October Rain

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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There’s nothing more spectacular than a season change. And around here, we all have the chance to get up close and personal with the shifting of breeze, the cool down or warm up and the new colors the big guy decided to paint with. So when I feel the shift, when I hear the leaves start to crackle or take notice of something new poking through the ground in the spring, I pay attention. I look around. Because I hate to miss a day of it, really. It happens so fast. One morning you will be walking through oak groves of plush grass, under a canopy of leaves sparkling with life and green, and the next those leaves have all changed clothing and some have already decided to turn in early for the year.

It’s this time of year, the autumn, that I hate to be away from the ranch. I hate to miss the 50 and 60 and degree weather, perfect for rounding up cattle and maybe, if it’s the morning, digging out my neckerchief.

I hate to miss how the horses seem to lay a little longer in the sunshine, breathe out breath we can see into the crisp early air and work on growing their wooly, winter coats. I hate to miss the days the leaves on the oak trees start turning from green to yellow to orange one by one or the crunch of the leaves under my feet and the smell of the damp air reminding me of a childhood spent in these very same places, in this very same season-change ritual.

Oh yes, I’d hate to drive away from this toward warmer sun in the south or shut myself in between safe and heated walls and miss all of the miraculous and well planned preparation going on around me. Because I fear that if I didn’t pay attention to the shifts occurring on the top of the buttes, under prairie grasses and animal skin, I wouldn’t understand what was happening to me….

…why my skin has faded in color and is begging me to put on long, wooly sleeves, why I want to warm up soup and sink in next to husband on our big chair and talk about plans and life and how I adore him. Without taking notice of the cool breeze, settling plants, and a sun that sinks below the horizon at an earlier hour each evening, I may not understand why my eyes feel heavy, my body weary and my bed calls my name at an hour when I may have still been on a back of a horse miles out in a pasture just months before in a season we called summer.

I might not understand why I don’t allow myself to go down easy, why I hustle around the house at 8 pm putting the finishing touches on projects and work, strumming my guitar and singing songs into the darkening sky, making sure all living creatures in the household know that I have things to do yet, I’m still here, regardless of the light. I would find myself crazy and alone in a world that was trying to get some sleep already if I didn’t witness the sky putting up the exact same fight during this time of year…

See, she’s not quite ready either–not ready to turn in her party dress. Because this time of year, more than ever, in the evening hour, right before dark I catch her showing off her biggest, most fluffy clouds with splashes of fuchsia and deep orange costumes as together they threaten a heavy fall shower with big, splashing raindrops when all the world thought the next thing to come was the dark and the snow.

I see her, I know what she’s doing, I understand the need to make a scene like this and I hear her laugh as she watches the crazy woman with the camera gaze at her face and dream about climbing those very clouds and laying down there for the winter, held softly in the warm fluff of the sky, eyes closed tight, knees to chest like a child, sleeping soundly through the winter until she lets me down with the rain in the spring.

But it can’t be so. I must stay here on the crust of the earth and watch her performance as she turns down the lights and paints the world soft pink, how she keeps the rain in the sky for a few moments, under small and un-daunting slivers of fluff evoking a trust and wonder in the creatures below basking in the uncommon warmth of a late fall evening.

Yes, I must wait here and watch as the sky pushes her sun further down the horizon line, lighting up the farmstead one last moment before she lets loose those big drops of rain, slowly at first, onto the crazy woman’s head.

Because the sky thought the woman needed one last reminder of a warmer world.

And she was right, the sky, she was. The crazy woman who could see the barnyard, a small dark dot on that very horizon, quite enjoyed the way the drops stuck in her fuzzy hair…

the way her feet helped float her body down the butte toward the light glowing from the kitchen of the farm house….

she laughed at the sound of her big brown dog’s paws hitting the dirt, his mouth blowing out air, his tongue hanging and bouncing along his clumsy body as he found his rhythm alongside a woman who was running now…

Running in the autumn rain, under a sky who is wrapping up her show, a season, with a reminder of the scent and feel and colors and sound of summer…

One last rain.

In autumn.

So I slowed my pace because a little rain never hurt anyone…

and me and the sky, we were not going down easy.

