The animals of winter…

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

Well the wind blew winter in this weekend and I breathed in the frozen air, a kind of sigh of relief that the season didn’t skip us altogether. Nope, the snow and the cold made it just in time to keep us wondering if there will be lions or lambs trotting in for the grand opening of March.

Oh, it doesn’t really matter much anyway. Around here we can’t trust in spring until the first weeks of June no matter how easy the winter season was on us. But on Sunday morning I was reminded of how much I missed winter all of these months when it was supposed to be snowing. The months I have come to call the extended fall…the early spring…

But we had winter yesterday and I couldn’t wait to get out in it. I squeezed into my long underwear, pulled on layers, tied my scarf around my neck, made sure my wool cap covered my ears and zipped my coat to my chin. The snow was fresh and the wind was blowing it in sparkly swirls around the barnyard. The hay bales were adequately frosted in neatly stacked white drifts, remnants of the small blizzard that blew through the ranch in the evening and was lingering into the late morning hours.

I stuck out my tongue to taste the snowflakes and snuggled down into the collar of my coat like a turtle as I walked toward the horses munching on hay below the barn.

I wished I had their fur coats, thick and wooly and brave against the wind.I wished I had their manes, wild and tangled and smelling of dust and autumn leaves, summer heat and ice. They keep it all in there, all of the seasons.

They nudged and kicked at one another, digging their noses deeper in the stack of hay, remembering green grass and fields, tasting warmer weather in their snack. I lingered there with them, noticing how the ice stuck on their eyelashes and clung to the long hair on their backs.

I scratched their ears and pulled some burs out of their manes and imagined what grove of trees they picked to wait out the storm last night, standing close and breathing on one another’s back. A herd.

I followed them out of the protection of the barnyard and into the pasture where the frozen wind found my cheeks and the dogs cut footprints in the fluffy snow in front of my steps. They played and barked and jumped and sniffed and rolled in the white stuff, like children on a snow day.

I found the top of the hill and remembered that I hadn’t felt this cold for months.

I had forgotten how my cheeks can go numb, how my fingertips ache, now my eyelashes stick together at the close of a blink and how the wind finds its way through the layers of clothing and freezes my skin. I forgot that sometimes it doesn’t matter that you took care to wear wool socks and three pairs of pants, we are never as prepared as the animals. Sometimes the weather just wins.

I wished I had fur on my ears, tufts on my feet, whiskers to catch the snow.

I wished I had hard hooves to anchor me in the snow, my own herd to lean against, to protect me from the wind.

I wished I was part of a pack, chasing and jumping and rolling through the drifts.

Oh, I would have stayed out longer if I had these things. I would have explored how the creek had froze, stuck my nose in the snow, walked along the banks of the coulee, leaned against the buttes and followed the indecisive sun.

But my scarf wasn’t thick enough, there was snow in my boots and my skin is fragile and thin. No, my body’s not wooly and my nose is not fuzzy. In fact, I wasn’t sure if my nose was still attached to my face. And my fingers? Well, I decided then as I turned my body back toward the house with a billowing chimney that there was a reason for those fingers I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep. Yes, those fingers knit sweaters and sew together blankets, our hands build fires and houses to protect us, our arms wrap around one another, our feet propel us toward shelter or sun and our brains invent things like warm, spicy soup and hot coffee and buttery buns.

No, we might not have fur coats, but we have opposable thumbs.

I pointed my frozen feet toward the house and flung open the door, stripped off my layers and stood over the heater vent, happy to have experienced winter, happy for my warm house and man-made blankets.

And happier still for a promise of spring that isn’t too far away on this winter day…

Dear Husband…

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

Dear Husband,

Good morning.

As I write this I imagine you on your way to work in your red pickup, your warm cap pulled down over your ears, a little of your scruffy hair escaping out the sides. Or maybe you’re there already, digging into the jobs you’re good at. I lost track of how long it’s been since you found me buried under a pile of covers and pillows to kiss me good morning before the sun peeked over the buttes. I turned over and pulled those covers back up over my head, waiting for a more reasonable hour to rise from my dreams.

