Summer heat

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

When summer sets in out here among the clay buttes and tall grasses it’s like nothing else.

It’s like our world could not be further away from the one we know in the middle of January when the windswept snow drifts outside our door and the cold is so cold it actually hurts.

But in mid July the air swelters. It settles on the top of the water in our stock dams and grows creatures we haven’t seen for months. It pools up under our cowboy hats, drips down the back of our work shirts and moves with us in the slow motion effort we use to make it through the day.

The people and animals of the north were not meant for 90+ degree weather. We see it coming and run for a canopy of trees, find refuge inside the ice cold of a sparkling drink and on the other end of our lawn hoses. We watch our garden grow and wait for the sun to retreat to do the weeding or to check how the radishes are coming along.

We swat horseflies and search in our houses for the summer cutoffs we wear five times a year to sit by the fan and say “Geesh, it’s a hot one.”

Our skin turns from white to red to brown as the wild sunflowers growing in road ditches reach their petals toward the sky.

We know who we are here inside the smells, sounds and sites of a season we wait all year to indulge in. We know what it looks like and what it means.

It means foxtails sweeping and bending in the draws, horseflies biting at our necks, hard cracked earth and tall wild grass that scratches our bare legs.

It means sweaty brows and an alfalfa crop, a sky with no clouds in site and dust hanging in the air kicked up by neighbors and big trucks heading out somewhere.

Summer means rain puddles left in the sun to dry, dragonflies and pink sunsets and a sky twinkling so bright you can’t tell the difference between fireflies and stars.

And we hold this under our skin, the pieces of the hard dirt, the swish of a horse’s tail, the sweet smell of cattle and summer grass and the trails we wore down to dust, we keep this with us as we move through the season, grow tired of the heat and welcome the cool down.

And come January when the ground is white we will say to one another “Can you believe it was ever green out here?”

Then we will close our eyes and dream of a summer that held heat under our hats and sent it trickling down our backs.

Songs for home

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

I want to thank all of you for your support and words of encouragement regarding the loss of the old farmhouse last week. We are very fortunate to have been able to save most of our things and even more fortunate that we have another house in the works over the hill that we will be able to move into very soon thanks to the help of our wonderful friends and family.

In life we are given little nudges and reminders to slow down, breathe and re-evaluate. I truly believe this was one of those times and I am so glad we stayed quiet enough to listen.

Today I am thankful that my knees are sore from tiling the floor in the new house all weekend and that I’ve been wearing the same two tank tops and three pairs of pants for the last five days because my momma’s been washing all of our clothes. I am thankful for my father-in-law’s plumbing skills and for running water, for the forgiveness of summer weather and for the fact that my sister and brother-in-law spent their anniversary laying hard wood floor in our house.

I am thankful for the rice-krispie bars the neighbor made, for my Pop’s patience with the world as he spent an entire ten-hour day with me running around to home improvement stores and for the fact that he only used a few cuss words when we got home at midnight in the pouring rain only to get a huge trailer full of house supplies stuck in the muddy driveway.

I’m thankful that one of my biggest annoyances is that I can’t find my left riding boot.

I am thankful that I have memories that can never be destroyed and new ones waiting for us over the hill.

I’m thankful that I have a moment today to catch up on work and share with you a little glimpse into one of the most exciting things happening in my world these days–the creation of my new album, scheduled for release before summer comes to a close.

Take a sneak peek at the recording process and hear me talk about why I think this work is so timely.

Jessie Veeder talks about recording her new album with Makoche Studios

Because if I’ve learned anything in the past few years of making plans and moving around between the walls in that little old house on the ranch it’s that this place inspires me, feeds my soul and encourages me to share my story.

And as long as I can exist out here among the oak trees, barbed wire fences, pink gravel roads and clay buttes, no matter the walls that hold me, I will be forever grateful and forever inspired.

And I will always have a song for home.

Prairie Musicians Series: Jessie Veeder & Lonesome Willy
Prairie Public Television

Check out my new music website: www.jessieveedermusic.com to keep updated on the latest on the release and the performances.

Irreplaceable Things…

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

Sometimes in the middle of an ordinarily beautiful summer night, below a nearly full moon and among crickets singing their song into the darkness the world takes a moment to remind you that you are not in control.

