Tag Archives: wildlife

From lost to found in the Badlands

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

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

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

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

From lost to found in the Badlands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I noticed I was alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe we belong to the turkeys

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For the past few years we’ve been raising turkeys. Have I told you about this?  The little flock of fifty or so comes down from the dam every morning to wander into our yard to check on the garden, peck up some grasshoppers and perch up on our fence to say hello. They’re the most maintenance-free livestock we’ve ever dealt with, because, well, they’re wild as can be. And no matter how many times we’ve seen them or how regularly they all but knock on our front door, it’s always fun to spot them. 

Frequent wildlife sightings sit high on the top of the perks of living thirty miles from town. So often out here we feel like we’re just intruders infringing on the coyote’s chance at a good meal or the deer’s peaceful bedding spot. I’ve always felt a little bad when we come over a hill on horseback or on a walk and scare a pheasant into flight or send mule deer fleeing. The way humans exist out here, the way we stand upright and stride without fear of predators, our steps sort of stomping in boots with rubber soles, crunching the leaves and bending the grass without a care, well, even the quietest among us seem too loud out here sometimes.

When I was a kid I used to follow my dad as he hunted deer in our pastures in November. It was with him I realized how noisy the quiet can be. The creak of the old oak trees, the shrill shriek from a hawk, the sound of your own breath in the cold. I also learned that above the goal of taking an animal, the joy of treading in their territory unnoticed is the biggest gift. If you can get to a place inconspicuously where you are allowed to witness the drama and noise of two bull elk fighting among the herd, crashing into the trees, smashing their antlers together, well there’s no performance more exciting than that. Once, when my husband was bow hunting for an elk, he made himself so invisible that the animals almost ran right over him. He tells the story about the day he didn’t draw his bow back more than any hunt. 

And I tell the stories about all the times I’ve run into curious coyotes on my evening walks or on a ride out to check cows. These young animals have kept me and my dogs in their sightline and at a distance too close for my comfort, stopping dead in their tracks when I turn around to face them and inching closer when I turn my back, like a wild-life version of “red light, green light,” only a bit more unnerving. To be a good hunter, I think, is to welcome being humbled in this way.

Last weekend we hosted a group of our friends who brought their dad out to hunt for an elk. This group of men bring with them evening meals and egg bakes and treats for the kids, canned goods and dried meat and an attitude of complete gratitude for the opportunity to step quietly among these hills. But to be together out here is always their main goal and it’s always sincere. To help the kids shoot their bows at targets, to watch them ride horses, to sit out of the front door under the dark sky and tell stories, to catch sight of those turkeys on the fence in the morning over coffee, to live a rural existence in good company, if only for the weekend, is always the goal as much as anything else.

And their presence reminds us how precious this all is, to live among these wild things and to be charged with taking good care of it. Because none of this is really ‘ours’ alone is it? It belongs to the coyotes and the chickadees, the porcupines, the field mice, the grass snakes and the muskrats, the deer and the elk and the one wandering moose that passed through my sister’s yard. And those turkeys, they don’t know we claim them as a joke. They don’t know anything about jokes, but they know everything about how to survive and multiply out here in this sometimes-brutal place without Amazon prime or the nightly news. And for that I will always regard them, and all the other wild things, superior. And when you look at it that way, maybe we belong to the turkeys?

A song for a new season

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A song for a new season
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If I could fill my page with words to make up an ending to each season that has given us her all — glorious orange sunsets and wildflower purple and the deep, dark blue of the rain — I would give the wind a voice.

And his voice would be deep and coarse as he reminisced about the way the grass bent beneath him as he worked to push the storms through the buttes and over the prairies. He would tell us how he worried it might dry up, or maybe how he thought the big banks of snow might never disappear and he would cry about the flames he can’t keep from rising, and he would declare, “It has to be, it has to be, just like I must take the leaves from your trees.”

And then he would laugh a big laugh at the way our hair stands on end when he comes around and how we lean into him out here. If I wrote the book, I’d make the wind tell us.

If I could paint the most beautiful cooldown, I would splash the canvas with gold and rich pinks and burgundy hues. I would use my soft brush to give the sky more clouds, thousands of clouds, for the sun to reflect her light and choreograph her show. And I would paint her glow on horses’ backs and splash her down between the shadows of the trees where the deer go to water.

