Tag Archives: writing

The Magpies are Back

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“The magpies are back,” my dad said casually in conversation while we were driving somewhere. Or maybe he was in the middle of putting honey in his tea at my kitchen counter while the kids interrupted us endlessly?

The magpies are back.

“I saw that!” I replied. “Saw one the other day near the barn.” And that was sort of that — a nice little revelation among talk about work and ranch plans and weather. It was weeks ago, but when I opened my notes this morning, I saw that I wrote it down.

“The magpies are back.” I had put it in writing so I wouldn’t forget to think about it later.

What’s the significance of a wild black-and-white bird on our small family ranch?

Photo from Wikipedia

I will tell you from my perspective, and that is simply that my dad used to tell me about them when I was growing up. The birds, known for their relationship with large animals, perch on the cattle and eat the grubs out of their backs. It was a little bit of a service to the cattle, and Dad remembers getting close to those birds hanging with the milk cows in the barn.

But it was there my memory sort of faded, so I had to give him a call. “I know you had a pet crow when you were a kid, but did you have a pet magpie, too?”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t just have one, I had several,” he said on the other end of the phone (I do have to do some investigative journalism for this column occasionally).

From there, he went on to his memory of being a little boy watching their nests, and then, just before they learned to fly, climbing a tree (or, in some instances, hauling a ladder to reach the right branch) to get to the young birds.

“I would take one and raise it each spring. They would live in the barn and hop around drinking the milk we put out for the cats and eating the grain. I’d feed them scraps of bacon and meat and they would follow me,” he said. “One was named Earl — I don’t know why.”

I heard that story before as a kid, but it seemed to have faded, like the magpie, to the back of my memory until that resurrecting conversation. To me, the magpie was a magical creature of my upbringing — like a unicorn or Santa’s reindeer — and you only believed it existed because of the stories you were told. But when Dad was growing up, you could shoot the bird for a bounty, bring the legs in, and receive payment.

“People thought they would peck at cows’ brands and they didn’t like that. I don’t know if that was ever really an issue,” he said.

I suppose it says a lot about my dad, defending the bird and keeping them for pets instead.

I never saw a magpie on the ranch when I was growing up. Area ranchers at the time would use the insecticide Warbex to treat cattle for grubs and lice. They would pour the chemical on the backs of their cows with a big metal dipping ladle, which I remember well because I remember the smell. It was potent, and if you happened to get some on your hands, you would feel tingly, itchy effects for days. It did the job, I suppose, but it also killed the birds, magpies specifically, who would inevitably ingest the poison on their quest for those grubs coming out of the cows’ backs.

In time, the bird just disappeared from the area. Before I became a teenager, the practice of using Warbex went out of favor, with most countries restricting or banning its use by the 1990s.

“It’s been about 30 years since we’ve seen a magpie on the place,” Dad remarked. “But then, I suppose, when I was growing up, I never saw a wild turkey or a bald eagle on the place. There were no elk, no mountain lions, no mule deer. That’s five species right there that have made a comeback.”

We went on contemplating why. With no real scientific studies to back it, Dad recalled my grandpa claiming that most of these species disappeared after the Great Depression and it’s taken this long to bounce back. This long and more education. This long and better land management. This long and just a few months ago, my sister found a moose in her backyard munching by her trampoline.

This long and the magpies are back.

If I were a different kind of writer, I might be inclined to try to pull this all together as a sign from the universe that it’s all going to be OK in the end. That feels good, doesn’t it? Without all the middle parts where we perpetrated and witnessed the disappearance of …

The story of the magpie and my dad might also make some of you mad. Domesticating a wild thing, how could he? I can hear it now. But he was a kid. A kid living and working among the wildness of it all and wondering how it all worked. Maybe then, more than anything, the story of the magpie and my dad as a kid with a ladder and a plan and then a bird named Earl following him around the barnyard is more a tale in paying attention. Noticing. Learning.

“I see the partridges are back, too,” he said before we hung up. “I wonder why? Maybe easier winters …”

ND Game and Fish

Stage Stories, Home Stories

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This morning, I opened a manilla envelope I had stored in my backpack to take back from Nevada to my home in North Dakota.

A few weeks ago I was standing on a variety of stages in Elko for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering’s 40th Anniversary Celebration. I sang songs about ranch life and “You Are My Sunshine” at the top of my lungs to an auditorium of 900 elementary school students and then I did it all again the next hour. I sang my “Happy” song and charged those kids with writing a list or a poem of all the things that made them smile.

I stood in a bar with my dad and guitar player and pulled out all the toe-tapping songs we could think of while people hugged and cheered and danced and visited.

I told a story about my great-grandfather’s life and the yellow roses that still bloom in the barnyard on a small stage in front of an audience so still and attentive and close you could hear them sniffle.

I shared the stage with Carnegie Hall performers, Western folklorists, a Grammy award winner, viral music sensations and the yodeling cowboy from Montana who’s the voice of the “Yahoo” commercials.