Husband, I have known you since you were a 12-year-old boy with hair just as unruly as it was this morning as you ran your callused hands through it. I knew you when your locker was six down from mine and you would walk with me to class. I knew you when your yellow lab, Rebel, was alive and young and he would pull you on your roller blades down the street. I was there when you heard your parents had to put him down.

I knew you when you wore your football jersey on our hometown field on Friday nights. I sat in the stands to watch you play and then waited for you at the gate after the game. I was there when you broke your ribs on the wrestling mat, I heard the stories about wrecking you bike, dislocating your shoulder in a three-wheeler accident, and the one about the fish-hook that somehow got lodged in your finger. I was there when you got that shiner senior year.

I lay next to you at night and trace your scars. I know where they came from, and I am thankful for that.

I am thankful that you picked up the phone to call me one summer evening only to find me crying on the other end of the line, catching my breath between whimpers to tell you about how I jumped off a small cliff at the lake and wrecked my ankle and my chance at making the A-squad basketball team. How was I to know that would be the first of a lifetime of comforting and level-headed conversations spent with you? How was I to know that hurting my ankle wasn’t the end of the world, but that conversation with you was the beginning of a life spent with a man who never hangs up?

A man who called again and then, when he learned to drive, drove thirty miles and way too fast every Sunday to the middle of nowhere to catch a girl with equally unruly hair mowing the lawn, painting the barn, riding a horse, digging in the garden or laying out in the summer sunshine.

Yes, husband, I knew you then. I knew you when your plans didn’t extend past Saturday night, but your future was blindingly bright. I knew you when your pants were too baggy, your music too loud and you thought you were invincible, bulletproof and incapable of breaking hearts. I was there when you learned it wasn’t true.

And, thankfully, you knew me. You knew that if you showed up, played chess with my little sister, talked guns with my dad and made my mother laugh that you would be able to take that trip every Sunday. You knew to tell me true things, because an honest man might not always win, but in the end, at least he is an honest man.

And so husband, here’s what I have to tell you today.

Each time I see you walking through that door after work or catch you cooking in our tiny kitchen, the smell of your soup filling my nostrils, each time I find you in your easy chair, feet kicked up after a day filled with work, I remember for a moment that boy I used to know and my heart starts beating the same way it did when you would meet me at my locker, when I would pick up your evening phone calls or see your old Thunderbird pull into my parent’s driveway.

But there you are, a man. A good man who cooks and fixes things and doesn’t make a damn fuss when I cry over things there’s no use crying about. A man whose heart is planted here right next to mine in a place that grew me, that grew us, up and together and away and back again. Husband, I might not always run to the door when you swing it open, my hands might be busy, my head might be somewhere else. Love, I might not always take a moment to curl up on your lap when you are in your favorite chair, I might not bring us a blanket because there might not be time that evening to sit. My Man, I might not wrap my arms around you when you are stirring a soup or making a mess in our kitchen, but I should.

My 16 year-old head over heals self would.

Because all that 16 year-old-head-over-heals-self wanted in the whole world, all of the wishes she used up on stars that fell and clocks that turned to 11:11 were wishes for a lifetime spent with you–waking up to your kisses, falling asleep in your arms, eating your cooking and building our home.

Yes, that 16-year-old-self had some things right, but she mostly knew nothing at all.

She mostly took a huge risk with her wishes spent on a teenage boy with unruly hair and pants that didn’t fit right. She knew nothing about life really. Nothing about the things that happen between those morning kisses and evening meals.

So here’s what your 28-year-old-head-over-heals-wife has to say to you today.

