Tag Archives: ranch life

When I could break untamable horses and catch fish with a spear…

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When I was younger, a little girl all wrapped up in the magic of this place, my favorite book of all time was “My Side of the Mountain.” I’m sure you’ve read it. It’s about a boy who finds himself living away from home in the wilderness of the mountains inside of a giant hollowed out tree. I can’t remember the exact story now or why he was alone out there, funny how those details escape me no matter how many times I went over the pages and marked my favorite parts. The parts where there were diagrams of how to build a fire with no supplies and something about a windmill and making a spear for fishing.

I still have the book buried somewhere deep in the rubble of the basement. It was one I could not give up to charity or to my younger sister. She just wouldn’t understand. She was a normal girl after all. A normal girl who read about horses and babysitting and a guy named Harry Potter.

Oh, I read about horses too. Horses that needed to be rescued from an island and a kid who became friends with a wolf, and another kid who overcame obstacles and won the Iditarod with a pack of misfit dogs and a whistle. I read about little girls growing up on the prairie during the homesteading days, riding in covered wagons, getting lost in blinding snow storms and making dolls out of corn cobs. I made one of those dolls myself.

I wanted to be these kids.

I wanted to be the free-spirited girl who broke the free-spirited horse. I wanted to live in a time where there was no “Garfield and Friends” on television, where we ate what we planted and went to school in a one room school-house. I wanted to be the girl who beat up the bully and wore pants when dresses were the rule.

I wanted to break the rules. I wanted to tame a wolf puppy, train a wild falcon to hunt, catch fish with a spear I sharpened out of a tree branch and exist in a far away time where those things were necessary for survival.

Screw microwave popcorn and Super Mario brothers, I wanted adventure!

And I wanted to live in the wilderness like the kid I came to love in “My Side of the Mountain.”

I am sure I wasn’t unlike most kids at 9 or 10 or 11 years old. We all wanted to prove our capabilities, stand out from the crowd, be the best at something. At that age most of us were lost in some sort of fantasy, whether it was flying to the moon, getting a puppy or discovering that elves really do live under mushrooms like in that book we just read. We all had a little more confidence than we had experience at the real world

So I’d like to think that it wasn’t that unusual that I, a 10-year-old girl who already lived about as far out in the middle of nowhere as anyone could live, had convinced myself that I could survive out in the wilderness alone. Without a house. Or a toilet. Or my momma’s cheeseburger chowder.

Yes, there was a time that was my plan. And let it be known that as a kid, I was pretty serious about these kinds of things. In the evenings I would step off of the bus from a day at country school, grab a snack, and head out up the creek behind our house. For months I would work on building what I called “secret forts” all along the creek that winds through our ranch. In the oaks and brush that grew along the bank I would identify just the right tree, one that was bent over just so, growing parallel to the ground, a perfect frame for which to create a sort of tent like structure out of fallen logs. And then I would begin the tedious process of locating and moving fallen branches, branches that took every ounce of muscle and try in my spindly little body to budge out of their place under overgrown vegetation and fallen leaves. But when it was dislodged from its space, I would drag it back to my tree and hoist it up to rest next to the last one I had managed to maneuver.

It would take a few days, but eventually I would have my secret fort enclosed with every moveable log and branch within a 100 foot radius. And when it was complete I would look around to make sure my little sister hadn’t followed me here like she did last time, identifying my plan and ruining the secrecy of the secret forts.

And then I would lay down inside of  it. And under the flawed “shelter” of fifty logs leaning on a tree, providing nothing but a faulty wind break for the day dreaming girl laying on her back in the grass and leaves and twigs underneath, I would think about my next move. I would need a door. Yes. That would be necessary. I could make the door the way I imagined Huck Finn made his raft. I would need some rope. Some rope and a knife. I wonder if dad would let me carry a knife? I need some sort of blanket. Maybe there’s something in the barn. Oh, and a fire. Of course!

I would be scouring the creek bottom for granite rocks to arrange in a proper fire circle when the sun sink down below the banks and I would decide I wasn’t quite ready to spend the night. Besides, I forgot to bring a snack and the wild raspberries weren’t quite ripe yet. Taking one last look at my creation and deciding to reevaluate the next afternoon, I would turn my back to it and follow the cow trail back toward the house where my little sister was likely lurking in the shadows, having found out my secret again, begging me to let her help next time. Begging me to let her in the fort as the sun gave off its last light and we argued and grappled until we could smell dad’s steaks on the grill or mom’s soup on the stove.