We were reminded of this in the early morning hours of an ordinary Tuesday as we stood on the edge of the barnyard and watched our neighbors work to control the flames that were threatening to destroy a house that has been a fixture of memories on this landscape for well over 50 years.

As the smoke rolled from the walls and out the windows I kneeled among the things I was able to grab while we still had time–my guitar, my books of writing, my camera and photographs chronicling years of blessed living, pieces of me I could not bear to see dissolve in the heat of a disaster we were powerless to stop–and I knew this was that last night I would spend under that roof.

We weren’t ready to let go. We had plans for this house, plans that I have shared here to ensure many more years of popsicles on the front porch, canning wild berries in the tiny kitchen, waking to the sound of horses grazing in the pasture below us, windows open to the prairie breeze and watching the sunrise from the window above the kitchen sink.

But we’ve been reminded, once again, that nothing’s forever. That house where my father was raised, where my grandmother lived and died, where I put on Christmas performances with my cousins, fell in love, grew up and sighed a breath of relief when my new husband carried me over its threshold, held us close and reminded me that I can come home again.

That no matter how lost I might be, I can be found, out here among the wild grasses, red barn and sweet smell of horse hair.

And so I have been found. And thanks to the quick response of the rural volunteer fire department–our neighbors, local bankers, truck drivers, farmers and ranchers that transformed into heroes in the night–we did not have to watch that house burn to the ground. We were able to walk through its doors once again and bury our noses in the smoke-laced fabric of our world and make decisions on what to keep– our favorite sweater, our dining room table, a forgotten photograph–and most importantly, what to let go.

We are thankful for that.

And thankful for our community of friends and family who helped us sort through the rubble, made us dinner, poured us a strong drink, encouraged us to salvage the irreplaceable things (like the rocking horse that has been in our family for as long as that house has stood ) and told us everything was going to be alright…told us they’d be right over to help with paint the new house, put in the floors and get us ready to move in.

We are blessed. Unbelievably blessed.

So today I am thankful to kick through the rubble, to sort my clothes on the lawn, to make plans with my husband, take a trip to the lumberyard with my pops, curl up on my momma’s couch rest easy knowing that we can never lose everything.

Because we are worry and love, community and friends, sentiment and replaceable things.

We are us, we are exhausted and summer’s only so long.

We have a life to build out here.

We’re moving on.

I will leave the light on
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
August 17, 2011

To come down from the buttes after staying out a little too far past sundown only to see the lights of the barnyard illuminating the grass and the kitchen of the house glowing warmly through the windows, waiting for my return…

it means more to me than I can describe here.

I imagine the same sight greeting my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and my father. I imagine them feeling the same deep breath, the same overwhelming calm as they drove in from the fields, rode up to unsaddle a horse or strip off the layers from a hunt in the hills in the still of a late summer or autumn evening.

I imagine the smell of baked bread reaching them from the open windows or the smoke from a grilled steak waiting for them to sit down around the table, the door swinging open and the warmth of this old house whispering “this is home this is home this is home this is home…”

No matter how far you find yourself.

No matter the distance between you and these buttes.

No matter the time that has passed, the mistakes that you’ve made, the words you can’t take back, the pain you might hold onto, the life you might have found down the road or the love you might have lost here…

No matter.

Don’t worry.

This is home…

And I will leave the light on.

Pug: For Giveaway

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

When I’m out and about in the world–working, shopping, grabbing a drink with friends–there’s a common question people from all corners of my life make sure they stop to ask me. It isn’t “how ’bout that weather,” or “how’s the new house coming along?” (the answer is “slow” in case you’re wondering). No, it’s not even “why’s your hair weird?” or “where’s your husband?”

It’s “How’s the pug?”

Followed by “Any more run-ins with porcupines?”

And then “Does he still think he’s a cat?”

“Has he peed in your husband’s boot lately?”

“Is he still wandering around the countryside?”

And finally “Oh that dog, he makes me laugh.”

The damn pug. Everyone just loves him.

These days, as his behavior has moved further away from domestic lap dog and closer to wild hound I’m trying to figure out, despite all of the reasons I shouldn’t, why I don’t send that damn dog packing.

Because as I run through the answers to the questions it’s pretty evident that’s exactly what I should do.