Thank you. Thank you for the every day good-morning kisses, yes, but mostly thank you for fighting with me without ever raising your voice or your fist, pushing me to stand up for myself and never hanging up on me no matter how many times I’ve done it to you. Thanks for staying true to yourself no matter how I push and for understanding that there are some things that you can’t change about me (like my addiction to shoes) and for not giving up on the things that are worth changing (like my lack of self-confidence and tendency to leave the back hatch of my car open over night). Thank you for never walking away in an argument, never sleeping on the couch and for always calling before you leave town to see if I need anything from the grocery store.

Thank you for fixing the things I break.

I break a lot of things.

And thank you for making me pick out and purchase my own car and schedule my own oil changes but always coming to my rescue when my tire is flat or the thing doesn’t start.

Thank you for coming with me to ride horses and for patiently teaching me, every day, how to properly use our complicated T.V. remote.

At 16 when I wished for you forever, I didn’t know that these things were important. I didn’t think about who would do the taxes or build our house, unclog the hair from the drain or clean up the puppy poop on the floor. I thought all you needed was love and affection. Those things you gave me, so I thought the other stuff came easy and fell into place like the things that happen in the “happily ever after” section no one ever bothers writing into Disney Movies.

I was wrong. It can be hard. All of the love and affection in the world can’t pay the heating bill, help you decide who unloads the dishwasher at night, make the house remodel itself or cure a sickness while you’re out basking in the glow of one another.

No, it can’t.

But I am so grateful this Valentines Day, husband, that I was wise enough at 16 to make those wishes for a boy who would become a young man with a ring who asked me to be his family.

I’m glad I took the risk.

I am happy I said yes.

And I am happy I have you, on Sunday, and every day in between.

Are you warm yet?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Uff da, it’s kinda cold here in Fargo. It’s normal for February, but with all of the 50 degree temperatures we’ve had in January, we’ve been spoiled and confused about what season we’re living in. Which makes today’s -32 windchill feels a little mean.

Yes, today in Fargo it’s winter indeed and I am happy I remembered to pack my giant sweater.

But we’re in the middle of February and even though the light at the end of the winter tunnel is approaching I think it’s time for a little reminder of what this land looks like with a change of clothes.

Because even a mild winter can feel long up here. So we need to be reminded that all that brown and white…

will eventually turn green.

That snowflakes

turn to raindrops…

and the frozen creeks will melt

and babble and sing again.

And the bare trees will bring fruit that tastes sweet on our lips,

The sun will once again flush our pale cheeks,

and strip the thick coats from the back of the beasts.

Creatures will emerge,

flowers will bloom again,

and the sun will soon rise on a new season.

There. Are you warm yet?

Magic frost…

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

A glorious weekend settled in here at the ranch, confirming my theory that everything’s better with frosting. So it was my delight to wake up and find that on Saturday morning everything was frosted.

Finally.

This is my favorite winter weather phenomenon, but with the unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been enjoying I haven’t seen much of it lately. So on Saturday I couldn’t wait to get out in it. I was like a kid on Christmas, hurrying up with my chores, eating my breakfast fast, chugging down my coffee and changing out of my stretchy pants as soon as I jumped out of bed…all very unlikely activities for a lazy Saturday woman like me.

But I couldn’t help it, I went to bed in a land of gold and brown and woke up to a winter wonderland outside my window.

So I had to get out there and become that kid in the beanie with the ball on the top that you see in those classic winter paintings in museums. I felt like that kid. I looked like that kid.

I was that kid.

So I had to get a little closer, to touch it, notice its sparkle, to exist in it…

kick it off of the grass, let it fall on my head, get down close,

brush it off of the horses’ backs, see it on the cat’s whiskers,

the dogs’ noses.

Oh, it’s amazing what a little coating of white can do to a landscape. It turns an ordinary scene into a winter fairytale. It puts a little magic in the old red barn,

softening its rusty nails

and stray wires.

The old boards and windows welcome those out in this fog to peek in and explore…

come in and stay warm.

And the landscape turns mysterious as I climb to the top of the nearest hill to catch a glimpse of our new world, only to be welcomed with a limited view.