This was my daily ritual for months and one of my signature childhood memories. Eventually I gave in and helped my little sister build her own fort. A much smaller fort. Across the creek. Out of site.

I thought I wanted to be alone out there, left to my own survival skills, but it turned out that having company was a nice addition, no matter how stubborn and annoyingly curious that company might be. So we built a tin-can telephone that stretched from my fort to hers and brought down old chair cushions from the shed, searched for wild berries, tried to catch frogs and minnows in the pond and spent our evenings planning our next move: spending the night.

But we never did it. We never spent the night. Summer gave way to fall and the leaves fell and covered the floor of our paradise. We would pull on our beanies, mittens and boots and trudge down the freezing creek to clear out the fire ring we weren’t yet brave enough to use. And then the cold set in and the snow came and the neighbor girls called us to go sledding and our dream of being wilderness women collected snow and waited on a warmer season.

I can’t help but think about those girls on days like these. Days when the cold sets in and the house seems smaller. Days when the toilet is doing the thing where it leaks, burnt casserole from the night before sits waiting for a clean-up on my countertop, the television’s blank and broken.

There’s no morning news today.

No one but me and the wind out here. The wind that seems to be calling me this morning to get out of the house. Come out of behind those curtains, from under the shelter of the shingles. Come have an adventure girl. Come dream about hollowed out trees, living on wild berries, building a fire for warmth and living a life like no one lives anymore.

I step outside and follow the trail to the creek bed, trying to remember where I set that first fort. Trying to remember what pulled me out here all of those years ago. Trying to remember the fantasy, the magic as the cold bites at my cheeks and the snow crunches under my feet.

I turn around and I miss my sister.

I turn around and I’m alone. Alone with a woman who used to be a girl I knew, a girl who thought she could tame wolves, fight off the bad guy, break untamable horses and live alone in the wild.

I follow the creek and look for her. I know she’s here somewhere. I hope she hasn’t given up.

I could really use her right now.

What makes you happy…

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He’s playing the guitar, though he’s not so good
and you’re dancing in the kitchen when you know you should
be scrubbing up the dishes, putting them away
checking off the list you made for the day.

But you’re hair’s looking good and your jeans fit right
and the sun came up this morning shining big and bright
and you aren’t about to waste another minute sad
life’s too short, so take what you have.

You have sprinkles on your cookies and it’s no holiday
a man who makes you dinner and swears he’ll stay
through broken plans and messes, unexpected things
so who needs fancy dresses and diamond rings?

When you have too many boots and you can’t decide
a big brown dog waiting for you outside
blue sky above and all those trees
flushed rosy cheeks and grass stained knees

So open up the door and let the morning in
smile as warm breezes kiss your skin
run wild like the girl you want to be
what keeps you going, keeps you feeling free?

What makes you wrap your arms around him unexpectedly
slip on your favorite shoes and grab the keys
forget about it girl, take one more bite
and while you’re at it, stay out all night

And shake it pretty momma like you just don’t care
jump in the lake in your underwear
let them see you laughing, see you come undone
yes, life’s too short, girl, have some fun.

What makes you happy? Tell me please, I must know!

Are you warm yet?

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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?

On a green January day…

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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.

Instigator…Idiot…Pug…

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If I were a pug with one eye I would tread lightly in this world, understanding that my life is hanging on the fact that my remaining eye, well, remains.

If I were a pug I would have put pen to paper in my journal to detail each gory detail about how, exactly, I lost said eye. I would have made a special note on how it is best to stay in the yard for the love of safety and even though some creatures look fluffy and cuddly and similarly built, looks can be deceiving…and unbearably poky.

I would have written that down for sure. Then I would have underlined it and placed it right next to a sketch of the spiky animal who caused such misery in the first place.