And next to the barn, the cats would bask in the light — the light I would make live forever if I could, or at least to live on that canvas in the space between day and night, sun and storm, warm and cold…

If I could paint the cooldown, I would use all of my brushes. And if I were to sing an encore for the season’s end, I would put the chorus on the wings of the geese so as they catch the wind and touch those clouds, it would ring familiar and in harmony with the croak of the frogs taking a breath in the creek bed to “ooh” and “aah” along..

And then, the wild elk bedded down in the tall yellow grass would throw their heads back and bugle a sad song of goodbye, the crickets would hush and the coyotes would take to the hilltops. The kittens would purr softly, the mice would hold still already and the cattle would stop their chewing to hear as the verses moved from the crocus to long days and onto cool rain and the smell of snow coming…

And then, the song would swell and blend with the howling dogs in the yard and the last screech of the red-tailed hawk as the bridge pushed through to the sound of the geese fading out, heading south.

And in their place would be only the sounds of winter.

And a palette of blues and grays, a familiar wind to remind us and a new quiet chorus repeating

A heavy dose of escape…

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Yesterday afternoon, when Husband came home from work I escaped.

Yeah. I said it. Escaped. That’s the right word.  Some days around here are easier than others, and I think this baby is getting more teeth God help me, so I left her, and the man who helped make her, to it.

And I headed to the badlands.

Because I hadn’t been there in a while. Because  I was feeling overwhelmed in this house that’s never going to be baby proof enough. Because being a mom is hard sometimes.

Being a work from home mom to a baby who just learned to crawl is nearly impossible.

Because I needed some inspiration. A good breath. A minute.

Because it was a beautiful night and I didn’t want to miss out on it.

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The badlands are right in our backyard and the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park is about a 45 mile drive from the ranch, but if I were a bird it wouldn’t take me nearly as long to fly there along the river.

I wished I was a bird yesterday evening as I drove through the park slowly with the windows open watching the rain clouds build up on the horizon, wondering how long it might pour on me and this landscape that has nothing to do but soak up the sky.

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Then I was feeling sort of bummed about it, about the rain. Like, finally I get out here and I won’t get the light bouncing off the buttes. I won’t get a sunset. I won’t get the great shadows the sun creates in the canyons. I won’t get to see it in all its late summer glory.

I won’t get what I want out of this little trip.

And I was right. I didn’t get what I wanted.

I got more.

Because just before the sky let loose a smattering of rain on a girl standing in the long grass, hair whipping across my face, a rainbow appeared like they tend to do out of nowhere and it stayed long enough for me get to know it a bit.

And to shake the boulder that unexplainably had been sitting heavy on my shoulders for the last few days.

img_3193img_3200img_3264img_3282img_3296img_3380img_3346img_3364img_3324img_3328Sometimes you don’t know what you need. And that’s ok.

But sometimes you do and you don’t take it. And that’s not ok.

I was reminded of that last night. Because I almost didn’t take the drive out there. I felt a little guilty about it. Like I should stay home and cook supper. Like it was going to be too late and the house was a mess. Like I had lots of work I could get done after the baby went down for the night. Like I was so tired.

But I went. I went because I wanted to. I went because it wasn’t asking much.

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Taking moments to exist in this wild space has always my best therapy. My best drug. And I got a heavy dose last night.

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And I’ve learned a heavy dose of escape makes the return so much sweeter…

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A full life, a full freezer…

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Heeeyyyyaaaa!!! It’s FRRIIIDDDAAYYY!

IMG_5109It’s been an exciting week at the ranch, beginning with this:

IMG_5538No, that’s not Ted Nugent, that there is my handsome, bearded husband with the bull elk he called in and shot with his bow in our favorite pasture.

Drawing an elk tag in North Dakota is a once in a lifetime experience, and being able to successfully harvest one in your own backyard with a bow and arrow is really a rare event.

To say I am proud is not quite enough. What I am is so completely thrilled for this guy, because in the past few months I have watched him immerse himself in a passion he has pushed aside for work and family and building us a house out here. And while all of those things are the responsible choices  people like him make, to see him take a breath and just be the man he is is just, well, better and more important than that fencing-the-yard-in-so-we-can-have-grass project…

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Because he’s been scouting the animals for months, watching bulls like this chase each other around the hills, vying for the attention of the cows, getting themselves all worked up and crazy and quite the sight to see.