Waiting for the cold…

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s late October and our windows have been closed for weeks, sealing our houses up against the chill that this month lays upon the nights. And we button up in the morning as we step out to start our cars, or saddle a horse, or feed the livestock or take a jog while the streets are quiet. We rub our hands together and notice our breath pushing out our bodies and floating in the atmosphere, hanging our words up there to linger for a bit. “Huh, look at that,” we say. “Haven’t seen my breath for months.”

Our words forget that they can be seen now. Our skin forgets, somehow, what this chill feels like. It forgets it bites a bit. It forgets the way the cold comes in, rustling the near-bare branches, dancing with the dried up grasses and the remnants of the wildflowers left behind brave and brittle…just as we have been left here season after season.

Yes it’s late October and we are reminded by the flush in our cheeks and the boots on our feet, prepared for the moment the sky could fall. Any moment . Our senses know it, we were animals once. The ones who move along ridge lines and on horses’ backs, behind the path of a deer, they remember. They remember that animal’s still there.

So we put on our wooly coats like the horses do and crunch through blankets of leaves on the ground, stripping off layers as the sun rises to give us one more day of warmth. Oh, we know it’s a gift. If only it could stay until late November. But we take it. We do.

We roll up our shirt sleeves and bring the cattle home. We stroll our babies dressed in fleece on sidewalks along paved streets. We sit a little longer on the front porch. We think of making apple cider, some biscuits, maybe a pie for dessert.

We eat soup and hang on, like the last of the yellowing oak leaves, to a hope that the snow will stay up in the air.

We hang on to the colors that don’t dare leave us, the colors that stick out on the landscape and promise a reprieve from the brown…

from the inevitable white that is to come.

We hang on and take trails still made of dirt, breathe in the damp air and find a quiet spot to watch the birds get ready for it too, wondering where they go in times like these…

…wondering if they’d take us too.

Wondering if they are ready.

Missing them already.

Yes, it’s late October and just like us the sun is slower to rise and faster to set, the dog takes pause before he walks out the door,

the horses nibble on hay, the cows stay close to the barn, the birds move in bunches and call to one another “come on, come here, stick close together, we have places to go” as they fly over a landscape that is rough like our skin,

and an earth that has given in to rest and is waiting, like us, for the cold.

It’s all about autumn…

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Fall is one of those fleeting seasons around here. The kind that doesn’t get much attention because everyone is busy digging out their wool caps and puffy coats in preparation for what’s to come. But boy, this fall, this season, has been truly spectacular so far around here this year. Just like the rest of the seasons, it has not disappointed.

So on this Wednesday as I prepare for one of my good friend’s visit to the ranch, I would like to take a moment out of my frantic cleaning, organizing and thoughts about baking something to pay this season a bit of the attention it deserves….

Because who knows, we could find ourselves in a snow globe scenario in the morning.

Here we go: On behalf of northern people everywhere, the ones who get out and take walks, stroll their babies through the parks, rake up piles of leaves and let their kids and wives and dogs jump in them while they laugh and stretch out the kinks in their backs before joining them. From the people who carve pumpkins and press pretty oak leaves between the pages of their books, the ones who enjoy a hot cup of homemade soup and light jackets and cardigans, the ones who paint eloquently, photograph with great care and detail, the ones who look, who really see…on behalf of people like these we would like to present this award of appreciation to the season of autumn.

I hope you display this giant, ten foot trophy proudly on the shelf on your wall–the shelf where you hang photos of your changing leaves, vibrant sunsets, rolling clouds and golden hues.

I hope you invite summer over for a cup of cider to brag a little. She’ll have time to stay for a bit now that she’s on vacation. And winter, I imagine he will want to see this too, as the only award he’s ever won was from snowboarders and skiers thanking him for staying so long.

That winter really likes to chat doesn’t he?

And spring. Let him know that he’s next in line. Maybe the two of you could talk to wind and ask him to tone it down a bit, he’s always trying to ruin a perfectly pleasant season change.

But for now autumn, this is all about you.

You and your understated beauty, your crunching leaves and well worn paths. You and your picturesque views from the hilltops, pleasant temperatures and crisp air.

Thanks for quieting down so I could hear the acorns literally plunking to the ground in the coulees behind my house. Thanks for dropping those acorns,

even if you did drop one on my head.

I forgive you, because you and I are on the same page about the whole “the world needs more oak trees” thing.