Now I know if I were the pug I wouldn’t have opposable thumbs, but I would find a way. I would talk to someone. I would ask them to remind me every night before I kenneled up or snuggled on the blanket on the couch to tell me the story about how I approached a porcupine for a cordial discussion about politics only to come away with one of those needles he wears as fur poking out of the middle of my eyeball…

My favorite eyeball…

Yes, if I were the pug this traumatic event would be burned into my brain, because what followed was misery, three trips to the vet, stitches, drugs and several desperate attempts to jump out of the cone that was placed over my head to protect me from myself.

If I were the pug I would have not forgotten.

But alas, I am not the pug. I am a me, a woman who puts rolls in the oven to rise at 9 am only to discover that at 7 pm after the oven is adequately pre-heated and ready for the evening casserole, that the rolls I had completely forgotten about are done, saran wrap and all. Surprise!

No, I am not the pug. I am me, a woman who forgets things in her oven, but who will never, under any circumstances, forget how an injury occurred. I’m on my tenth or twelfth diary folks.

But the pug?

Well, the pug is the pug and the pug just happens to:

a. have a short memory
b. have balls of steel (those balls, of course, being metaphorical, because well…)
c. be an idiot
d. all of the above

And after yesterday’s events I believe I have enough information to answer the above multiple-choice question correctly.
Because as I held the stocky, determined, incredibly strong for his size, pathetic pug on the floor of my kitchen while husband worked to remove what I have documented as the third round of porcupine quills the animal has endured in his short lifespan, I grabbed my pencil and circled:
d. all of the above.



Now I admit there should have been signals that this animal’s intelligence is questionable. I admit I should have figured this was bound to happen again after witnessing how much gusto he put into chasing that raccoon off the deck…twice. And the rabbit that showed up, umm, not living, to my doorstep? Well, I’m pretty sure he didn’t commit suicide. 

So you see, I could blame last night’s incident on the lack of an eye, like maybe the pirate pug couldn’t properly assess the situation he was getting himself into. Like maybe he was blindsided… But as Pops pointed out, the fact that quills were poking out of his squishy nose right below the good eye, indicates, well he at least saw it coming. The quills inside his mouth finish the story.

The story that ends with the pug being labeled not only “idiot” but “instigator.”

Instigator.

Terminator.

Eliminator.

Dumbass.

Because even now as I type this I hear that shithead barking ferociously at some poor creature up in a tree or down in a coulee somewhere…

Yup, now he’s running around in circles down below the corrals, the lab on his tail, following the scent of some threatening vermin.

I just got in from screaming at him to come back, but he must have lost his hearing in that last porcupine fight. I swear to Martha, if I find myself pulling quills from that snorty snout again tonight he’s up for grabs.

Adoption.

A pug orphan.

Because even after a half-hour, four-way fight between me, husband, the pug and those damn porcupine quills, a fight the pug was sure was going to be the death of him; a fight that found him whimpering, bleeding, shaking, and begging us to unhand him; a fight that ended with a gallant victory by a strong man with pliers and a stunned and feeling-much-better-already-thank-you-very- much black lap dog curled up on the foot of the couch sighing deep, grateful, breaths of relief, it is quite clear that the third time is not going to be a charm.

When the pug gets in from his latest life-threatening chase, I’ll let you know what I think about the forth. And then I’ll give you the number of the mile marker where you can pick him up if you would like to take on the task of saving his life…day after day…

Cause I tell you, it would be my luck that this is the only dog in the history of the universe that has the potential to live forever… Despite the tiny brain, big balls, and all the odds.

Now, where did I put his safety goggles?

Obsession…

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I have been having some issues this past month and I decided it’s high time I let you all in on one of my little quirks.  Because I think it is one of my duties to make you all feel better about yourselves and life in general and what better way to give someone the gift of self-assurance than to flat out confess that I might be a little crazy.

I can't help it, like GaGa, I was born this way...

See, you feel a bit more normal already, don’t you?

Anyway, I may have mentioned in passing that I have a few addictions. One of them is coffee,

Like I said, it started at a young age...

Another is bagels, and, well, get me in a room with puppies and I am in danger of an overcommitment similar to that of the Megan character in Bridesmaids.

Yeah. 9 puppies in a van. That would be me.

Look at me, I'm possessed....