Andy Hedges, Dom Flemmons, Dad, Seth and Katelyn (Buffalo Kin) and Mike
Watching Wylie and the Wild West from backstage
Adrian Brannon rehearses backstage before our set
Margo Cilker, her husband Forrest VanTuy and her band
Ed Peekeekoot shows us the head of his guitar he hand carved

I sat in the audience at an open mic session for kids where 50 or so aspiring performers recited, read or performed cowboy poetry or music that they wrote or memorized. I obliged when a 10-year-old cowgirl behind a guitar asked us to sing along to “Home on the Range” while she played.

Jessie Veeder listens to a young fan recite his cowboy poetry.

I met new people from all over the world curious about ranch life and eager to hear the stories. And then I swapped tales about ranch kids with fellow ranch moms and dads. I met unbelievably talented musicians and poets from across the country and reunited with those I’ve come to love over the years.

Clara Baker, Margo Cilker, Lara Manzanares

I ate, drank, told stories, shopped, talked, barely slept, and sang and sang and sang until it was time to point our car back north in a blizzard warning, slowly through Nevada, then Idaho and then Montana and then finally to our home state, where the wind sent the fresh snow skidding across the interstate.

I took the wheel in the last stretch of the trip so my dad could log into a bull sale and make his virtual bids while we drove toward the Badlands, rolling us back into our real life before we even parked the car. What a very modern-day-ranching thing to do after a week of talking about it.

Back home, my husband kept the cows, horses, kids, cats and dogs fed. He fixed a faulty furnace and wrapped up work on a big shop project. He practiced spelling words with our daughters, and when I caught him on Facetime during breaks in my schedule, he was snuggling our oldest on the chair watching YouTube videos on how to install fascia on steel buildings, and I thought, “Well, look at how much she loves him — little Edie enduring the drone of a how-to construction video just to be in the crook of her dad’s arm.”

When you’re home at the ranch the way we are in our everyday lives, you don’t think much about how most of the rest of the world is living — and that breaking ice on water tanks and rolling out hay bales in negative temperatures is Hollywood-esque to some who have never or will never live this way.

I dress up in my felt cowboy hat, pressed dark jeans and a bright pink satin blazer behind my guitar to tell the audience in Elko about the time, when I was a kid, I attempted to get the horses in by riding my sorrel mare bareback with baling twine for a bridle. They laugh at the part where I question my dad’s parenting instincts, recalling how he hollered “Bail off, Jess!” And I did, only to break my wrist and leave it dangling off my arm.

Back home, my husband is in Carhartts and a wool cap. He smells like diesel exhaust and his beard is scruffy. He packs snacks in backpacks and makes sure our daughters have snow gear for school, he takes out hamburger from our deep freeze stash for supper and stands by the stove smack dab in the middle of our decision to raise our kids out here alongside those horses, tucked into the hills while I’m a thousand miles away singing about it.

I pull the SUV into the drive and drag my suitcases and guitar inside. I flop down on the couch and lay my head on my husband’s lap. I’ve been gone a week, but there’s no big fuss about that. He gives me a kiss, then launches into the report on those spelling tests and on Edie baking cookies all on her own and Rosie’s newfound master of the stove. I notice a log burning for the first time in our new fireplace. I say a few things about the crowds and who I got to see.

We get up and take out elk for a stir-fried supper. Our youngest gets sick at bedtime and throws it all up on my husband lying next to her. Welcome home, here’s the flu.

This morning, I emptied my bag to find that manilla envelope. I thought it was going to be a big thank-you card with signatures from the kids in Elko, but it was better. Twenty or so pages from Mrs. Wine’s Southside class with handwritten reasons these kids are happy.

The big ‘ol auditorium full of elementary school kids

To: Jessie: I want to say hi to your daughters. I know one is from the name Rosey? But I want to say thank you for singing us the songs but I love how you and your dad and your friend sang it almost made me cry.

Dear Jessie, I like when I was dancing, only for 15 sec…Sunshine made me remember the old times.

Dear Jessie, what makes me happy is going and seeing my dogs and cats and my mom and dad and what I love is coming home and smelling supper.

Dear Jessie, my dogs make me happy because they make me laugh when ther licking me. My teacher is my first thing that makes me happy.

Dear Jessie, Songs make me happy Jessie. Things that make me happy are dogs, chicken, horses and cowboy poetry week…

And I think, same here kids. Same. Same. Way up here.

For more photos from The Gathering, click here

The miles, they sing

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Hi from the ranch! We back from the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV after one big week away and two days of driving north under a blizzard warning. I have lots to say about the experience, which I’m drumming up for next week, but for now, here’s the column I wrote in the back seat of my SUV while my dad drove him, me and my guitar player, Mike, through Idaho.

Greetings from somewhere in the middle of Montana. As I write I’m on the second day of driving through this massive state on our way south to Elko, NV for the 40th anniversary of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. There’s no easy way to get to Elko from Western North Dakota. You can drive two hours to take three tiny airplanes and hope you don’t miss your one 11 pm connection from Salt Lake to Elko so you don’t have to take the additional three-hour van ride to finally get you there.

Or you can load up your car with guitars and pray the blizzards are at your back or already through as you wind through fifteen hours of desserts and big mountains.