Thanks for putting a sparkle in the stock dam,

a shimmer in the chilly creeks,

a glow on the tips of the trees.

Thanks for reminding me what red looks like…

and orange…

and yellow

…and gold…

Because of this and how hard you have worked to paint a picture outside my window each morning and put me to sleep at night with your cool breezes, I will forgive you your cockleburs, the hornet that stung the favorite part of my hand, and the excessive and obnoxious amount of grasshoppers. They are only out there because you have given them longer life with your warmth and sunshine.

Thanks for that. Thanks for letting us sit outside and read a book, do a project, or just poke around. Thanks for sticking around long enough for me to take your picture. Because I’m sure your friends will want some for their walls.

You rock autumn.

Now go call your momma, she’ll be so proud of you.

Alone and breathing in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well fall came dancing along in all its glory around here and we sure didn’t need the calendar to tell us so. Just like the uncharacteristically warm weather, the leaves on the trees were not about to take the subtle approach to the season change. Overnight the ash leaves turned from greed to gold, the vines bright red, the grass and flowers exploded seeds and even the slow and steady oaks began letting go their acorns and turning one leaf over to gold at a time.

It has been magnificent. But that’s the way it is around these parts, when it comes to the landscape and the great outdoors, you really can’t accuse it of being understated.

So after a challenging week I was ready to celebrate autumn the way it deserved to be celebrated. I was ready to frolic in it, to let go my agenda and my worries, ignore my pain and troubles and just climb a big damn hill and feel the warm breeze in my hair. So on Friday after a trip to the big town for an appointment, I moseyed on down the busy highway filled with lines of trucks and pickups and SUVs. Vehicles that moved busy humans at full speed along that paved ribbon of road that winds through buttes and half cut wheat fields, across the Little Missouri River that sparkles and meanders under the big blue sky and slowly sinking sun. I wanted to meander too, I wanted to meander among the things out here that are allowed a slow change, a subtle move toward hibernation, a good long preparation for a show like no other, a recital of how to slow down gracefully.

And I couldn’t help but wonder while I tried hard to keep my eyes on the road, despite the neon yellow trees waving at me from the ditches, if these people who were sharing my path were seeing this. Did they notice that the tree was waving to them too? Were they commenting on how the crows have gathered? As we came down through the brakes that move us through the badlands of Western North Dakota, our home, did they notice how the layers of the buttes–the line of red scoria, the black coal, the clay–did they notice how in the late afternoon light the landscape looked like a giant canvas and the buttes seemed created with wisps of an artist’s brush?

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

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

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

But not Friday. Friday I needed its therapy. I needed to park my car and stretch my limbs and take a look around from the other side of my camera.

From the top of Battle Ship Butte.

From the trail at the river bottom.

From the flat where the bison graze.

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

and then I noticed I was alone.

Alone out here in this wild place I’ve visited before as a tourist, as a resident of the area, on dates and outings, family functions and educational tours surrounded by inquiring minds and cameras.

But I’d never been out here alone.

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

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

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

Alone as a ran my hand along the cannonball concretions, scrambled to keep my footing and wipe the sweat from my forehead on the way down.

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

Alone as I walked toward the river, keeping an eye on the time, but wishing there was no such thing. And there was no one there to stop me from following it a little bit further, to see what it looked like on the other side of the bend.

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

And because I was alone, because it was quite, because in here there was no speeding or trucks or access to my phone, because unlike on the ranch, I was unfamiliar with the trails and the directions I was forced to really pay attention, to use my senses, to make new discoveries, I was able to notice that after a few weeks gone missing I was becoming myself again.

The self that understood this was my habitat, my home and surroundings. The self that knows the weather will be predictably unpredictable, but the seasons will always change, the leaves will dry up, the acorns will fall, the birds will fly away from the cold or prepare for it, the grasshoppers will finish their rituals, the snow will come and coat the hard earth, then melt with the warm sun, changing the landscape, if only a little bit, as the water runs through and cuts the cracks in the earth.

And the bison will roam because we let them and the antelope will too knowing or not knowing that their lives are fragile.

Just like ours.

So we must remember to be present, live in it…breathe.

Thank God I remembered to breathe.

Please, remember to breathe.