Obsession. We all have it in us. Sometimes it’s a great thing. Sometimes obsession pushes us to test our limits of capabilities and finds us climbing uncharted mountains, speaking foreign languages, running marathons or, you know, at the Grammys or something.

But sometimes it ain’t so pretty. Like when you snap out  of a chocolate chip cookie induced coma to find that you have been watching a marathon of “Dance Moms” on a Sunday afternoon, for like four hours straight. The realization that you may never get those brain cells back is a tough pill to swallow. And the realization that there are actually women in this world who are that awful…and they get their own t.v. show…can also be something that puts you at risk of a late night call to your therapist.

Yeah, I’ve had my fare share of obsessions. From my addiction to blending things, the semester in college where I couldn’t fall asleep without watching re-runs of the Cosby show on TV Land and the six months I spent determined to find myself a pair of the original Zubas…in my size…in pink and black…just…like…I…used…to…wear.

Needless to say I had to wean myself off of Ebay the same way I had to quit Theo.

It was painful, but necessary.

Yes, I have been known to go overboard. You witnessed it a few months back when you caught me sitting at my kitchen table in my sweatpants, crazy eyed and determined to craft something. It goes wwwaaayyy back people. Back to my days of 4-H and wildflower hunting and learning to ice skate on the frozen stock dam, practicing for hours so that one day it might be possible for me to compete in the Olympics.

I am delusional. But in those moments, the moments I am spinning on ice and getting ready to use my toe pick to launch into the triple axel I am so utterly confident I can land, I believe myself. And then I crack my tail bone on the ice and decide that perhaps I should get back to latch hooking.

Yeah, I’ve been known to possess the not so productive, not so calorie burning or brain-cell friendly obsessions in my lifetime.   And I will admit that not many of them have turned out the way I had intended.

But some have. Like my this one right here:

Ummm, hmmmm, that turned out alright sisters.

Yup. I am the woman who finds something she likes for breakfast and then eats it for breakfast like….every….single….morning. When I have a favorite menu item at a favorite restaurant I order it…every…single…time. Like a song? I press repeat. And then I press it again. Then I buy the album and NEVER take it out of the CD player until I find another album to torture my friends and family with for months at a time. Seriously, I have literally worn out CDs….

And so I guess that explains my five year marriage to a man I met when I was eleven, in case you were wondering.

Yup.

Which brings me to today. I’m flaring up.

And I am blaming the advancements in technology. See, it used to be out here in the wilderness you were protected. You didn’t have access to a shopping mall, so maybe you wore the same boots every day and didn’t know any different. You were happy. You fell in love with the music that you heard coming through the radio on drives in the tractor or in the feed pickup.

All seven of them.

And you were happy humming to George Strait. George Strait is the man. And Zubas were only a fond memory. A memory that had absolutely no potential of becoming a reality again because there was NO SUCH THING AS EBAY!!!

But now I’m screwed. I have high speed (well, high speed for middle of nowhere) internet and I just found out that Pinterest was invented AND I NEED FURNITURE AND LIGHT FIXTURES AND I NEED TO CRAFT THOSE LIGHT FIXTURES OUT OF RECYCLED WINE BOTTLES AND THE FURNITURE OUT OF BARNWOOD AND PILLLOWS I HAVE TO LEARN TO SEW FROM SCRATCH! IDEAS! I’VE FOUND ALL THE IDEAS!!!

And then, my little sister came home and introduced me to Spotify,  an online music sharing site that gives you access to any artist and all of their albums.  So I downloaded it and have been crying in my office at work for like three days in a row as I listen to Lori McKenna‘s new album on repeat for eight hours.

I mean, who writes lyrics like this?

 I was just a little girl
When your hand brushed by my hand
And I will be an old woman
Happy to have spent my whole life with one man”

Who is this woman and why is she singing about my life?
Can we be friends? Lori? Lori? Can you text me? I’m dying. Sniff. Sniff. Sob.

I think I’ll stalk her on YouTube

Lori McKenna: How Romantic is That

But here’s the worst thing of all. Something I’ve known is out there for years. Something that has fed an already brewing obsession. Something that allows for that obsession to be delivered to my door with a click of the button. Something that is filling my already to capacity closets to the brim, inhibiting me from making wardrobe decisions, has me standing in front of the mirror in jeans on one leg, and then the other… It’s keeping me up late at night.