I should just let him run away like the wild wind he thinks he is, tell him that the next time he hits the road, curly tail in the air, nose to the ground sniffing out which oil rig or neighbor has steaks on the grill, I should just leave him there to fend for himself.

Yeah.
I should.

I had this discussion with myself yesterday when a friend I work with in town popped in my office to tell me she had received a phone call.

About the pug.

See I hadn’t seen him ever since I pried him off of the couch a few days earlier and shoved him out the door to find a spot to poop.

Well apparently he likes a little privacy to do his business away from the house…like far away.

And apparently it takes him a while…or maybe he just gets distracted by things like butterflies, wandering coyotes, the herd of cattle up the road and, well, life in general.

Each time he goes missing I imagine him sitting shotgun in a big rig finally fulfilling his dream of traveling the country by highway, front paws up on the edge of the open window as he leans into the wind, letting it blow through is floppy ears sending the drool trailing off with the dust of the 18-wheels. I think of him looking over at the truck driver with the white beard, bald head and Harley Davidson t-shirt, and saying something like “Hey, thanks for picking me up man. I’ve been trying to get out of here for years. Life on the road…now this is livin'”

In my imagination the pug’s voice sounds like one that would come out of the lungs of a middle-aged biker who’s been smoking cigars and Marlboro Reds his entire life.

Anyway…it’d been a few days since I’d seen the damn dog, but I wasn’t concerned. Aside from the one recent episode where my momma was on her way home from a trip to the city and spotted a black dot out in the middle of our neighbor’s pasture nearly four miles away from home, the dog has generally been making his regular rounds. When I decide it might be time to get him back on his diet, I’ll get in the pickup and start my searching ritual: up to the oil site south of the house, then the one across the road. If he’s not there, I’ll check mom and dad’s. If he’s still MIA, he’s usually at the rig near the highway.

It’s getting ridiculous, but each time I arrive to load his fat ass into the pickup I have to spend a good ten to fifteen minutes talking to the guys about how awesome he is, how bad-ass he looks with one eye, how much fun they had with him and how they fed him T-bones and let him sleep in their campers with them that night.

No wonder the little bastard won’t stay home.

How can I compete with T-bones?

Anyway…back to yesterday. The pug was missing and I was starting to get a little concerned because he wasn’t in any of his usual locations. And the lab was home.

When the lab is home and the pug is not, that’s when things get hairy. The pug, left to his own devices, has the potential to go rogue and stay that way until someone comes looking for him. And he never calls to tell us how late he’ll be out.

But I decided I had reached an all-time low when I got a phone call about the bandit AT WORK!

This electrician who had been working on a site on the highway tracked me down to let me know that the little shithead had been hanging around the site for days (shithead might have been my word and not his) and I suddenly felt like a mother who’s kid had been sent to the principal’s office.

And I would have never thought to check there. The pug would have been missing forever, because Lord knows he wouldn’t have made his way home until he was certain there were no more steak dinners coming out of those campers.

So on my way home from work I got to make a pit stop to pick up the pug who pretended like he didn’t hear me when I called his name across the muddy field.

But when our eyes finally met he did do me the service of at least acting happy to see me. Like he suddenly remembered he had a previous life away from this construction site. A life that maybe wasn’t so bad after all…I mean, I do occasionally let him sleep on my favorite blanket and feed him leftover dinner scraps. Come on buddy, what more do you want from me?

But I guess I’ll keep him…

tied up in the yard with a “For Giveaway” sign tied around his neck.

You love him? Come get him!

Shit.

Riding Horses

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

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

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

And she remembers the good ones.

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

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

The way the sinking sunlight hits him just right.

How the grass sparkles under that sky.

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

riding horses.

Dancing.

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Sometimes my job as a writer brings me to stories I am not looking for, but grateful to have found.

I visited a small town yesterday in the center of my state. In the middle of a freshly planted corn fields and along the railroad tracks cattle grazed, a construction crew pounded nails into a new roof on a sleepy Main Street building and a group of community members gathered in a small diner, opened especially for my visit to learn about their town.

We sat around a rectangle table on diner chairs in the back of the restaurant. The room was full of local men and women who were there to talk about dairy farming and population decreases, rural living and 4-H programs, the weather and how kids these days don’t understand that chickens don’t have nuggets.