For more photos of my hike around Theodore Roosevelt National Park, click here to visit my Flickr photo album

Oh, and if you missed it, take a stab at my North Dakota Trivia Game from last week’s post for a chance to win a prize! There haven’t been many brave attempts (I think you’ve all been out enjoying the beautiful weather), so I’m giving you more time! Get your ND history hat on a play!

Quick, change your season!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So I hope yer termaters were covered last night, because there was a frost.

whimper, whimper…sigh…sniff.

Yup.

There was a frost. I saw it with my own eyes when I woke up, rubbed out the crusties and scrounged around for the dog food only to collapse in a heap when I noticed that the water in the dog dish had a little crust of ice on the top.

Sob.

How do I get the defrost button to work on, you know, the earth?

Anyway, I suppose it is about that time. It seems like it went too fast didn’t it? I mean, I hear Texas is still feeling 100 degree weather. It’s weird how quickly the season’s change around here. Just last Saturday I had on my swimming suit and was splashing in the big lake.

Just last week I was using my little window air conditioner while husband and I screamed casual conversation over its rumble! Just last month I was cussing the rain and the cows who ruined my lawn. And just like that, the lawn really doesn’t matter much anymore.

Oh, but it’s not so bad really, when considering last year at this time we had SNOW!

Oh, North Dakota and your weather games. No matter how many tricks you play we always wonder where the hell we put our sweaters.

Anyway, I’m not complaining. (Does it sound like I’m complaining?) Fall is a sweet time of year, even though it’s a bit short. Fall means hunting and camouflage beer, colors changing in the trees, cute sweaters, pumpkins, being able to ride horse and jog in the middle of the day…you know, if I were the type of woman to exercise on purpose.

But I am going to miss summer, just like I do every year. I am going to miss my summer skin that makes me look more human and less pasty white alien. I am going to miss my cutoff jeans and bare feet, my horse’s slick coat, husband’s t-shirt sleeves that hug his arms perfectly, vodka tonics, and wildflower hunting, brats on the grill for supper once a week, not having to plan my outfit around a jacket and sunshine that lasts past 10 pm.

However, the snow will be a good disguise for my destroyed yard, it will also send these mosquitos into hibernation as well as the necessity to shave my legs every other day.

Yeah. I guess a part of me, perhaps a large part of me, is looking forward to snuggling down in my sweaters and traipsing around in my boots. That will be good.

As for the pug? Well, I think he’s kinda pissed about the whole colder weather thing…

Anyway, I can almost taste the soups that will be boiling in cowboy’s kitchen. Oh how I’ve missed you dumplings. Maybe this winter I will find myself a free weekend to enjoy a blizzard under the blankets while I watch a good girly movie. The happy hot summer sunshine doesn’t allow for such excuses.

A blizzard? Well, that’s a perfect reason to do nothing but eat Red Vines and cry at Sandra Bullock movies.

But it seems like just yesterday I was hunting out crocuses and now I have a few tubs of chokecherry juice waiting for my domestic side to come and make it into something delicious. Wasn’t I just sleeping on top of the covers with the fan blowing on me and the windows open? Didn’t I just document the first buds of spring only to wake up to find the leaves kinda droopy?

Man time flies when you’re trying to find a way to stop it. It changes right before our eyes every day out here. We know it’s bound to happen, yet it seems we never expect it. It seems the seasons, with the exception of the North Dakota winters, leave us all too quickly. So I’d like to do something fun here. As you have probably noticed, I have been keeping up with a photo a day for about a year now. And the point of that endeavor was to help me open my eyes to something beautiful, something interesting, every day. But you will notice when you visit the Daily Photo page and scroll through the pictures that it also does something more. It documents the subtle changes around here, not only in weather and season, but in the animals, the vegetation, the mood and feelings of each day. It’s amazing how that in one spot there is so much to see, so much to document, so many different perspectives constantly shifting and moving with the spin of the earth, the rise and set of the sun, the changes of the moon. So I invite you to take a moment to visit the Daily Photos page for a quick recap of the past year in photos.

Because we can’t stop time, we can’t change the weather or make our favorite season stay, but we can keep our eyes and hearts open to the beauty, subtle strength and mystery nature displays every day of the year.

In the horses:

In the pastures:

In the vegetation:

And even in the pug:

Wasn’t that fun? Now pull on your sweaters and hunker down for fall weather North Dakotans. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

Now where’d I put my earmuffs?