It’s costing me hundreds of dollars.

And the worst thing of all is that I can’t quit. They don’t make a patch, they don’t have a help line, I can’t call my momma cause she has the same problem…my sister is hooked too. It might be hereditary. It might be the devil…if the devil was fashionable and sexy….

Yes…you guessed it. It’s online boot shopping…and I need one of the following in every color.

I need fancy boots for singing, practical boots for riding, comfy boots for walking (because these boots are made for walking), boots that look like slippers, slippers that look like boots…

I need boots that go over your jeans, and ones that go under, and a pair that do both just in case. I need high heeled boots and mid heeled boots and well, normal heeled boots. And I need high heels that look like boots.

I need snow boots for trudging, and snow boots for shopping, and muck boots for slopping around in the shit in the corrals.

I need hiking boots to climb the hills and boots that go in my snow shoes. I need hunting boots. I need cowboy boots, and sexy cowboy boots, and boots that kinda look like cowboy boots, but aren’t.

I need hippy boots and professional boots that go with the suit I might wear some day. I need square toe, round toe, pointy toe and the ones that are kinda square and kinda pointy…

There out there…they are. I’ve seen them all!!!! Mwahahahahaha….. (*whisper* hhheeelpp….meee…)

I’ll just be a little longer… Can you hand me another chocolate chip cookie?

Shit.

How you spend your weekend…

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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….

This year’s story…

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29

The year is winding down here and it is doing so quite nicely. This morning there is a little fog that has settled in over the barnyard, coating the grass and trees with a thin layer of frost. I am waiting for the sky to lighten a bit before taking a trip into town, just as all of us up here this December are waiting, holding our breath for the snow to fall as it inevitably will. And in the hustle and bustle of our lives, the taking down of Christmas decorations, the New Year’s plans, the gift returns and holiday cleanup, my hope for you is that you are giving yourself a  moment to close your eyes and reflect on a year that was no doubt filled with achievements, heartbreak, love found or lost, adventure…all the experiences that got us safely to the cusp of a new year, a little older, a little wiser, and hopefully, a little better in spite of all of those lessons.

Lessons like when delving into a full-blown, first time in the kitchen salsa caning project at 8 pm, make sure you have the proper ingredients (like jars) and the willpower and drive to follow through into the early morning hours. Or the other lesson learned early on in the year about how to ensure you don’t ever get a visit from the Schwan’s man again in your life followed by the an over the phone tutorial on how to pull the FedEx man in a FedEx van out of your snowed in driveway in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere. Both lessons resulting in getting our ice-cream and our packages in town.

Yes, there was the lesson learned about what happens when 150 cows throw a party on your lawn after a big summer rain storm, the one about how to sprain your ankle jumping off a horse, the realization that I just might be too soft to be an effective 4-H judge followed by the other realization that apparently husband collects coolers, microwaves, bed frames, dressers, ice skates, thousands of unidentifiable tractor and truck parts, old lunch boxes, swallow nests, spiders, deer antlers, gears, wire, Christmas wreaths, scrap wood, a jeep and a partridge in a pear tree and keeps them piled up in our garage….and that isn’t likely to change.

Ever.

And yes, I will always blame this on him. 

And then there was the blinding lesson the pug learned about messing with porcupines when you only weigh thirty-five pounds and a good portion of your smooshy face is actually covered in two buggy eyeballs, which resulted in the following lesson on how to get by with only one buggy eyeball. And after the three trips to the vet, the giant cone he was forced to wear and a few run-ins with the wall as he turned his head to look over his shoulder, the pug has pretty much been transformed this year into something that could be referred to now as “Bad Ass.”

Bad ass like husband running out the door in the middle of the night to save us all from the raccoon dangling off of the side of the deck with, umm, nothing but a gun in his hand and a mission in his groggy head. Turns out he got to learn the lesson about wearing clothes to bed in case of midnight varmint emergencies, well, twice.

Yes, some lessons catch us off guard and find us standing butt naked on the rail of the deck in the middle of the night with a shotgun in your hands and two full moons shining in the darkness…and then others roll into your lives quietly, like the herd of elk Pops and I snuck up on this spring, reminding us that life is magical and fragile and quite frankly a masterpiece.