A view that turns me curious and sends me over the next hill and then the next to see what might be there…as if overnight, given the dark and the fog, the rocks took their chance to move and switch places,

the trees held hands and grew taller,

the dry brown flowers bloomed,

and the wire fences repaired themselves.

I couldn’t help it, I kept walking, because anything is possible in this kind of quiet, in this kind of weather. It’s a new season! And it could last for weeks, for days, or only a few hours. So I couldn’t wait. I needed to see what the bittersweet looked like coated in white…

And if the bull berries looked just as delicious…

And as I walked along the pink road that gently rolled into the low hanging cloud I was living under I held my breath and disappeared into the quiet calm.

With frost hanging on my eyelashes, coating the hair that had escaped from my wool cap, I let out a sigh and wished, just for a moment, that the sun would wait…

Because there was so much more to see over that hill, so much quiet to take in, so many ordinary things wearing new clothes and looking fabulous…and I wanted to stay out there and forever live in that painting.

A painting that with the warmth of the sun,

was sure to sparkle and shine, a contrast of vibrant blue and white and beautiful…

only to melt away,

leaving us waiting for winter’s the next inspiration…

On a green January day…

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

Well, we are nearing the end of January and outside my window the sun is trying desperately to peek through the blanket of clouds and I feel, at 45 degrees, at any minute this brown, damp landscape is going to erupt in colors of green and orange and pink and purples.

What a weird winter it has been. And when I say weird, I also mean a little wonderful.

But I’m wonderfully freaked out.

Remember last year? Remember the countless times we were snowed in? Remember my run in with the FedEx Man in a FedEx Van who, by the grace of Martha, I was able to pull out of my yard in order avoid an awkward afternoon of coffee in this little house in the middle of nowhere with a man who delivers my boots.

Yes, last winter we snowshoed, we sledded, I made snow angles and a snow man. I let the snow man wear my hat and my scarf, because, well, I was wearing a hat and scarf.

There were drifts that reached up over my head, which made driving into our yard feel like driving in the tunnel of a snow fort. I began contemplating purchasing cross country skis to give myself another option of getting around the ranch.

It was a damn winter wonderland.

But what we have this year people is a damn phenomenon and I’m not quite sure where I am and what they’ve done with winter , but it sure is keeping me on my toes.

I mean, there we were hunkered down after a stretch of sub, sub, zero temperatures only to wake up to rain and the smell of spring in the air. In another winter in another time this type of weather would send the snow melting in the coulees and me running to creek beds to float sticks and homemade boats.

But today the ice on the creek has melted just enough for the dogs to grab a lick, the banks brown and muddy,

red bare stems poking up from the ice,

orange berries dangling from twiggy branches,

golden dried wildflowers.

These are the colors of this North Dakota winter. And the feeling is all around poky.

And this is disarming to me, because it my mind, winter is supposed to be soft.

I am all out of sorts in this in-between, schizophrenic season. So yesterday while the boys were working on our new house, I skipped work and took a cross-country hike to momma’s on a full out search for any signs of winter. I needed to find something worth snuggling into, something that beckons me to come and lay down in it, something that sparkles.

But what I found was not what I was expecting really.

See as I followed the deer trails through the trees toward the creek, I tried to recall if I’ve ever been able to hike through these coulees so late in the winter. A walk this long through this much rise and fall in terrain last year would have induced near death huffing and puffing for sure, or at least a bloody nose. But yesterday, after leaning in to examine the thorns that stuck out from the blueberries bushes, the bare flowers, dried up and bending in the breeze without their petals, the dry grass that crackled as the wind pushed through its stems, something else caught my eye.

Under that dry grass, at the base of the oak trees, clinging to the rocks in the frozen creek was green, vivid, wonderful, lush, bright green. What is usually buried under a thick layer of white were remnants of a warmer season coated in the drizzle of this unusual January weather.

Fuzzy moss.