IMG_5458He’s sat and watched patiently. He has gathered the right equipment and practiced shooting his bow every night.

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He knows what it means to take the life of a majestic beast that we admire so much off of our place. He understands the responsibility of it and he takes it seriously. And he took his shot quietly and alone and then called in reinforcements to get this animal home to be properly butchered, removing the hide to be tanned for leather, the horns for mounting on our wall and the meat to fill our deep freeze and our bellies for many months to come.

So that’s what we’ve been doing this week, ending our days by cutting and wrapping meat and answering phone calls from our excited sportsman friends and relatives looking for Husband to re-hash the story from the big hunt…because that’s part of it, the sharing of stories…

Oh, but we did take a break to take a drive to meet the newest member of our family who was born a week or so ago.

Be still my heart, I cannot wait to get this smooshy little creature home! And apparently I couldn’t shut up about it so Husband loaded me up in the pickup and took me for a drive to have a snuggle with him.

Four more weeks and counting. Hondo, get ready…you’re gonna love him I’m sure.

With all these distractions it goes without saying that there is enough dirt on my floor to plant carrots and laundry piled up in places where underwear shouldn’t be. Right now I am procrastinating working on making a dent in the dust an dirty shirts and then I’ll sit down and work on new music, getting ready to record a new album, sorting through songs like sorting through socks, matching up melodies and stories and rhymes.

There’s so much to do and the weather is hot, tricking us all into thinking that summer might linger like this good week we’ve had out here in our little piece of paradise.

Here’s to a beautiful weekend, full freezers and full bellies!

Peace, puppies and elk steak,

Jessie

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On bighorn sheep and humans…

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Oh my gosh you guys, look at this. 
It’s a baby bighorn sheep. He’s trying to get down to his momma.

And then look here, here’s the herd of nannies and babies I spotted a few weeks ago on a little drive through the badlands on my home turf.

The bighorns are badlands residents that I don’t get to see too often. In fact, this sighting was only my second in all the years I’ve lived and roamed around here.

So I was pretty excited to find a whole clan of mommas hanging out on a cliff in the badlands, posing for me.

These badlands that we live on the edge of are full of surprises, changing every day, every few minutes even, with the shift of light and weather.

Change is a big topic out here in these boomtowns exploding with growth above the shale formation where we’re busy extracting millions of barrels of oil.

Somedays are harder than others to get around, to make plans to accept that there are things that simply will never be the same. And this is both for the worse and for the better and that can be a hard thing to explain to people wanting to hear that it’s all black and white.

If I’ve learned anything from living back at the ranch it is that this world is full of blending colors…

Somedays I don’t feel like talking about it. Somedays I do.

But that day I was taking a drive outside of town, scoping out a spot for an oil truck  photoshoot.

A shiny oil truck in the middle of the badlands.

Not my usual subject and sort of a funny juxtaposition of industry and beauty…

I was kicking up dust on a gravel road, me and about a dozen other pickups, along the Little Missouri River, when I got a glimpse of this little family…

And so I slowed down and watched them eating on the yellow clover, twitching their tails at the bugs and content and unconcerned with the world outside the fence moving and changing so quickly around them.

I stepped out of my car to get a closer look. A trucker stopped with his camera.

And then a car. And another pickup.

Working people behind out of state license plates taking a marvel, taking a second to admire these mommas.

The guests came and went but I stayed for a bit longer, like a visitor at a zoo, studying their behavior, admiring how they move so easily up and down the cliffs. How they were made for this place.

I think I was made for this place. Most days I do. I was made to defend it and scuff my boots on it. I was made to witness it in all of its changes.

In its struggles.

In its best moments.

I was made to tell its story if I can. To ask questions and make sure I take notice of things that are just so spectacular. Things that we might miss if we drive too fast.

Sometimes I think we’re all driving too fast.

Maybe in another life I’ll be something like a  bighorn sheep momma, with just a few simple tasks, eating and moving and keeping us all alive….