A masterpiece that grows the raspberries in the east pasture and finds us riding our horses in the summer sun at just the right time to stumble upon them and indulge. It’s the kind of life that gives us voices and ambition to sing out loud next to people you respect and admire  and the ability to understand that it doesn’t matter where you are, in a barnyard, around a campfire, in a smoky bar somewhere, it’s the chance to blend voices, it’s the music in you that, when it finds its moment to be heard, is the true gift.

Like the gift I was given as I watched my husband walk across the pasture in the crisp spring evening at the end of the first pleasant day of one of the harshest winters of our lives. And as I watched him scratch the ears of his favorite horse from my perch in the passenger seat of the pickup I caught my breath in the realization that this is the life we were supposed to be living and that in this world full of snow storms and breakdowns and things that might never be fixed, I married the right man. And we are in the right place. 

And so here I sit in my husband’s favorite chair in my grandmother’s house on my family’s land on the edge of the badlands in North Dakota as the wind blows through the icy trees under an overcast sky. Here I sit with my coffee cup, taking a moment to reflect on a year that was observed just as much as it was lived. And if the words I scrounged up to describe the sound of a coyote howling across the landscape haven’t moved a soul, if the photos I snapped of the breathtaking sunsets were only seen with my eyes and the music I wrote of my home in the hills was only heard in my heart, today I can say with confidence something that may not have rung true a few years ago…it would be enough for me.

See, it hasn’t come easily, but as I walked out in the summer rain and bent down to snap a photo of a wildflower drenched in the season, as I laughed out loud at the antics of my pets, helped my husband in the kitchen, strummed my guitar, playing along with a song my father was singing or climbed on the back of a horse to show my friend around the ranch, I found myself becoming an a spectator, a witness to the life I was living. With my camera to my eye I noticed how the sky formed gorgeous silhouettes, how my father’s hands folded on the saddle horn while he counted the cattle, how my sister rides horse like she lives life…on a mission.

With the idea of passing on the story, I listened a little closer at how words rolled of tongues, paid attention to the heat of the sun, the bite of the wind, the way the snow crunched under our feet…

Yesterday a new friend exclaimed that one of the three things we have control of in our lives is our time. And I know sometimes it doesn’t feel this way, sometimes it feels time has a grip on us, it passes us by, it moves too quickly when we want it to stay and drags on the minutes while we wait to move on. But if we could give ourselves one gift this new year I think it would be this: to exist and move through our lives conscious of how we are spending our minutes, aware that they are with or without purpose. And then we should give ourselves a little bit more of it so that we might observe the moon as it rises big and bright over the horizon, kiss our husbands a little longer, let ourselves lie down in the spring grass, feel the warm sun and watch the clouds move with the wind, hold our children a little tighter and linger there to smell their clean hair, to feel their soft skin under our fingers so we can remember it well, that we can get to know it all… so that we might have it in us when we need it most.

So of all of the lessons learned this year, all of the things I’ve come to know and appreciate, one of my greatest gifts has been having your ear to listen, your eyes to see what I see, your words that relate to the chaos of life here in this space we share, to tell you these things and know that someone cares. Because the stories are there, boring or humorous, observational, poetic…everyone has them. But without you I may have never  told them…

And because of you I now know they are enough.

Happy New Year to you and all of those in your story!

A Cowboy Christmas reminder…

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13

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…


The list

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9

Christmas is right around the corner. Like, right there. I can see its sparkly ribbons and the ball on its Santa hat from here and I am finding myself a little anxious about the whole thing. I’m saying things like, I’m not ready! I have to bake something! I have to wrap the presents and find a Christmas tree and put up lights! It has to snoooowwwww! It hasn’t even really snowed yet!!!

I’ve been so wrapped up in other things this December, like planning the arrival and set-up of our new house, that Christmas and I haven’t been able to spend time together.

So this week I have  “Christmas” on my agenda. I’m not going to lie, I don’t like having to pencil it in. I much prefer when the season infiltrates into my life naturally. I like when the ground has just the right amount of sparkly snow and husband and I are able to go out and cut the tree together. I like when I have a weekend to put up the lights and replace my usual brown candles and wooden frames with red and green decorations and boughs of cedar.