I wrote down their names and got snippets of their stories: the retired school teacher, the cook, the woman from Wisconsin, the fifth generation dairy farmer.

I thanked them for their time as they dispersed after our visit to the t-ball game down the road, to check the cattle, to cook dinner or lead a 4-H group.

But as I was rushing toward the door, checking my watch and calculating what time I would land in bed if I left now and stopped quickly at the grocery store in the big town along the way, I heard a voice say, “And one more thing…”

I turned around to find that voice attached to a man in a clean pressed shirt and suspenders, holding his white feed store hat with green trim in front of him as he spoke. It was the man who sat across from me during our interview. The man with kind eyes and the daughter who was a dairy farmer.

He had something more to tell me.

And this is what it was:

My first train ride out of here was when I was nineteen. Boy was that a ride! You hear how the train moves along the tracks, squeaking and bumping along? That’s how it was on the inside, riding along like that for days.
In those days the train came through here often to pick up passengers. It took me to the service.
The Korean War.

I anticipated his next thought and he caught me off guard when I noticed a bit of a sparkle in his eyes. He gripped his cap a little tighter. I leaned in.

He smiled big and broad and looked young as he told me…

I was lucky. They sent me to Germany and, well, my family is German. It was my second language. So boy did I have a time! I think I wore out my first pair of boots dancing.
I was a cook see, and in the evenings I would go out and, well, the girls, they asked you to dance. They did!

I was a little nervous at first, being there with all their men sitting along the bar. I asked them if they were sure, if there would be trouble, but they said go ahead and dance.
They wanted to sit and drink, see. The girls wanted to dance! And I was young and fit and I would dance.

I was lost there in that memory with him. I wanted to be those girls, I wanted him to show me his dance steps. I wanted to know him when his eyes were young.

Young, but not any more full of life than they were at that moment.

Oh, I just I loved it. I would dance all night.

With that he pulled his cap down over his gray hair. I thanked him for the story and he thanked me for the time. He held the door open for me and walked me to my car parked next to those railroad tracks, the steel lines disappearing in the distance a constant memory of the young man who took the train out of North Dakota and came home with boots worn from dancing.

The long way home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s nothing.

It’s everything.

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

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

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

The country church reaching up toward the sky.

A family of ducks swimming in reeds.

The sun sinking below the horizon.

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

Hearts more open.

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

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

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

happy to hear his tires hum along familiar roads…

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

And relieved to forget about the things we should do…

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

A good day to be the pug.

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Ahhh, Monday.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little scared of the days of the week that are to follow. The hustle and bustle that comes with the short North Dakota summers is now officially in full swing. Yeah, we’ve gotta cram it all in before the snow flies again.

And all I want to do is lay next to this guy in the sunshine and soak it all in.

Monday. I have been dreading you and all of your promises about grocery shopping, finishing the laundry, meeting deadlines, cleaning up those dishes that have been sitting over the weekend, returning phone calls, sorting through emails, attending meetings, planning events and being forty-seven places at once with a homemade dessert.

Monday, I’m not ready for you yet.

It’s cloudy, the blue birds are chirping outside my window and my bed and the coffee are still warm.

Sigh.

Days like these remind me of when I was a teenager moping around with that little gray cloud of dread over my head about a chore I didn’t want to do or a class I didn’t want to attend. I remember looking at my cat stretched out on the couch in a spot of sun and wishing I was her…with no responsibilities, no chores, no dishwasher to unload, bed to make or homework to fuss over…nothing to concern herself with but sleeping and eating and pooping and lounging.

At these moments in my life I experienced the same jealousy toward anything with fur and four feet. The dogs and the simple lives they lead. No deadlines or term-papers.

The cows grazing on the hilltop, blissfully unaware of the life and death situations humans had to deal with regarding what to wear to prom or failing your drivers license test.

I wondered if horses felt humiliation. I figured they didn’t.

And I figured the grass and grain would suit me just fine if it meant I didn’t have to worry about being the only teenager in the world to never gain the legal qualifications to drive a car.

I wanted to lounge.

I wanted to graze.

I wanted to stand on a hilltop and let the breeze blow through my mane, my only concern to be switching my tail to keep the flies off of my back.