Summer don’t leave me…

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Summer don’t leave me
stay under my feet
hang warm in the sky
don’t dry up the wheat

Summer stay near me
to kiss my skin tan
mess up my long hair
hold tight my hand

Summer please stay here
in the chokecherry trees
on the back of a good horse
in the green of the leaves

Oh, Summer my good friend
there’s only so many hours
so take the bees and the rainbows…

but don’t take my wildflowers

Heaven is a wild raspberry…

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Around here you go to bed at night to a landscape brown and ready to shoot to the sky and wake to fields of flowers big and bright and alive. Around here you savor their aroma, their vibrance, their fleeting existence, because as soon as you close your eyes again they have withered into the earth.

Around here you wait for months for the sun to stay in the sky just a little longer to warm the ground and make things grow and allow you to stay out in the air until well past 10 pm.

Around here you must get to the corn before the deer, the tomatoes before the bugs, the berries before the birds, because every creature is waiting in the shadows to savor the fruits of summer before the trees start to drop their leaves, the sun casts shadows sooner, the rain turns to snow.

And so on this early August day I am hit with the realization that we are on the back side of summer now. The hot side, yes, but the down hill slope indeed.

The weeds are tall, the late season flowers are in full bloom, the clover has reached its peak, the kids are buying school supplies, the sun is leaving us a little sooner each evening, I am contemplating what types of celebrations I am going to cram into my birthday month and

and

the wild raspberries have appeared like tiny drops of heaven, little rewards, consolation prizes for a summer on it’s way out of dodge.

These perfect little morsels are what I spent the late summers of my childhood hunting while sitting bareback on a horse with my best friend and a plastic grocery bag. These tart wild fruits that grow on vines along the thick brush are what my eyes are searching for this time of year. To hell with the wild sunflower, the coneflowers, the juneberries that the bugs have demolished. If I can bite down on a wild, perfectly red raspberry and savor the juices that hit my tongue if only once in a summer I am satisfied.

Fall can come tap dancing in.

Winter can bring it.

I got my raspberry.

So it was with delight that I hit the trail last Sunday for a leisurely ride with pops, husband and little sister. It was the last day in July and it sure as hell felt like it. The air was muggy, but there was a nice breeze and the sun was hiding behind a skim of clouds for the time being. It was enough relief to keep us from baking, enough to allow us to saddle up and head for our favorite pasture in the east.

We weren’t looking for anything in particular, the four amigos. We just wanted to be in one another’s company as the morning rolled on into the afternoon. See, the other casualty of late summer is this: little sister is leaving. Yup. Back to east side of the state to finish up her schooling and become a grown up already. I haven’t admitted it yet here, but the fact that time is marching on and out too quickly, bringing with it this type of consequence, has been the catalyst to the waves of dread and the reason I have occasionally pulled on my crabby pants during the past five days or so.

I am lashing out at time and wondering why the bluebells can’t stay….

Why the clover must dry up…

Why the sun can’t maintain its heat…

Why my gray hairs multiply with each pluck of a straggler…

Why little sisters don’t stay little forever.

But anyway, there we were last Sunday strolling on the back of good horses through acres of wild sunflowers and grass up to the heels of our boots. There we were riding just a little further, despite the fact that the sun had reappeared and the temperature was rising. There we were, the four of us, bonded by our love for a place, the desire to be part of something a little more untamed, and the need to be together out in it for as long as we could.

We were chatting about the unprecedented rainfall and the lush vegetation when pops, always in the lead, pushed his horse through a barley visible trail like a cow dog going after an unruly bull and squealed like a little boy. The three of us stopped in our tracks. What could it be? A mountain lion? An elk? A big, black hole? Aliens?

As pops flung his body off his horse and dove into the brush one of us dared to ask that question. You know, the one that starts with “What” and ends with “is it?”

“What is it, what’s the deal. Are you ok? It must be an alien this time…pops? Where you going?”

“RASPBERRIES,” he hollered from behind a tangle of green weeds and thorny brush and vines.

“RASPBERRIES” he mumbled as he dropped his horse’s reigns to the ground to reach and bend and lunge around him, his wide fingers carefully plucking the delicate fruit from its vine before popping his mouth full of the wild, red, succulent berries.