I love it when the house smells like cedar. It’s one of my favorite things about Christmas at the ranch.

Last night when husband and I got in late from dinner at my big sister’s new house I walked through our entryway full of tools and living room piled to the ceiling with unwrapped presents and realized that, with Christmas just a few days away and husband working so hard on the new house, it isn’t likely we will have a tree this year. And it’s the last Christmas we’ll spend in this little house.

It made me a little sad as I crawled into bed, thinking about our first Christmas spent as a married couple in this house. I pulled  the covers up and closed my eyes to remember the first tree we cut together from the place. Our first tree as husband and wife….

We’d been married about four months and there was snow on the ground. We headed out the door in early December to drive the trail to the east pasture, the pasture on the edge of the badlands that grows the most Christmas type trees on the place,  our new puppy riding in the back of the pickup. We bumped and bounced along the rough and frozen path until we got to the top of the hill looking over one of our favorite spots. Deciding he had pushed his luck and the limits of his 4-wheel drive, we got out of the pickup to scope out the hills on foot, our little brown lab trailing in our footprints behind us.

It is one of my favorite memories, watching my new husband dressed in his wool cap and neckerchief, jeans and big boots, milling over the size and proportion of a cedar tree that we had spotted on the top of a hill together. I remember it being just before dark as the sun made its way down over the buttes as our new puppy and I watched eagerly as husband carefully sawed off the top of our chosen tree and drug it up the hill to the pickup.

We followed in his snowy footprints and walked together talking and laughing at how our puppy was jumping through the drifts, watching our breath puff in and out with our words. We reached our pickup as the sun was setting, loaded our puppy and the tree in the back and I plopped my snow-suited body down next to husband in the cab. He started the engine, put the vehicle in reverse, stepped on the gas and, well…we didn’t move..

Husband put in drive, stepped on the gas…and…ummm…we were not going that way either.

Reverse.

Drive.

Reverse.

Drive.

Stuck.

Husband got the shovel and I stepped out and sunk knee deep into the snow bank we decided to park in. I trudged around to the back of the pickup to check on the puppy who, in all of that back and forth, had lost his cookies all over in the box of the pickup…and if memory serves me right, it seemed he had indulged in a lot of cookies.

So there we were, my new husband and I, out on the prairie in the middle of winter at sunset, a good five hilly miles away from our little house with a Christmas tree and a sick puppy in the back of the pickup…two supplies we found are  pretty worthless in times like these.

But you know, I don’t remember feeling panicked or frustrated or upset in any way. I do remember being grossed out by the dog puke, but not enough to not laugh about it. I knew somewhere in that youthful and hopeful heart of mine that I married a man who was perfectly capable of getting us out of a jam like this and on down through the hills to help me drag that tree into the house and make it a Christmas to remember.

So I got behind the wheel as husband shoveled and instructed me on the technique of successfully rocking a pickup out of a snowbank that had us high-centered. He shoveled the snow, wet and sticky from the warmth of the now disappearing sun and I leaned my head out the window to hear his instructions to drive forward, then backward, then forward again.

And then, as the stars started showing their shiny faces one by one over the snowy hills, husband scootched me out of the driver’s seat to get behind the wheel, I grabbed the puppy and with one mighty rev my man drove us and our giant Christmas tree out of the snow bank and to the front door of our home in the barnyard.

I remember us laughing the entire way home with relief, thanking those stars above that we weren’t walking.

Thankful that we were there together in our own adventure…

Thankful for a Christmas together.

I fell asleep last night with this memory floating in the air above my bed, playing itself out for me. I woke up this morning while my husband of nearly five Christmases still lay sleeping beside me.

I wrapped my arms around him and lay there in that memory for another moment. And in the quiet of the farmhouse, in the still of the early morning before the sun appeared, I listened to my husband breathe.

I listened to him breathe, kissed his shoulder and rolled out of bed to find the list of things I have to do to prepare for Christmas this weekend.

And at the top, in front of wrapping presents, making fudge, cleaning the house, and writing cards I wrote in big, bold letters…

  1. “Find a Christmas Tree with Husband.”