And it seems today I am regressing. Yes, facing this over-scheduled week I am once again experiencing those pangs of jealousy toward my furry companions who’s only chore is to walk past the food dish a few times to check to see if it’s full.

I want to snore away the morning like the lab at my feet.

I don’t want to make dessert.

I don’t want to do the dishes.

I don’t want to worry about supper or the business of picking out pants…or shoes.

Dogs don’t wear shoes.

And Pugs don’t have to make Jello Salad. Pugs hate Jello Salad.

And meetings.

And showers.
Today would be good day to be the pug…

When it pours…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny how a good rain can cleanse us, even when we watch it from the other side of the windows or come to know it after the calm has set in.

I love this land.

I love what exists here.

The changing and unexpected beauty cannot be recreated, not matter the repetition of the seasons.

I find I’m manic about being a witness to its changes, running out to be a part of it…

to be a part of the down pour…

Because when it rains I feel there’s something up there responsible for this…

When it rains, when it pours…I believe.

Lessons in life and death from a ranch kid…

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

If you were to sit me down for coffee, serve me up a piece of pie and ask me what it is that appeals to me about ranch living I would tilt my head to the side, look up at your ceiling and come up with a few things.

The first would be the quiet and the beautiful secluded spaces I can visit at will.

The second would be the animals.

I would probably go back and forth then, trying to really distinguish which aspect is truly my favorite before coming to the conclusion they go hand in hand really. I mean, you need the wide open space to keep animals healthy and fit and roaming. The rolling hills full of grasses and trees and the winding creek bed are perfect for cattle and horses (and goats and sheep and llamas, you know, if you were into that sort of thing). And I truly believe if a dog were allowed the choice of prime real-estate to make his home he would pick your farm or ranch over the city sidewalks. Yes, even that little fluff ball you keep in your purse would agree. I mean, given the choice wouldn’t you prefer to poop in private?

But for all that ranch living is to the animals: an endless adventure for their noses, a smorgasbord of the best grazing, a giant park with countless trees to pee on, a dynamic hunting grounds, it’s also something entirely different…

Dangerous.

Dangerous and full of lessons about life and death.

And as a young ranch kid growing up out here I like to think that we learned about the circle of life a bit earlier than most. Ranching mom and dads, in my experience, don’t tend to sugarcoat things like this for their young ones. Our lessons about where babies come from were caught while helping Pops check cows and being brave enough to ask what the deal was with the cow, ummm, well, giving that bull a piggyback ride…

We learned about birth by sitting on a hill-top in the early spring to watch a cow deliver a calf in the warmest, most protected place she could find. We absorbed what instinct meant as we witnessed her lick her baby clean as it awkwardly struggled to get to its feet, wobbling on knocked knees for a few hours until it got the hang of his hooves standing on the surface of the big, wide world.

That calf needed to stand to live. It needed to move with his momma as she ate, so he could eat. He needed to tap into what it meant to be a calf and who he needed to stick by in order to survive out here where there are spring ice storms, slick mud, unexpected temperature drops and coyotes.

And so yes, I learned about death out there in the pastures as well. I learned that it isn’t always fair, that sometimes the weak don’t have the luxury of protection, sometimes mommas don’t possess that instinct, and sometimes nature is more powerful than the will to stay alive.

Oh, I learned these lessons and I accepted them, but my heart broke just the same each time the tough ones made their way into my life. I remember saying silent little prayers to myself when Pops would have to bring a calf in from the cold, feed it and warm it in the basement only to delay the inevitable. And I remember my heart breaking when my favorite horse grew so old and weak that one day I woke up to find she didn’t make the trek to the barnyard.

I remember the untimely death of the puppy I rescued and the countless barn cats that didn’t have the chance to make it to old age.

As a little girl I wondered if these things got easier as you got older. I wondered if your heart got harder or you got braver as you grew taller.

Then I would watch my Pops work into the night to help a young cow deliver her first baby safely. I was a mouse in the corner as he tube-fed a calf clinging to life. I was a witness to the despair when he found his best horse bleeding and broken out in the pasture. I saw how his eyes dropped, how he shook his head and paused for a moment before sucking in breath, exhaling and moving on.

And I understood.