for supper, the world gives you a chance to throw it all out the window and just get lost.

Yesterday afternoon on my way out the office, heavy-overstuffed briefcase on my shoulder, water cup in my left hand, my list under my arm and a trail of papers flailing behind me, I dialed Husband to remind him it was voting day and asked him if he wanted me to meet him at home so we could make the trek together.

Husband works a good thirty-plus miles away from the ranch. I work another good thirty miles away too…in the other direction. And when you live in the middle of winding gravel roads, you do not vote in the town that you travel 30 miles to work in each day. No, you take the gravel to a smaller town sitting nice and neat alongside the county road and cast your vote in a quaint community building as your neighbors from over the hill, across the creek and down the road filter in and ask you about your family, how the house is coming and what you think of the weather.

I thought about taking the fifteen mile detour to cast my vote on my own, but the idea of a little car ride with my husband and the opportunity to actually show up in public together sounded like a nice one. He agreed.

And so we met at home, dropped our piles of work at the door, and husband drove me north on the scoria road, past the substation, and our friends mailbox where the gravel turns to pavement, right on the county road and into Keene, ND where we would greet the ladies who have been working the polls all day and follow their instructions to fill in the circles dark and complete, and for goodness sakes, don’t vote in more than one party column or you’ve gotta do it again.

I took their directions and my packet and followed Husband into the little gym where we played volleyball this winter and where I attended craft club last week. I waited for my neighbor to cast her vote and I took her place at the round table against the wall.

I read the directions thoroughly, wondered if Husband, who was at the table on the other side of the room, was canceling out my votes, finished my civic duty, closed the folder and fed my sheets through the fancy machine.

Husband followed close behind. I waited while he cracked a few jokes, said goodbye to the neighbors and then followed him to the door and back out into a beautiful summer evening in the hub of our little township: Keene, ND-Population 266?

We contemplated heading back home to grill some brats and finish up the laundry. We talked about how the lawn needed to be mowed and that fence that needed a good inspection. We thought we could maybe get some work done on the new house before it got too late.

We said we probably should go home…we really should…

But it was such a nice evening, the sun was shining through the fluffy clouds, the grass was green and fresh from the recent rain, the farmers were out and it smelled so sweet. We rolled down the windows and pointed our car north toward the lake where we heard the restaurant at the marina had just been renovated and is open for business. What’s another 30 miles when the lake is calling and you heard they might have walleye on the menu?

What’s another thirty miles along new green fields, under big prairie skies, next to a handsome man with lots of things to tell you with the windows open and your favorite songs in the speakers?

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

And the food was good, the water was crystal clear and the sun was hitting the horizon with a promise of a show as colorful as the rainbow that had just appeared in the clouds to south.

Husband pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the county road. He headed toward that rainbow, toward the ranch and our chores…but then, without a word between us, he ignored the turn that would take us there and chose the long way home instead.

I didn’t object. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t say a thing unless it was to ask him to stop so I could take a photo of the clouds reflecting off the glass-like pond in a rancher’s pasture.

The country church reaching up toward the sky.

A family of ducks swimming in reeds.

The sun sinking below the horizon.

We drove this way for hours, tourists exploring the landscape we knew so well, seeing it again with eyes wider.

Hearts more open.

I was exploring our homeland and my husband was my guide, a man who just wanted a little more time to move through the world he loves…

patient with the clicking of the camera and my need to let the cooling air blow through the crack of the window in the passenger seat…

humored by my theory on coming back after my death as a duck…

happy to hear his tires hum along familiar roads…

content to sit next to me and hum along with the songs we love.

And relieved to forget about the things we should do…

and just live in the moments, under the sky, moving quietly and slowly along the landscape that made us…

When it pours…

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We got drenched here yesterday. The morning brought us thunder against the glow of a sunrise trying to peek through the clouds and, well, it just escalated from there.

Around here we don’t get too many downpours like this. Typically we get our moisture in the spring and then watch the sky for a chance of showers to help soften the hard clay throughout the summer, so this day of gully-washing rain was a welcomed site for us.

And when I say gully-washing, I mean it. The coulees were flowing with raging river rapids, the corrals below the house turned into swimming pools, a new ravine was cut along the edge of my driveway and, well, I got myself a free pug wash. It’s days like these that make me feel like I’m in a different world altogether. The ten-year-old in me itches to run around in it, to let the rainwater soak in my hair and squish between the mud in my toes. But the logical grown-up in me decides it’s best not to get pneumonia, even though I’m fully convinced the pneumonia scare was a ploy by mothers and grandmothers everywhere in an effort to avoid soggy kids running into the house with a pile full of muddy laundry waiting to be stripped from their pruny bodies. But whether it was the threat of a sniffle or the scarier threat of more laundry that willed me to stay inside until the monsoon-like rains subsided, it doesn’t really matter. I was out in it at the first sign of let-up.
Because I love the way rain makes my world look. I love how it changes things, how it drenches the wildflowers causing their petals to recoil.

I love the sparkle of the rain drops waiting to be evaporated back into the sky on the soft surface of the leaves.

I want to lick the drips from the un-ripened berries.

I like to visit the horses, to see how they fared as they stood still against the opened sky, their butts turned against the wind, soaking the heavens into their skin. It always seems a storm makes them ravenous, starving for the lush green grass that seems to turn neon at the first drop of moisture.

But after the storm they won’t have me poking my nose in their business. They are not about to come in.
They braved the storm, now they’re going to feast.

I always walk to a hilltop then. I scrape and scramble my way up the face of the clay buttes, my boots, suffering from a severe case of mud-pack, weighing an extra 10-20 pounds. I scour the bushes for flowers, check out the sky for more rain, listen for the birds coming back to life and breathe in the fresh, new air.