Then again, maybe that’s all we’re really trying to do here…as humans…

Sunday Column: On summer, and the uninvited…

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In the spring of the year we dream of all the possibilities the summer will bring. We prepare for the work that needs to be done and make plans to hit the lake and take long rides to hunt for raspberries.
IMG_0080We clear the deck of snow and ice and wait patiently for an evening warm enough to enjoy a cocktail out under a setting sun where we eye the garden and visualize it’s late summer bounty…

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Yes, in the longest winter of our lives, we dreamed of our garden. Of plump, ripe tomatoes. Of cucumber sandwiches with bacon. Fresh garden carrots, with a little dirt still stuck in the cracks. The snap of a pea pod. The crunch of a bean steamed with butter.

The satisfaction of the taste of our growing things…

This May I helped Pops plant those little seeds in neat rows, the cucumbers in mounds, the tomato plants neatly caged up. We hoed and weeded and watered and watched those little seeds sprout…

We covered them when the frost threatened…

And then we left for Minnesota for a little getaway, hoping that the rains would come and keep things moving along…

Hoping the sun wouldn’t scorch things while we were gone.

Hoping the hail didn’t tear the leaves.

That’s the thing about North Dakota. Growing things have to grow fast, we don’t have much time for stretching toward the sun.

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The weeds know this better than any other living thing I decided I when I went to check on our little plot of dirt when we made it back home.

“Where are the pea plants? Where are the carrot tops?” I exclaimed as husband and I started pulling up little thistle plants and vines that didn’t belong.

“Wow, I something’s wrong! There should be peas here! They should be tall and lush! There should be carrot tops for crying out loud! Keep pulling, keep looking! Get Martha Stewart on the line, we’ve got issues here! A garden emergency!”

Husband just shook his head and calmly pulled and hoed at the things that needed to be pulled and hoed…

I grabbed the hose and sprayed frantically, cussing my black thumb and the idea that we had the guts to abandon a garden for a week at such a crucial time.

Could it be that we won’t have peas this year? Could it be that we won’t get fresh garden carrots or beans on the side of our steak supper?

Could it be the weather?

Could it be too much rain?

Not enough?

Could it be I planted things too deep?

Could it be…none of these things…

No.  It’s  just her.

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See her there trying to hide behind the patio furniture?

She’s taken over. It’s a buffet and it’s her “all you can eat” secret.

And she’s at Mom and Pops’ every night.

Her favorite dish? Peas.

Dessert? Mom’s geraniums.

And nothing can stop her. Last night I heard her hissing at the dogs.

Step out on the deck and she barely lifts her head, each bite and munch crushing our garden dreams…

A million acres of sweet clover and this girl prefers Pops’ tomatoes.

Funny how, in the middle of the deep freeze of winter, our summer memories skip over mosquito bites, black flies, pig weeds that grow over our heads, barn swallows that make nests in the garage and shit on my car and pretty, bossy, little deer that bite the heads off of petunias.

Ah, every season has its battle. This week it’s all about ours…

Coming Home: Battling the annoying side of nature
by Jessie Veeder
7-20-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Cheers to the best parts of summer and here’s hoping all your house guests have been invited…

My column, Coming Home, appears Sundays in the Fargo Forum and weekly in the Dickinson Press and Grand Forks Herald. 

 

Badlands Skies.

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It’s Friday and it seems I have run out of words for the week, but that’s ok.  I want to show you something that I don’t think I need many words for.

Because I was in the badlands this week, in the South Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora. After my work was done,  I went out looking for landscape, for beauty and life in those rustic buttes, and found that above the vibrant green of the grass there were these colors in the sky, constantly changing, casting shadows and light that changed the way the world looked every minute.

I couldn’t take my eyes away.


Here’s to a beautiful weekend.

Peace, Love, Sunrise to Sunset,

Jessie

 

Sunday Column: When the outside comes in…

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Well, it snowed.

So there’s that.

I sorta knew this was coming. We watch the weather like hawks around here, so on Friday when it was a calm, almost 70 degrees I called in the troops and we saddled up and headed east to get the kinks out of the horses’ backs, stretch our legs and get our saddle butts back.

It was a glorious few hours spent out under that spring sky, visiting pastures we haven’t seen in a while, counting crocuses and ducks and blades of green grass.