Silky grass.

Furry leaves.

And the more I looked, the closer I got to the ground floor of my world, the more green I found. Soon I was stripping off my wool cap, untying my neckerchief, folding back the flaps on my mittens as the uncharacteristic color of winter transported me and I was convinced I was living in a warm May day.

Oh yes, the creek was still frozen on the top, the dogs spinning out as they chased after a squirrel who too, was awoken from his deep sleep by the warming up.

But underneath their furry paws the creek was following them, running too while it can run… on a green January day.

Oh, I could have stayed at the bottom of that creek bed nestled among the birch trees and towering oaks all afternoon, holding my wood cap in my hands and shoving my mittens in my pockets. The fallen oak leaves were a warm blanket covering the cool ground, the moss on the trees invited me to touch, the biting breeze was blocked by the deep banks the creek has cut and the trees who make those banks their home.

Oh, yes. I found soft.

I found soft on a snowless winter day where, on gifts of days like these, if you look close, under all that brown and red and orange, and frozen gray

the earth waits patiently for it’s chance to shine again.

How you spend your weekend…

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Weekends around the ranch, no matter how well intentioned and thought out, are usually pretty unpredictable. Where some families have a nice and lovely routine that includes pancakes in the morning, taking kids to practices, catching a movie and maybe going out to eat with the family on Sunday after church, around here we try to keep our plan simple so as to not disappoint: wake up when the sun gets up and see if we can’t get something done between the hours of sunrise and sunset.

Sometimes we rock it. Sometimes we accomplish our goals of moving cows, mowing the lawn, fixing fence, taking down the little Christmas tree, taking a walk, nailing something to something else and feeding all the damn cats in time to cook supper together and kick back in our respective spots on our comfy furniture with our feet up before hitting the sack.

Other times our biggest accomplishment of the weekend is getting out of our sweatpants.

And usually those Saturdays come after the Friday that the band plays in town.

Uff. Da.

Because when the band plays in town we don’t roll back to the ranch until 2 am.

And, well, you know what I say about 2am? Well, usually nothing because usually I’m sleeping. But if I happen to see it, I scold it. Because nothing good happens after midnight…and nobody is beautiful at 2 am…especially not yours truly.

I’ve known this to be true even during my stint as a younger woman who may or may not have been the only one caught sleeping at the completely innocent and organized after prom party.

2 am and I never got along.

But making that drive to town to listen to the band play “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Can’t You See” and John Prine songs that make me think about dancing the two step is worth the inevitable next day spent shuffling around the house in sweatpants. Especially because one of my favorite things in the world is singing with these men, my pops, our neighbor, and two or sometimes three of the greatest musicians around.

Oh, and then there’s the talent that just might saunter through the back door sometimes, like the squeeze box player from New Orleans, the fiddle player from the badlands or the base player from the next town.

The music is always good.

And the next day after I have pulled off my boots and washed the smoke out of my hair, no matter the hour we arrived home to our bed, I am always a little rejuvenated, despite that my blood-shot eyes might indicate otherwise.

See, when I was younger and looking over the edge of the nest, waiting to take that inevitable leap, I have to tell you, I think I was realistic about how much I really knew about life. And that’s why I was scared to death. But the few things I did know, like what it felt like to be loved, which direction my car needed to be facing to get me home, how to make a killer bowl of ramen noodles and the fact that leaving this place was inevitable were a good basis for what I now know will be a lifetime spent learning how I might exist here with purpose.

Which brings me to my point. I have one, I think. See, when I left home ten years ago I don’t remember being too delusional about life, although I am sure it snuck its way in there at times as I imagined myself singing on big stages, selling at least enough CDs to pay the bills or writing a best-selling novel. No, I didn’t see myself as a CEO of a company or a big PR Executive even though that might have been the direction my professors were leading me. I didn’t dream of climbing to the top of big mountains, but I would have taken you up on your offer. And I didn’t picture myself with 4.5 children, a white picket fence and a casserole in the oven, although I was open to it if it happened to turn out that way

Casseroles weren’t something I dreamed of then.

