Tag Archives: writing

Tiny little miracles (and some other things)

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I went out yesterday morning to feed some babies. It was the first time the sun appeared after a few days of rain and it was fresh and crisp and lovely all around.

I had a major amount of work to do in the house. Like piles of notes and phone calls to make and stories to write. That’s the thing about working from home, when you’re home, that work waves to you all uppity like from that little nook of a desk that sits in the middle of your house. You can’t escape it, you know, unless you wander off.

So I wandered, me and big brown dog. (The pug? So glad you asked. He was snoring on the couch inside, avoiding mornings like the plague is his thing.)

Then I said  to myself: “Self, you’ve got time. This is why you live here. To feed the animals and spray the weeds and unload the dishwasher and avoid the laundry and ride some horses and wander. There might be something in there that says write and be productive and make a living, but I can’t be sure right now…oh and look, how convenient, I have my camera with me! How did that happen? I think I’ll just climb up this little knob and maybe I can find something to photograph seeing as things are all showered up and sparkly.”

So sparkly.

I like sparkly.

I wasn’t expecting anything but a couple bluebells, some horse poop, maybe a dried up crocus or two and a little time to clear my head, but as soon as I hit the top of the first butte, BAM!

It’s wildflower season.


I think we’ve been over my wildflower love affair before so you will have to forgive me as I revel in my obsession and breathe in the colors I’ve been waiting for all winter, the colors I could only find briefly in the sky that touched the white buttes on clear evenings.

I love that sky and I’ll see it again someday, but you’ll have to forgive the fact that all I desire is to put my nose to the ground for a few weeks, to poke around through the tall grass, kick the mushrooms, smell those soft petals and take them home for my kitchen table.

You’ll have to forgive all the photos of flowers that will be covering these pages during this very fleeting time in this very fussy climate. Because I am simply amazed, year after year, that as soon as the ground thaws out a garden that no human person planted just appears out of all of that clay and mud and poop and rocks.

Forgive me, yes. Forgive my amazement and overt enthusiasm for tiny little miracles like this…

and this…

and these…

Because who wouldn’t be excited about their own personal floral shop, a small offering given to us out here for enduring all of this snow and rain.

Gifts like the smell of sweet peas on your kitchen table that make a deadline a little more attainable, something that the dried up Glade plugin that has been sitting in my outlet for months has never fully achieved.

So thank you for taking this little wander with me. I tell ya there is a lot more where that came from, but I’ll try to restrain myself  to ensure that you get some of the other exciting news from the ranch. Important things like:

  • it’s wood-tick season
  • the pug currently still has all of his limbs in spite of his love for picking on things bigger and far more dangerous than him
  • Cowboy has been grilling the most delicious cuts of beef and venison, reminding me every day that I made the right choice in husband (even if he doesn’t do the dishes)
  • it has been too wet to get the cows home and
  • I am making to do lists for little sister to ignore when she comes to live at the ranch for the summer.

Oh, and I’m playing music with pops tomorrow evening in Medora at the Roughriders Hotel–Theodore’s Dining Room. I will also be on Prairie Public Radio today at 3:00 (CT) to talk about being a part of Dakota Air: The Radio Show  at the Burning Hills Amphitheater coming up on June 4th. Due to flooding in the Medora area, this show has been rescheduled for September 17th! But I’ll still be chatting on the radio, so catch it if you can online or on your dial. They’ll be playing some of my tunes and I’ll be talking about new music, old music and what’s to come.

More details on my upcoming appearances:

Thanks for all your support. Here, I picked these for you:

Hope to see you out west soon!

Growing up North Dakotan

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This Sunday I will be in Fargo participating in a panel discussion for the Why Radio Show.

The subject?

Growing up North Dakotan.

I will take a seat next to individuals who have a handle on their identities, who may have wandered, explored their world and asked the questions that need to be asked. And one of those questions is “What does it really mean to be North Dakotan?”

As a woman whose heart has been planted solid here, but whose feet and mind have wandered with music and education and the winding road, I have been asked this question in many forms. It’s like asking what it means to you to hold your last name, or wear your grandmother’s ring, or to lay down next to the man you love every night.

How do you answer it?

Not everyone can speak about it. Not everyone can explain.

Not everyone needs to.

I was talking to my good friend  on the phone yesterday afternoon. As I stood right in the middle of our home state she was in Oregon, a place on the map she picked with her husband. She had been there for nearly three months after years of college and graduate school they were looking for adventure, new opportunities, valuable experience before they settled into their lives. She is loving the ocean and the coffee shops and the eclectic culture. She loves the rain and the flowers and the new scenery and the people.

But you know what she said to me between breaths about her plans and her new apartment and the photography show she is putting together?

She is missing something.

“I miss that prairie. I want to lay in my grass and smell my lilacs and plant my garden and breathe in that sky. I miss my home.”

Home.

Her home.

Who are these people who hold the scent of the dirt, the push of the wind, the endless winters, the wheat fields, the small town in such regard?

Who tends their grandmother’s garden, brings in the baby calves into the basement in the dead of a blizzard? Who works the teller line and serves your morning coffee? Who has owned the Implement Dealership for years?