Well, that was it. That’s all he needed to say to get the rest of us to follow suit, fling ourselves off of the back of our sweaty beasts and dive into a draw, braving thorns, mosquitos, poison ivy, bees, ants and that dreaded and inevitable alien to get to the prairie rarity before pops and the birds ate them all.

“There’s hundreds of them guys! Look at all of them….munch munch munch…remember this moment…munch munch…because in the winters…munch munch…we will talk about how we found all those raspberries out east that one summer…munch munch…here you go…taste some…”

And so we did. We all picked and tasted and searched the area like scavengers on a hunt for gold. We talked about what it might have been like to be a Native American out in this area and to come upon berries this sweet on a hot summer day.

We talked about the past summers where we wandered into similar patches. We talked about how many there might be here and what we could make with them.

We talked about coming back with a bucket.

But by the time we were done talking our fingers were stained red and so were our tongues and we had cleared the area of all visible signs of the wild fruit.

Because that’s the thing about wild raspberries, they very rarely hit the bottom of a bucket or make their way into a jam or pie.

No, no, no. They taste the best standing in a pasture, surrounded by sky and bugs and up to your eyeballs in foliage and leaves and vines and pure bliss.

So yes, the summers out here are brief. I don’t know why they have to be that way. I don’t know why the green leaves can’t hold on a little longer or why the wildflowers have to wither at all. I don’t know why 80 degrees only touches our skin for a few short months or where the bumblebees go when the snow comes.

I don’t know why I am beginning to notice lines on my face and a few strands of silver in my hair.

And I certainly don’t know why little sisters grow up and leave home…

or how wild raspberries appear and disappear like magic.

I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s for the best. See, if we had paradise all year how would heaven measure up?

Because I’m sure there are raspberries in every cool draw in heaven.

Raspberries and clover, blue sky and just the right amount of clouds, good horses and sisters and husbands and fathers and mothers all riding together through lush pastures like the one that exists out east of our home…

the one that exists in my heaven.

Welcome short, spectacular season!

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I would like to interrupt the drizzling skies, raging rivers, mud puddles and frizzy hair to wish everyone a happy first day of summer.

I’ve been waiting for this for a while and went out last night, despite a threatening sky, to see how things are growing–

Martha, how they’re growing!

The cat came with.

I don’t know why he comes with.

Neither does he.

He was pretty pissed when the sky opened up and dumped buckets of rain on the grass that reached well over his head, so he disappeared somewhere…

that cat is weird…

Anyway, I didn’t care about the rain (or the cat really) I just kept trucking up on to the top of a hill that, just months ago, required a good set of snowshoes and a hearty breakfast to reach.

Let’s reminisce for a moment:

December

June

December

June

December

June

December

June

December

June

What a difference a few months makes in this country!

I am always amazed how summer seems so far away during the depths of February when your cheeks are frozen, the FedEx man is stuck in your driveway and you find yourself wearing two parkas at once, only to wake up one morning to find grass up to your knees and every color of wildflower reaching for the sky.

But this summer is shaping up to be as challenging and unpredictable as its cousin winter–with unprecedented precipitation and unexpected rising rivers. So today I celebrate, and then send my thoughts and prayers to those battling flood waters, farmers who can’t get in their fields and families displaced.

Because Mother Nature, true to her form this first day of summer continues to be unpredictable, miraculous, stunning, gentle, quiet, subtle, colorful, splendid, nurturing and unforgiving all at once.

Here’s hoping that whether the rain soaks your skin, the sun hits your shoulders or the gentle breeze tousles your hair you can find a way to take a moment and give thanks for a season so short and so spectacular today.

until we’re warm again

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

I can’t be your warmer breeze
no, I can’t be her right now
I can’t be your brown worn hands
damp hair, your sweaty brow

I can’t be the evening mist
or the clouds that roll on by
I can’t be your blades of grass
the lightning in your sky

I cannot be barefoot
or younger than today
can’t be your rain boots or your fishing pole
or make the summer stay

But I can stand beside you
under skies of gray and white

and on the long and starlit nights

I’ll be your wool cap and your overcoat
your coffee and the broth in which your dumplings float
I will wrap my arms around where your scarf has been
wrap them tight around your neck until we’re warm again