But when the clock would hit that magical 11:11 at night, something that I always found so thrilling to catch, do you know what I wished for every time?

A happy life.

Yes. Even though I had no idea what that meant, what my version of a happy life was, I wished for it.

And so here we are a good nine days into the new year and I’m not going to lie, it’s been a tough nine days around here. Because it turns out even my safe-haven, even the rolling hills of the ranch and dreams coming true can’t protect us from pain and uncertainties that can come speeding down the pink road. But it has put this question on my mind as I roll out of bed, trying to move through the fleeting thoughts that come with knowing there are things I may never have and people in my life who may never have the happy life I speak of.

And as I talk to friends and family who might be hurting or reaching for something that they are continually denied or failing to see themselves, to really see themselves, I tell them: try every day to live honestly…and be true.

And so I tell myself.

But what does that mean? Really? What am I saying?

Ok, well, let me bring it back around to those men who play guitar and sing while closing their eyes tight on Saturday nights at the bar in their hometown. Or the woman who gets up in the morning before her children, before her husband, just as the sun is peeking over the horizon to lace up her running shoes and spend an hour propelling her body over the earth, sucking the morning air into her middle-aged lungs. Or the father who sits patiently with his teenage son to teach him the art of wood-turning, the artist who sees the sunrise as a painting, sees a face in the clouds or the single man who finds himself committed to conquering fears and the adrenaline rush that comes with skiing down the face of a snow packed mountain.

What do they have in common? It’s not the result of the painting, the physique that comes with the run, the money made on the piece of art or the applause after the song is over.

No.

It’s the beauty of the wood discovered underneath the bark and the conversation with his son that he might not have had otherwise. It’s giving herself the chance at a morning quiet enough to hear her own heart beat out in the open space she loves, it’s taking notice that the world is the masterpiece and the understanding that the end result can’t possibly give her as much joy as the process of creating it.

It’s singing out loud next to your father and his best friends for the sake of singing. For the sake of committing to doing something that you love with people you care about.

Because in order to live honestly you must know yourself and the tools you need to cope in a world that can be downright unpredictable and overwhelming and sometimes unbelievably sad.

It’s knowing there are things inside you that need to be nourished, things that need to be shared with others, created, or kept safely next to you on your bedside table. And it’s trying your damnedest to find out what those things are and doing them, even if it means staying up until 2 am.

And so it’s worth it sometimes (if you have at least one pair of clean underwear left) to let the laundry wait until you get back from your walk, finish that painting, go to your yoga class, visit a friend…

Because the secret to living honestly, staying true and living a happy life, just might be how you spend your weekend….

Oh January

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Oh, January you’ve changed haven’t you?
Casting long shadows
against gold, green and blue

tempting us with light jackets
and unlined walking shoes

Oh, January…what did you do?

To your silky white snow drifts
your wind frozen and wild?
You used to be reckless,
now what are you? Mild?

You’re a hot, sultry vixen
and you’re throwing us off
with your new sexy t-shirt
and your jeans? Are they cropped?

Yes, your new look it is stunning,
your kisses so warm
still I find myself watching
for the inevitable storm…

For the snowflakes to drop
and my fingers to freeze
as I lay in the gold grass
humming with the soft breeze.

Oh, I wait to despise you
like I usually do
No, I’m not sure about this
but I like it, it’s new.

But your hair does looks different
your cheeks a bit flushed
and you greet me with sunshine!
January I’m touched!

So though the I hate to admit it
or make a big fuss
January, I tell you…

I’ve never liked you this much.

A Cowboy Christmas reminder…

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, it looks a little like a Charlie Brown Christmas around here, but husband and I did it. We got a tree…or something that looks like it might have come off of a tree somewhere.

Not the Rockefeller Center Tree, but at least we'll save on our electrical bill...