And who roams all over the world for years on end, traveling over seas to live and work in foreign languages, who are leaders of cities and  major corporations? Who serves in the military,  climbs mountains and rafts raging rivers only to find themselves pulled back again, to be haunted by the memories of sunsets and 4th of July Celebrations no matter how how far they have traveled or how long they’ve been gone.

Who is North Dakota?

We are rural route roads, beat-up mailboxes and dusty school bus seats. We are rides in the combine, summer sausage sandwiches, a thermos of coffee washed down with warm lemonade and  faces black with dirt after a hot August day.

Two miles to a gravel road on the edge of town and we are freedom, our father’s truck, twelve years old behind the steering wheel.

We are first loves and last loves and forever loves found on those backroads at night, on front porches, in the backseats of cars and under a blanket shared in the stands at a football game.

We are the stars that light up the endless sky at night, family farms, four generations of the same recipe on Christmas Eve.

The barnyard light.

We are white wood prairie churches, our mother’s voice quietly singing the hymns, jello with suspended vegetables and mayonnaise casseroles waiting for us in the basement when the service is through.

We are wet clay caked to cowboy boots, the black soil of the valley, the stoplight in town.

High heels and business suits, running shoes and hoping things will stay the same…knowing that they need to change.

Number crunchers, songs that must be sung, books that must be written.

Snake bitten.

We scream for sun and pray for rain and push the river from our doors. We’ve been here before.

Chokecherry jam, misquote bites, country fairs, one station on the radio, too young for our first beer, FFA and 4-H steers. Too young to leave here.

We are race car tracks and power lines, hockey rinks and barbed fence wire.

Drilling rigs and endless fields of wheat…September heat.

We are bicycle tires in the middle of Main Street, fireworks in May, popsicles and swimming pools and a stop at the Tastee Freeze please. Rodeos and American Legion, football heroes, lead singers in the band, the ferris wheel in town.

Pow wows, three legged races, familiar faces, dances in the street.

Fishing in the creek.

We are “Pete’s kid,” “Edie’s granddaughter,” and  “Your mother wants you home right away!”

We are pushed to go and pulled to stay, we are leaving this place as soon as we’re grown.

And we are the sky we can’t explain, predictably unpredictable, colorful and full of rage and gentle hope that it’s all ok.

We’re the wind, relentless.

The snow, endless.

Sharp and hard and steadfast and certain like the winter and the change in weather.

We are the dirt under our nails, our wind tangled hair, the cattails and bluebells and big white tail deer.

We are all of these things that make up a home, but home is not ours to take.

It is in us and we have been claimed.

Join me for:

“Growing Up North Dakotan”

A panel discussion featuring Joshua Boschee, Kathryn Joyce, Jessie Veeder Scofield, and others. Moderated by WHY? host Jack Russell Weinstein

Prairie Public Television Studio
5-7 pm
207 5th Street North
Fargo, ND
Facebook Event 

The event is free. Come be a part of the audience, ask questions, make comments, and engage philosophically with this most important issue.

If you can’t be in Fargo, please share with me here how North Dakota has claimed you.

Back in the saddle

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8

Ahhh,  finally. I got my butt back in the saddle this Sunday for the first time this spring.

Well, technically this was my inaugural ride:

(Two butts in the saddle, always better than one.)

But after the babies left husband and I saddled up the sorrels and took off over the greening landscape to really test things out.


Really, my first ride of the spring should have happened a month or two ago, but given unpredictable weather, skies spitting snow and writing deadlines the horses got to stay out to pasture for a few extra weeks.

I like to think they were itching to go too, but their big bellies and lazy attitudes gave me the impression they were just fine with procrastinating the inevitable.

Ahh, the first ride. It’s something we wait for all winter long as the snow drifts pile up at our door. We try to remember it ever being green. We talk about all of the work we will get done when it thaws. We can’t wait to rummage through the tack, brush the winter hair off the horses and slip the them some grain to coax them in and see which one has the most spunk and, you know, who might hit the ground for lack of practice in both human and beast.

But no matter the months it seems to come back easy every year. The cinch gets tightened, the horse grunts and swings his head around, I pull up my pants, put my toe in the stirrup and launch my butt into position.

Deep breath in, I give my ride a bit of a kick to ease him out of the barnyard. This time around it took a bit of convincing, but soon we were off, right behind husband who has been oiling and training the stirrups of his saddle in the basement of the house all winter. Finally he got to test it out.

Finally he got to climb to the top of that hill and feel the breeze on his skin, smell the sweet grass, feel the sway of the horse’s back beneath him, test out a trot and then a lope along old cow trails and through the clay buttes…

down the draws to his last elk spotting, just past a bull snake basking himself in the sun, quick to escape to the nearest gopher hole.

Finally I was able to relax and fall in line with the rhythm of my horse’s pace, feel the sun on my shoulders…

be reminded of how the land rises and falls when the weight of winter has been lifted, take in the view of the most handsome man…

smell the sweet sweat of my favorite animal, hollar at the dogs who follow too close and be exactly where I wanted to be.