I even saw a couple turtles sunning themselves on a log in the stock dam.

I bet those turtles are pretty pissed right about now.

I bet those ducks are booking their flight back south.

I bet that muskrat that found his way into our garage last week is glad the cat put him out of his misery.

This week in my newspaper column I wrote a piece about all of the creatures that have come to life in this warm weather.

I was one of them. I had emerged. I traded my muck boots for cowboy boots. I put on a short sleeved shirt for crying out loud!

Things were looking up.

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I should have known better. Only in North Dakota would the end of April mean ice pellets slamming up against your window at midnight, turning a perfectly peaceful promise of spring into a snow day.

At least I didn’t go so far as to pack away my winter gear. I have a feeling a few creatures will be knocking on my door today, looking to borrow a sweater…

Coming Home: When the great outdoors venture inside
by Jessie Veeder
4-28-14
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

When to fly home

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I went out on the last day of winter to see if I believed it.

I had been driving for much of the day, having woken up in a hotel room in the middle of North Dakota to find that during my sleep snow had fallen.

It was the last day of winter and, well, you know how winter likes to hold on to the spotlight around here.

I waited a bit then before scraping the windshield of my car and heading back west on a quiet and slick highway, lingering over morning talk shows and hotel room coffee.

The weatherman said it would warm up nicely, the sun would shine and the roads would clear on this, the last day of winter.

150 miles west those roads were shut down and traffic backed up. Too slippery to be safe.

Not spring yet.

Oh no. Not yet.

But we gave it some time then, under the sun, and the fog lifted off of the thawing out lakes. The snow plow came.

White to to slush. The earth warmed up.

And me and my guitar buried under a mountain of groceries made it back home to the buttes on the last day of winter.

And when I arrived I changed out of my good boots and into the ones made for mud and I went out in it, knowing full well that just because it says “Spring” today on the calendar hanging by the cabinets on the wall, doesn’t mean the snow won’t fall tomorrow.

I heard the snow is going to fall again tomorrow.

But today I’m sitting in a patch of sunshine making its way through the windows, bouncing off the treetops, on to the deck and into this house and I’m telling you about yesterday, the last day of winter, when the brown dog and I headed east to my favorite spot to see how the land weathered the bitter cold of the season.

I followed the cow trail behind the house and through the gate, where the petrified bovine hoof prints from last fall magically turned into fresh tracks in the mud of the elk who make their home back here.

Sniff sniff sniff went the nose of my lab as he wove back and forth, back and forth in the hills and trees in front of me, always looking for something.

Squish squish squish went the rubber soles of my boots on the soft ground.

And then there was the wind, everything is second to the sound of it in my ears.

But as we followed our feet up and over the hills and down the trails to the stock dam there was another sound I couldn’t place.

It sounded like crickets or whatever those bugs are that make noise in the water at night. But it was too early for bugs. Too cold for crickets just yet.

I stepped up on the bank of the dam and watched my lab take a chilly spring swim in the water where an iceberg still floated white and frozen in the middle.

I put my hands on my hips and tried to place that unfamiliar music over my dog’s panting and shaking and splashing about.

It could be frogs, if frogs chirped like that, but there are not frogs just yet…or snakes or minnows or other slimy things that disappear when the cold comes…

No…none of those things…

but there are birds…

and well…look at all of them up there in that tree,

perched and fluttering, covering almost every branch.

Are they singing? I think it’s them.

Listen to that!

Relentless in their chirping conversation against the blue sky of the last day of winter and unafraid of the big, clumsy, slobbering canine sniffing them out.

Not phased by his two legged companion squish squish squishing up to the tree, shielding her eyes so she could get a better look at them.

A flock of proud little birds with puffed out chests, wearing tufts on their heads like tiny showgirls in Vegas.

Putting on a show for us on the last day of winter…

And if you would have asked me earlier that morning if winter was over, the fresh snow stuck to the bottom of my boots, my white knuckle grip on the wheel and my breath making puffs into the morning air as I pulled off the highway and stepped out of my car to admire the view, I would have said oh no, it is not over yet.

But under that tree full of songbirds I would have believed in anything…spring and summer and music and joy and tiny little feathered miracles who know, without a doubt, when to fly home.