And it finally smells a little less like the small brown stinky present the pug left on my carpet last night and a little more like the holidays in this house.

Yes, the pug continues to hold a spot at the top of the naughty list, but we’ve gone ahead and decked the halls anyway…

Don’t worry, he’s been adequately punished…

hey, at least I sent him out in the cold with the proper gear...

And that’s all I was asking for. A little holiday cheer, a pug in a santa hat, and a tree, any tree, to put all of those presents under.

Yes, when husband came home before dark for the first time in weeks last night we decided to head out before the sun sunk down below the horizon. Despite the beautiful weather we have been experiencing this December, husband and I haven’t been out and about on the place together for a while. So we loaded up the lab and the pug in his humiliation hat and headed out to check on things.

Down the pink road and into the quickly setting sun we drove, dressed in jeans and boots and nothing but a hat, coat and gloves. As we took a turn onto a prairie trail we both marveled at the weather we’ve been having. We couldn’t believe we don’t have to wear seventeen layers beginning with underwear and ending with a wool cap over the top of a wool cap. Last year at this time we were on a snowmobile zooming over the top of ten foot snow drifts in our search for an oversized Christmas tree that would spend the rest of the month in the house poking the back of my neck as I sat at my computer desk.

Yes, last year we had a bit more ambition, a little more time, the pug had two eyeballs and we had a very white Christmas.

Last Christmas

This year? Well, Cliff the weatherman says it’s supposed to be 40 degrees.

Do you know what I am going to do on Christmas if it is 40 degrees?

Go find my horses and ride off into the tropical North Dakota December sunset, because riding horses on a warm, snow-less December day on the northern plains might be a once in a lifetime experience.

I think the horses were feeling the same thing as they came to greet us on our hunt for holiday cheer. Our pickup rolled slowly across the grassy pasture and the paints and the sorrels and the buckskin and bay, fat and happy and furry came trotting down from the horizon to sniff our pockets for treats.

I buried my nose in their fluffy coats to smell the little pieces of summer they hold in their skin. I scratched their noses and took some photos as they posed for me, black silhouettes against a darkening sky. And standing out there on the open prairie with the winter chill on my skin as those horses breathed and snorted and leaned into our hands on the cusp of Christmas, just like a shot from a gun I was flooded with a memory that set me right with the season…right in the place I needed to be…

…to Christmas morning when Pops gets up before the sun. Hours before our bare feet hit the floor to find our warm slippers, he is pulling on his wool cap, his overshoes and coveralls in preparation for the chill of the morning winter air.

If we get up early enough we might catch the tail lights of his ranch pickup as he heads out over the hill, the empty grain buckets he is intending to fill rolling around in the box as he bounces along the gravel road.

And as we walk past the sparkling tree with presents piled high, our stockings filled for the brim waiting for us, as we put our caramel rolls in the oven, brew our coffee and pull our robe tight around us to go wake the children, our little sisters or our husbands, Pops has just parked his pickup next to the grain bin and pulled out those buckets from the back. He is un-latching the creaky door to shovel the sweet smelling feed into the containers, piling it high to the top as the dust from the previous season pools in the crisp air around him.

Carefully he is loading the buckets, two at a time into the back of the pickup… and then he grabs one more and fills that one too before pulling down his cap against the cold and reaching for his handkerchief to wipe his chilly nose.

As we are pulling on our sweaters and sipping our first cup of coffee, pops is heading toward where he last saw the horses, out in the field above his house or down in the coulee between the two places.

And while we’re turning on the holiday music and buttering our caramel roll, Pops is taking a moment to scratch his buckskin between the ears, pull a few burs from the bay’s mane and give them that extra bucket of grain before heading out to check the water and then on into the yard as the sun rises slowly over the house.