Yes, no matter what we say during the winter months, the promises we make to ourselves to get the work done, to check the fences and cut trails, the first ride of the season is nothing but a meandering, soul rejuvenating, deep breath in, unpredictable, blissed-out therapy session with just a little edge, you know, because of that hitting the ground thing.

The first ride–a necessity for sanity and a sweet, sweet success (and I am happy to report no butts met the ground this time around).

Such a success that nobody here gave a second thought to picking ticks off our jeans the rest of the night.

Wish you were there with me. I promise you wouldn’t have had issues with the ticks…or the snake. That’s just how heavenly it was.

Ah well, maybe next time.

Until then, go find your blissed-out place, you know, the one that confirms a change in season, and bask in it…

A few minor bruises and a bursting heart

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First things first:

Sigh.

Happy Monday. You’re welcome

Second:

Thank you all for showing your compassion for my hereditary malfunction of succumbing with force to the laws of gravity day after day. I have to say your stories of cow trampling, stair plummeting, dock dunking, face planting in church and falling off of your tall shoes had me laughing out loud.

Which brings me to the second thing:

Bwahahahahahahahah!

ahhhhhhhhh!

Your willingness to share your embarrassing mishaps with me made me love you more than ever. I’ve always felt that life and all the bruises and bumps that come with it are a bit easier if we can just laugh at the whole damn spectacle.

Especially when that spectacle happens to be looking at you in the mirror. Like Cindy said after spilling her embarrassing “sleeping leg face plant” story, maybe public embarrassment is a way of getting rid of bad Karma. If that’s so we should all be evened up in that department….

In his next life he's guaranteed a wolf body at the very least...

So, it was a tough decision, but given the sheer volume of Annika’s misfortunes, mishaps, smashed limbs and near misses with the holiday fruit salad I am quite certain she is destined to be reincarnated as the Queen of England for all of the suffering she has encountered here in this life. Yup. That and the fact that she had the good humor to let her college roommates tally her falls, flubs and skinned knees make her the winner!

Congrats Annika. Your stories made me feel like the lead ballerina in Swan Lake, a ballerina who came out of the other end of a ranch weekend relatively unscathed…except for the bruise above my eye as a result of a three-year-old’s attempt at fetch with the lab.

Oh, and that scraped heel from a horse spooked by husband’s branch-breaking project.

See him back there, so helpful and unaware of the dangers of loud noises...

But you know what? I barely even felt any of it. Because I was high on the sweet spring air, the horse hair, the bluebells and all of the family and kids and babies that came out to visit us this weekend.

My heart was full and at risk of being the third body part to split or bruise, almost tearing at the seams there was so much joy in there.

Because look at this…

And this…


Don’t turn away yet…

Yeah, you crying? Not yet? Well this should send you over the top…

I’ll wait while you get a tissue…

You ok? Ok.

Yes, this weekend the barnyard was filled with squeals and screams and laughter and tiny little footprints. It was bliss. And it helped confirm my belief in the importance of keeping and sharing a place like this with others, especially the others that stand under three feet tall.

Because there’s something about kids and animals that make people like me believe in impossible things…like maybe those two species, kids and beasts, can actually talk to each other…

The innocence, the trust, the unconditional love and wonder they hold for one another makes me feel like maybe, before we could remember, before we grew up and got all that noise in our heads, all our worries and plans for the future, before we forgot what it was like, before we thought we had so much to say, maybe we could really listen.

Maybe that’s why kids take so well to the farm, why they squeal with delight at the baby calves and reach so willingly to touch the nose of a horse. Maybe that’s why they suggest buying baby chicks and piglets and beg for a puppy. Because they belong here. Together.

Now all’s quiet again at the ranch and those babies have gone home to their beds. But I like to think they dream about horses. I like to think in their dreams they are out there with the dogs, running and rolling in the green grass, laughing and talking to each other.

I like to think those kids left a little piece of their heart here knowing that they can come back and get it anytime they want.

Sigh.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get down to the barnyard.  Now that the dust has settled on the weekend, I swear I can hear those horses calling my name.

Accident Prone (Prize Alert!)

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31

In honor of Friday the 13th I would like to take a moment to embrace a side of me that I have not appropriately opened up about. And I am ashamed of this, because anyone who knows me personally will know that this part of me is worth mentioning, if for no other reason than to protect the innocent souls around me.

Deep breath in….now let it out….sigh…

Some days life is tough for me.

Yes.

And by tough, I mean literally painful.

Because I am a klutz.

Accident prone.

A magnet for small disasters.

A target for falling things.

like bird poop...

This is a quality that is so much a part of me I have began to embrace it and use it when asked to describe myself:

“Who am I? Well I am so glad you asked: I am a wild haired, overly friendly over sharer spaz of a woman who is inclined to burst out in song when simply regular talking would do just fine. I often have big ideas that require more muscles than I currently posses attached to arms and legs that are more often that not, flailing. I lack the attention to detail needed to glide through this ranch-world unscathed by stomping horse hooves, alarmingly uneven ground, muddy creek beds, giant bulls and rodents with wings that prefer to fly right for my head when there are a million miles of open sky available to them. Oh, and chips and salsa are still my favorite food groups even though the food group almost choked me to death in a public space known as a restaurant, just to make sure I was good and embarrassed (Sweet Martha thank goodness for Mr. Heimlic and his maneuver). Oh, and I got my big nose from my dad…and a flying sled and an unruly beer bottle in case you were wondering….thanks so much for asking, I think l’ll go inside now.”