When I was younger he would take me with him if I was up in time. And in those quiet moments on Christmas morning when the frost was sparkling on the trees, or the snow drifts were lurking in the shadows of the rising light. in the moments my toes might have been a little chilly and my nose a little runny I don’t remember thinking that we needed to hurry to get back. I don’t remember feeling anxious about opening my presents or checking out my stocking to see what Santa might have brought us. I don’t remember thinking about hot cocoa or Christmas cookies or the new sled I hoped I would be getting…I knew we would get there in time

The only thing I remember on those Christmas mornings when I sat next to Pops on the bench seat of the feed pickup is the lesson he may have mentioned out loud…or maybe not…

No matter the day, no matter the season or the weather, the blizzard or the warmth, no matter how many presents are waiting for you under the tree, our first responsibility is to care for the things that depend on us…

And on Christmas we always throw them a little extra.

If only some of those things that depend on us didn’t poop on our floors…

Alright, alright…I’ll take off the hat…

Three hundred and fifty-some days a year…

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We are honing in pretty close to a new year and ringing it in by, you know, bringing in a new house. It seems to be a pattern for us, making big changes at the end of the year. Three years ago we closed on our first home and spent the next two years renovating it during any spare time we were granted. Last year, on December 30th to be exact, we signed it away, every brick, board and painstakingly varnished door and have spent the next three hundred and fifty-some days between then and now planning how we might look in our new house.

It’s funny how quickly three hundred and fifty-some days go by when you spend it with your eye on the future while still trying to be all the things you need and want to be in the present.

And in those days, in those moments, we have been many things: cooks, cowboys, fly-swatters, lawn-mowers, photographers, poets, travelers, an uncle and an aunt, friends and big mistake-makers.

We have been dreamers and planners, singers and wanderers, sun bathers and bundled up for the cold.

On the weekends we were lazy, party-goers or two people making pancakes together in the kitchen as the light streamed through the window. And sometimes we were on a mission, to tear something old down, to clean something up, to pull weeds or cut the grass…living and busting our asses in the present for a more cleaned up tomorrow.

And sometimes our only mission was one another.

The hair on our head grew, some turned gray. Our favorite jeans turned into work pants, things were lost and never found and then, to our surprise, things that we thought were gone for good were recovered.

We’ve had conversations, countless conversations, about family and life and where we might be two years, ten years, fifty years from now. We have remembered together where we once were and laughed at how different things can be in just a short three hundred and fifty some days.

We have counted our blessings.

Yes, we have had some time to prepare for this change that is right around the corner, for a move, for the plan we had all along. Three hundred and fifty-some days to build new walls and roads and move some dirt and snow and rocks and trees and old equipment out-of-the-way, fitting a little work, a little planning into the spaces of time between breakfast and dinner at night… and still we’re not quite ready. The day doesn’t hang on long enough for us to find the right place for every nail, just as it doesn’t quite hold onto the light long enough to allow us to be all of the things we want to be, all the things we can be, in a day.

In a year.

In a lifetime.

There’s never enough time, the work is never done, all the lessons will never quite be learned. And there were days in there that I didn’t want to move away from the little stream of light that peeked through the curtains of my tiny room. There were days my head was spinning with the to-d0 list and the realization that there may be dreams of ours that just won’t come true.

I keep a few of those days in my pocket to take out when I need them. Just a few.

Because I have never been one to focus on the things I cannot change, at least not for very long. Because some of those things we cannot control have been the best things…the most certain things of all.

Like how the sun always rises over the barn

and falls on the other side of the earth behind my parents house.

Every day.

Reminding us that we can build houses, and fences and plant potatoes in the earth and drive down roads we’ve built to take us to places we’ve never been and places we need to go to survive, but in the whole wide world there is nothing more important than that big wide sky and the fact that, for another day, we get to live under it as it moves and changes and puts on a show.

And as we have been counting each time it rises, marking our calendars and making plans that are bound to fail at some point, it comforts me, it lifts a little bit of weight off of my shoulders to know that the sun only has one mission, day after day…

to rise and shine and make its way across the sky…