I mean, let’s get real here. How many women have been smacked in the head by a 15 foot 2×6 board that came screaming at 30 mph out of what appeared to be thin air one day…only to fall through the floor of a barn the next?

Danger, lurking around every corner

How many people have actually bent over to pick up a napkin off of the floor only to smoke their head so hard on a kitchen table (a table that has been in the same place for 15 + years so there should be no surprises) that guests fell silent and actually witnessed those little cartoon bluebirds circling around her head?

Do you know any proper lady who has dolled up, put on her big girl shoes and attempted a few hours in a dress only to step out of the dining booth and fall directly on her face, flashing her entire rear-end to a bar full of strange men?

How many best friends have to regularly say “Really? Did that just happen? Are you ok?”

How many times can a dad rush his young daughter to the emergency room for a crushed foot from jumping the wrong way off of a horse, a snapped ligament for landing the wrong way while jumping, er, falling off a small cliff, a smashed finger from getting her limb stuck between a 2,000 pound bull and a metal post, or a disjointed wrist from a unfortunate decision to heroically save herself from a runaway horse?

Note to self...bridal necessary.

How many times can a husband shake his head at his wife before his head actually falls off and he turns from bystander to victim?

How many people do you know who have actually hit themselves in the head with a hammer, measure the time they have spent in casts in years and were nicknamed “Tuck and Roll” in seventh grade by those who are supposed to love them most?

How many?

Well, I know one who happens to share my name and the same bruise on my left knee and permanent and distinct bump on my nose.

"Hhiiiyaaa gguuyyyssaaa!!"

Um, I just need one moment here….

“Bwwwaaaaa ahhh  ahhhh…sob…sniff…sniff…whimper…”

Sigh.

Ok, enough of this confession. Life is tough out here for animals and humans like me. Come to think of it I have a couple dozen stories I could tell you about witnessing my pops in similar life-threatening situations (i.e.: welding his polyester shirt to to his arm, getting clotheslined by a barbed wire fence and one or two cow trampling incidents) so perhaps his giant nose and frizzy hair weren’t the only qualities he passed down to me.

Thanks a million pops.

"Why you're welcome dear daughter..."

But I decided a long time ago that I can’t live in fear about the next mishap, bruise, concussion, bloody nose or knee. Life’s too short and there’s too much to do…

So I took the pug’s lead and invested in some safety glasses:

Because we can’t afford to lose another eye on this place.

And in honor of this cryptic type holiday, the one straight out of those horror movies I refuse to subject myself to for fear of bed wetting, I want to hear from you.

Tell me about an embarrassing blunder or injury. Give me your best accident prone tale and the one that makes me feel better about myself and the fact that I am gracefully challenged can chose from the following 8×10 matted metallic prints to be sent to your door.

Photo #1:

Photo #2

Photo #3

Because I like to celebrate our shortcomings 🙂

Oh, and don’t forget to visit the “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” Facebook page and hit “like” for more ranch updates, contests and photos.

Love you and happy accidents everyone!

Dear Brown Dog…

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Dear big brown dog with the fat tail that sweeps objects off of the coffee table with one swish,

I  know you don’t remember this, but at one time your nose didn’t even reach to that table in the center of our small living room, not even to grab the last of a sandwich or a piece of leftover popcorn on movie night. I know you don’t recall how I used to take you along in my car when you were so small I had to lift you onto the seat.

Because you’re a dog, and you live for the day, your memory doesn’t reach to the place where it first began, the first month into my marriage to a man I’ve known since I was a little girl. I wanted you to have him. I wanted you to be there at his side for hunting trips, drives to the big lake with a fishing pole, evening walks to the dam with a stick and nights when I was hundreds of miles away singing for my supper.

I wanted him to be yours, so I found you and brought you home to him and he gave you a name and something to chew on. And somewhere in between the pounds and pounds of kibble, the ever expanding collars, the jogs with your long pink tongue drooping out of your jowls, paws that slapped the earth with increasing force on your way to greet me at the car, you scooched on into my heart and became an essential part of a small family that only existed for one month without you.

I know you loved the ranch and the wide open spaces, the endless mud that the creek supplies and the water in the dam that never lets you down–all the smells and trails to follow, all the poop to roll in. I know you love it out here. And I know I’ve never properly thanked you, big brown dog, for giving all that up to sit in the passenger seat of the car on my 24th birthday as I drove us hundreds of miles away from the only home you ever knew, leaving my new husband behind to pack up the rest of our things. I needed you as we searched for a place to call home.  I needed you there as I drove into the mountain town late at night and unlocked the door to a lonely apartment, unpacked my bags and rolled out my sleeping bag to lay on the floor.

I needed you to sleep right next to me. To calm my nerves.

And you did.

You always do.

Thank you for your enthusiasm and companionship we found on new trails and sidewalks, you attached to the leash, attached to my arm.

Thank you for waiting patiently in the small backyard, sprawling out in the sunshine or hunkering down in the snow and rain until I returned home from work and husband from school. 

Thanks for wagging your tail and helping turn a bad day a bit better.

Thank you for showing remorse and regret when we left you in that apartment on a rainy night only to come home to find that you had shredded my favorite feather pillow to the point of no return.

It’s three years later and I think I still have feathers in my hair, but I forgive you.

I forgive you because you destroyed my pillow, but you have never touched my shoes.

I forgive you because you follow me, blindly faithful, even when I beg not to be followed…you follow.

And you are always eager to sit down next to me in the passenger seat–you do so time and time again. When I loaded you up and drove you back toward home, so close you could smell it, you didn’t run the rest of the way when we stopped to repair an old house, to work, to think on how we might get there in the end….

You waited as we worked it out. You nudged my dirty hands as I held my head and helped soak some of those tears up on your snout.

You cleaned up the pieces of burnt chicken that fell on the floor and went outside to wait with a stick, just in case I had the time today. Just in case I felt better. Just in case you could convince me that a little fetch fixes most things.

Thank you big brown dog for being right. Thank you for your perseverance.

And thank you for holding on to hope that someday we would bring you back here for good, back to the land of porcupines and wood ticks and water tanks and every specimen of bird just waiting to be chased.

But most of all, thank you for not running away, disowning me, howling in protest or indulging in a late night snack when I wasn’t looking, after, to your horror and in a complete moment of weakness, hubby brought this home to be mine.

And he began taking over.

And chewing on the shoes you always stayed away from. And eating your food, laying in your bed, hiding your bones in between the couch cushions and worst of all, stealing your sticks after biting your hocks during a game of fetch.

Thanks for not eating him when he does that.

I really appreciate it.

Because big brown dog with the fat tail that clears the coffee table with one swoop, you were meant to come into my life to take care of the man I love, to be his and he yours and walk off into the sunsets on hunting trips like a scene in one of those sportsman calendars.

But you could not be fooled, not by your name, not by your breeding, not by a small, black, one eyed monster biting your heals…

No matter what they say, from the very beginning,

on into the middle…

and until the end…

I’m yours.

With love,

The woman who feeds you

She chose us

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I like to imagine my mother before I knew her–before she became a mom for the first time to my big sister and wife to my father. I like to imagine her long straight hair, jeans that hugged her ballerina legs, her high heels clicking along the pavement on her way to a job she was damn good at, her tan skin on elegant arms that opened out wide to the world.

Because it was those open arms that brought me into my world. A world with gravel roads, cattle grazing in the yard, clay buttes, children on horses and neighbors who lived miles a way. A world I am certain this beauty queen who used to twirl and spin in satin dresses on stages never pictured herself in.

I like to imagine her this way, young and in love and willing to sacrifice the life between city streets, the life she was familiar with, for a man in a band with wild, black hair wearing a suit with cowboy boots and looking displaced in that city where they met–ready to bust out at the polyester seams, saddle his horse and ride out on the interstate toward home.

I like to imagine him, my father before he was my father, enamored  by this woman with quiet confidence, natural beauty and an aversion to practical shoes. A woman who was like no other woman he had ever met, who was fine on her own raising a beautiful daughter, but might be convinced, if treated with the kindness and respect that she deserved, to go with him.

Go with him to live in this wild space, a space that I imagine has always been under appreciative of a woman so refined and polished and poised. A space that required more practical shoes.

I like to picture that she pulled on her boots and listened to her new husband’s dreams of cattle and horses while she searched for work, taught dance classes in the nearby small town, had two more daughters and raised them in a landscape so far from the sidewalks and movie theaters and restaurants of her youth.

But she never complained. At least I have never heard it. And out here surrounded by snakes and trees and creeks and buttes and big blue sky my mother watched her daughters grow and get their hands dirty and tangle their fuzzy hair in the wind. She cheered them on at small town rodeos, tended to broken arms, made makeshift habitats for pet turtles in her roasting pan, gave advice on cheerleading moves, helped with 4-H projects and bought them pretty shoes, no matter the dirt and mud they insisted on dragging into the house on our boots.

And while she drove one with ballerina aspirations to lessons 75 miles away, sent one to ride horses and sing her songs on stage and  scheduled the other for basketball and volleyball camps around the state, I imagine her grabbing little pieces of her heart and spirit and handing them quietly off to her daughters…

Her pointed toes, blue eyes, poise, gentle nature and quiet beauty slipped to her oldest in her mug filled with hot chocolate on her way out the door.

The honesty, determination, quick wit, strength and social graces that exist within my mother flew out of her mouth and attached to her youngest during an argument about boyfriends or clothes or parties with friends.

And to her middle daughter, a daughter who in her younger days was convinced that she had nothing in common with the woman who gave birth to her, she gave a gift of gentle touches, encouragement, belief in wild dreams and understanding of untamed emotions. But most of all her sacrifice, her perseverance, tolerance and acceptance of a world she had to grow to understand and appreciate has been her greatest gift to me…the gift of a home on the landscape I will always belong to.

That, and an affection for impractical shoes.

But for all that she’s given, all of the sacrifices she has made through winters at the ranch that seemed to have lasted years, through snakes and skunks making their way into her home, through thankless jobs, burned tuna casseroles, drought and dust storms, drained bank accounts and children who just won’t listen, my mother has held on to the best parts of herself:

The beauty queen parts, the wine connoisseur, hilarious loon interpreter and graceful selflessness parts. The life of the party, the fashionista, giver of the most thoughtful gifts, Christmas loving, sun seeker, tasteful, best friend in the world parts. The big sister, the caring daughter, the understanding wife parts. The organized and impeccably clean and always prepared (even when 30 miles away from the nearest grocery store) parts.

The parts of her that have always known what is best for her family. Best for her daughters.

So, yes, I like to imagine my mother before I knew her, before she was my mother. I like to imagine her with all of that love to give, all of that joy, all of those dreams and talents with the world at her delicate fingertips.

And then give thanks that she chose this life. Of all of the things and people she could have belonged to, all of the places she could have laid her heart down, she chose to lay it  here.

She chose us.

And we are the luckiest.

Happy Mother’s Day momma.

Love you as wide as this prairie sky we live under…as wide as your arms reach.

Momentum

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Momentum. Forward motion. Moving.

I have been thinking about the act quite a bit lately as I have been guiding my car through back roads and highways, my feet along cattle trails and off to cut my own path.  The act of moving forward, in any capacity, whether it’s walking, riding or driving, is what I envision the stream of consciousness to look like: sweaty, breathing, flushed, meandering or running in a straight line following a bird, a path, a rainbow or nothing in particular.

Because there is something about covering ground that propels not only your body, but your mind. It frees it up a bit, opens it. And even when there is somewhere else to be, a dot at the end of the map, a destination, there is something about the space between point A and point B that takes on a life of its own entirely–the space where you can’t go anywhere but forward. Where time ticks away with the miles.

I drove across the state on Tuesday. 350 or so miles from the northeast corner to west. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the wind was blowing across the flat landscape. The road I was following was completely unfamiliar to me as I headed in the direction of home. I had my radio blaring familiar music, music that I could sing along with and softly  I mumbled through words I have forgotten only to crescendo as I was reminded of the ones I always knew. I rolled down the windows. I sipped coffee. I adjusted and readjusted my visor and my sunglasses. I put a stick of gum in my mouth.

My mind wandered and I found myself back on all of the unfamiliar roads I have traveled during the time I was on the road with work and music. In pieces those moments flashed in and out of my memory–the toll booths on my way from Fargo to Chicago in the early daylight hours, my eyes heavy from the unexpected miles.  The long stretches of yellow lines on the interstate in Kansas. The blacktop backroads on my way to a small Wisconsin college town. The bridges that confused me in Green Bay. The antelope infested stretch in South Dakota. The mountains that unexpectedly jutted out as I hit Boise. The white-out road that welcomed me home to North Dakota and forced me to spend one spring night in my car along the interstate.

While I remembered parts of my life that weren’t significant enough to make it out of my mouth and into stories to friends and family, the miles carried me forward and turned me onto a highway I have taken home hundreds of times. And while I sped between its straight lines it was as if someone was playing DJ and handpicking the soundtrack that came through the car speakers and into my conscious to help me replay the events I moved away from and back into during the time I spent on the pavement that stretched out in front of me. Pavement I haven’t been on for years. The songs and the road and the setting sun bounced off of my aviator glasses as I thought of beer, coffeehouse gigs, sidewalks in my college town, movie theatre trips to pass the time, crying from pure loneliness, a future naively hopeful and wanting so bad to be somewhere else.

My tires hummed along as I watched the sun dip down a little further, changing from gold to pink to red and I thought about the idea of wishing to be gone. How I used to exist in that thought, in that wish, so passionately. Driving toward the horizon I suddenly felt a little uneasy, like I needed to begin constructing plans for what was next. That I couldn’t just move through the miles thinking about what could have been, but concentrate on what is now and what could be so great.

I started constructing plans for what was next. Ideas passed through my mind like a slide show, progressing with each mile marker, playing themselves out as the sky turned from red to black and headlights flashed in my eyes. But by the time the landscape started to roll a bit, after I crossed the big lake and the road began to wind the unease calmed and I settled into my thoughts, sorted them out in my head, planted some and let others fly away when I flung open the doors of my car to breathe in the familiar air of the ranch–wet grass and dirt and horse hair.

When my husband and I moved to the ranch when we were first married, we weren’t ready to be here. We weren’t ready to plant our lives. We had more to see, more to do and be. We didn’t understand yet that we did not have to hang up our wings to exist on this landscape.

And the best thing we could do for ourselves make the decision to leave. Because time was always something we understood. Time and the knowledge that only we have the power to change the way we feel, the way we live.

So we left. That dream we had since we were twelve or thirteen was staring us in the face, but our  arms weren’t open, so we left it there, alone.

To know that you can always move, to know that you have an option of a road, an option of your feet to take you where you don’t even know you need to go is one of the greatest freedoms.  That is what my husband taught me.

That is what we taught each other.

That we can always move. That we have hands to hold and feet and roads that are there to lead us anywhere we want to go.

And those hands, those feet, that longing to fly, those same roads brought us back here. When we were ready. When we understood that sometimes freedom isn’t always about leaving…

sometimes freedom is choosing to stay.

The Queen of the Barnyard

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I have added a new task to my morning routine at the ranch. Yes, while the world was watching a beautiful woman turn into a princess this morning, I was wiping my eye crusties, pulling on my vest and muck boots and heading out to the barn to play momma to two drooly, stinky, snotty, lovable, furry babies.

Oh, it’s a slightly less glamorous gig than what that princess on TV will face in her life…a few less diamonds, a lot more snot, but simply another day in the life of the Queen of the Barnyard.

Queen of the Barnyard. That’s me.

Yes, I received my crown and the important and necessary job of keeping these babies alive and growing up big and strong when our neighbor up the hill, who has been calving during one of the most treacherous, snowy, cold and wet springs in years, found these babies abandoned in the mayhem of the spring blizzards.

Our neighbor is one of those ranchers who has been running the place his father ran for his entire adult life. He is an expert when it comes to the cattle industry and takes the job very seriously. Consequently, he has spent the last few snowy months painstakingly feeding and checking his cattle in the sub-zero weather, blizzards, ice storms, rain and the occasional, merciful sunshine in order to keep the mommas happy and healthy so they will deliver happy and healthy babies in the spring.

Because that’s what good cattle ranchers do best, especially and most importantly during calving season. They watch. They pay close attention to their herd, taking in which cows are close to giving birth, who might be having trouble, what cows may need a little help in order to be a good momma and what babies need medicine or extra TLC

And these babies needed a little extra TLC indeed. One a twin whose mamma wouldn’t let him suck and the other abandoned all together, our neighbor took them into the barn, warmed them up and begin the milk replacing, bottle feeding regiment. But with all the other tasks our ranching neighbor is charged with during days of calving and feeding and the fact that our cattle don’t come to the Veeder Ranch until the grass is green, husband, pops and I decided to purchase the calves and start a little project of our own.

And I was dubbed Queen…

Not because I’m the most capable, intelligent, and fairest of them all…

but because I’m home.

And I have time to devote to a morning and evening calf feeding ritual.

So all rise for the Queen of the Barnyard looking ravishing in a yellow and gray flannel, saggy, drool soaked jeans and a Carhart cap–much more practical head-gear for royalty with these types of responsibilities.

Responsibilities like putting her morning coffee on hold to mix up giant bottles of warm milk replacer and head to the big barn where the babies are crying.

Important tasks like sliding open the barn door only to be rammed and head butted and stepped on and licked during the calves’ search for the bottles she holds tightly in each hand.

Yes, the Queen of the Barnyard puts one bottle in each hand (with the exception of when she has a camera) to feed these babies. Because she is an expert at time management and doesn’t want to leave anyone waiting (or deal with the repercussions that would occur while feeding one calf and fending off the other with her free royal arm and corresponding leg…the results sure to be painful and sloppy)

But the Queen of the Barnyard isn’t all business. Oh no she isn’t. She realizes that she is these babies’ only link to the outside world and she must teach them to be calves. So when her subjects are finished drinking she distracts them from their instinct to ram her repeatedly with their noses until she flees to the house by tossing the bottles aside to begin the ritual of demonstrating to the babies what it looks like to run and buck.

She begins by running as fast as she can to distance the needy animals’ noses from her royal butt. She then launches her body half-way across the length of the corral in a leap, lands both feet in the dirt and then finishes it off with a jump and a kick.

Hands on hips the Queen waits for the response.

Her subjects stop.

Stare.

Bow…

and follow suit.

Her Highness laughs and claps with delight.

And the Queen’s subjects shower her with kisses and bid her adieu.

Then the Queen, a hot royal mess, climbs the fence  to make the short trip home, only to do it all again in the coming hours.

Because this Queen goes above and beyond…and her work is never done.

Ah, princess Kate, you may have a castle and a country and a handsome prince, but are you the ruler of all this?

Or this?


This?

What about him?

Or him?

But most importantly is this yours?

Yeah. Didn’t think so fancy pants. Didn’t think so.

Happy Royal Wedding day everyone! I want to know what makes you king or queen of your household today.

Life: one damn masterpiece after another

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I have a theory about this world we live in. I know I’ve said it here before, but it just proved itself to me again on Monday evening and I feel I have to share it once more.

Because there it went spinning outside the windows and walls of this little home in the buttes and I found myself catching my breath again…

because life is just one damn masterpiece after another.

And that is my theory, in case you missed it the first time.

Because on Monday evening after my day was coming to a close–a beautiful, 70 degree day spent cooped up in the house answering emails, scheduling, making phone calls, organizing and checking things off my list–I stepped away from my desk and moved to the kitchen to shift the cans in my cupboard and pretend to think about dinner–the next task. But just as I was giving up on the idea that I would come up with some sort of brilliant meal and heading toward the front door to fling it open and splay my body out on the deck to catch the last afternoon rays, I was met through the window of the door by pops, wide-eyed and looking urgent…

the first human person I had laid eyes on for a good twelve hours.

“Whew…hey there…you scared me…whats up?”

“There are elk on the hill right across from the house…just saw them as I was driving in…a bunch of them…”

“Really?”

Here is where I will explain that before I even uttered the word “really” I was already heading for my boots, snatching up my camera and throwing on a hat…

…and pops was already in his pickup, behind the wheel and shifting into drive.

That was all the exchange we needed right there.We knew what we were going to do.

Because elk are still a rarity, a treasure, a bit of an oddity on this landscape and we needed to witness this, we needed to get in close and watch them pass through our world.

So as the fluffy clouds rolled on over the farmstead, creating patches of shade and sunshine on the brown ground, pops and I bounced along in the green Dodge, turning off of the road and toward the elk herd–a site that would have gone unnoticed by eyes less trained and in tune to the landscape.

See, pops is the kind of guy who is always looking. After years spent as a rancher the man is always scanning the horizon for something amiss, something important, out-of-place or occasionally, if he’s lucky, something spectacular.

And Monday he found the spectacular and chose to share it with me.

So in the green Dodge pops drove toward where the wind was right so the elk wouldn’t smell us. And when it wasn’t advisable to go any further with the pickup we stopped, opened the doors and stepped out into the landscape.  As soon as the doors latched, just like that pops was on the hunt and it was like I was twelve years old again walking behind his strides in his footsteps as he snuck up on a big buck–always so eager to come along, pops always so willing to allow me the experience.

Over the fence and along the side hill we reached a point where we had a spectacular view of the herd and I snapped some photos while pops counted and recounted under his breath…”three…four…ten…seventeen…I think there’s about seventeen, eighteen there Jess…”

We sat there watching the two bull elk as they moved toward the rest of the herd, discussing whether they had antlers, using my telephoto lens as binoculars. We watched them graze along the flat below the clay buttes as pops explained to me in a hushed voice the way elk graze and what kind of grasses they eat.

I am not sure how long we sat before pops made the decision to get closer, but seeing that the beasts didn’t suspect we were there he took off at his hunter’s pace down the steep hill and along the muddy cow trail before leaping, without pause, in his cowboy boots and spurs through the wide and moving creek.

I followed diligently, a good ten steps behind, wondering how close we would get, wondering if we would spook them, wondering if the herd would be there when my ponytail appeared over the clay knob.

Pops slowed his pace and stepped softer.

I did the same.

He crouched down.

I crouched down.

He stopped.

I froze and held my breath.

“The two bulls, they should be right over there. Right over that knob. Get your camera…go ahead…you should get some great shots…”

I looked at him, little sweat beads forming on my forehead, and for a brief second (because that’s all the time I have in situations like this) I wondered how he was so sure of the exact location. How was he so certain after a fifty-mile-an-hour trip through brush and mud and a raging creek?

But it didn’t matter. I believed him. Because in my experience with pops and things like this he is always right.

Always.

And he was right again as I flung my hat down in excitement and crouched and belly crawled and peeked my way over the knob to find before me something I had never been so close to in the wild of my backyard in all of my 27 years.

I was shaking as I pulled the camera up to my face, certain that the beasts were going to bolt at the first click of my shutter.

But it was as if I was just a little breeze, a bug in the grass as the mighty bull elk lifted their noses at the sound.

I clicked and took a few steps closer…

and clicked again.

The elk froze, looked me directly in the eye…and nuzzled each other.

I looked back for pops, whose black hat was peeking over the hill. He nodded.

Encouraged, I put my sites on a bald bump in the landscape, thinking if I could lean in on that I would be close enough to almost reach out a give their noses a scratch.

I snuck.

They stared and snorted a bit.

I crawled and crept until I reached my destination, laid flat out on my belly and clicked my camera in a panic, certain now that they were going to run from me at any moment.

But they stayed.

They looked.

I stayed.

I looked.

And although I know it wasn’t possible, even from my ideal distance, I swear I could feel their warm breath…I swear I could smell the dust on their shaggy coats…I swear I could hear them sniff the air as I held mine.

I swear I have never been so close to something so wild.

We sat there like this, the three of us looking at one another, and the magnificent elk posed for me, taking turns walking in an out of my shot until I exhausted all possible photo opportunities and the elk were no longer curious.

And after hours, or minutes, or seconds, slowly and reluctantly we turned away from each other, sneaking glances back over our shoulders, wondering what we had just witnessed…

…wondering what the other was doing out here in a world that, just moments before, belonged only to us.

When I was growing up out here I never laid eyes on an elk on this ranch and as pops and I walked back to the pickup he informed me that, until recent years, the beasts never passed through this place at all.

And it makes you wonder where they are going, what the grass was like where they came from, how many women with wild ponytails they have watched sneak up on them…

and how long they will stay.

But mostly it makes my jaw drop in awe that while I am busy living my life between walls and windows and the nook of the barnyard, these creatures are living their lives, grazing, snorting, shedding, pawing, living and moving on through my backyard, into my life and out again, free and magnificent as the wild wind.

I may never be that close to the nose of an elk for the rest of my life and I could have very well missed it, just as I have most certainly missed them passing through dozens of times before.

But I didn’t.

I was there.

Pops was there.

We were there.

Right smack in the middle of yet another masterpiece.