That’s the current choice we’re in the middle of, seeing so much of this America out the windshield of the SUV I usually use to take the kids back and forth from school every day. The amount of ranch mud and snack wrappers I removed from the floors of this ride to get ready for this trip was alarming. But here we are, cruising at 65 MPH through a sagebrush sea with the mountains ahead of us and behind us and the next tiny town fifty miles away. To see North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada this up close and personal gives a sort of perspective that only comes on a long stretch of highway with only the promise of more and more highway to come. I’ve spent a good portion of my life behind the windshield traveling for music. When you head in the same directions you’re reminded of the past trips by little landmarks or gas stations or favorite restaurants you’ve frequented years before.

 If you haven’t done the miles this direction it would surprise you how desolate it is. And I use desolate not with a negative connotation but with a lack of a better word for lack of people. Lack of porch lights or streetlights. We’re following the highway parallel to the powerline. “Coyote,” dad just pointed out. About sixty miles back I was the first to spot a bald eagle landing on one of those power line poles. We saw some deer. Some cows. I’m traveling with dad and our musical friend Mike who has been playing dobro and guitar with me since I was just a kid. The fact that he continues to take these long trips with me year after year to stand on stages so I can tell ranching stories to rooms and theaters full of people who want to hear ranching stories is a testament to how much we regard one another and the music.

Inside all of these miles, between pointing out elk tracks and that one big feedlot we just passed, humming along to old tried and true favorites of ours and making them listen to my new favorite (I am every trips’ DJ and navigator and chooser of hotels and restaurants) Mike will come out with a thread of a memory from playing in bands for fifty or so years and dad and I become the audience for a story that never ends the way we thought it would when it started. And you would think after all these years traveling together (here I pause to calculate just how long it’s been? I’m forty-one. Been playing out with dad and him since I was fourteen or fifteen or younger. How long really? Could it be 27 years now? Aren’t I still sixteen?) you would think I would have heard every one of his recollections, that there would be repeat shenanigans I could tell back to him, but that’s not Mike. He has memories for as many miles as we have driven, so there’s always a new one.

“These school busses have a long ways to go between houses,” dad remarks as we bend and weave on ID Hwy 33. It makes the ranch seem downright urban.

We’ll be in Elko before it’s dark. And tomorrow we’ll be on stages telling North Dakota stories in my now foreign accent. And all these miles we’ve driven between here and there, the mountains, the high desserts, the small blips of towns and ranch houses and barbed wire and wide open, their poets and musicians who live and work and call it home will gather to tell its story.

It’s the wide open. It’s the vastness of it all. Miles and miles of it. If you didn’t know any better, desolate could sound lonesome. But in Elko, it sings.

Five ways to love January

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Yesterday the girls Facetimed my in-laws to show them their new rooms. Their grandparents are spending the first three months or so of 2025 in the desert, away from the frigid temperature that is North Dakota. As their granddaughters pointed the phone toward their new purple walls, their grandparents talked to them about the pool and the nice weather and the hikes they are going on.  This weekend they will meet up with other North Dakotans who have fled to the south to survive the winter.

Meanwhile, back at home, we’re in the middle of the hardest three months. Between the dark and the cold, the taxes, the constant little illnesses and my husband working outside in the volatile weather, these are the days convincing the kids to get out of their warm beds and out the door is a bit more challenging.  One day on our drive to town we watched the temperature fall as the sun rose, a whole ten degrees in a matter of minutes. From 2 to -8.  No outside recess this morning, Rosie declared.

Anyway, the goal here isn’t a public complaint about North Dakota in January. If you’re reading this, you likely know what we’re in for and have long accepted it like the rest of us. But lately I’ve been thinking about the little ways I can make our already pretty good lives better and more bearable during these cold months when escaping to Arizona isn’t an option for us.

And maybe it’s more of a resolution thing, like how can we love one another better? Who doesn’t need a little extra dose of it these days, no matter the weather. If I were a magazine writer I would come up with a tidy little “How to love January” list for you, but honestly, I don’t think there’s anything tidy about my life, so I’ll just start with

Number 1: The Cooking. Lately I have had cravings for fresh vegetables and new seasonings, which is the opposite of the usual noodles and cream I want to hunker down with in the cold months. But these cravings have sent me to the kitchen with a little more enthusiasm to try a new recipe and to the grocery store to purchase ingredients I don’t keep in my cupboard. In the past few weeks of this month, between my oldest daughter’s interest in her new cookbook and my online searches, we’ve tried out five or six new recipes. Some were wins. Some were too spicy for my Midwestern pallet, and, well, our new brownie recipe was a downright flop. But it has been fun. The reward is always to see what my husband thinks. And to give him a hot meal after a long day in the cold makes me feel valuable and helpful and makes him feel cared for. Bonus is that he does the dishes and that he always gives everything a thumbs-up. Except the brownies, no one could stand behind those things. 

Chopped Thai-Inspired Chicken Salad was a hit. Here’s the link to the recipe on Pinterest
https://pin.it/5Yx57mDil

Which brings me to Number 2: The games. Over the Christmas break the girls got a few new board and card games and so we’ve tried them out only to be reminded that the only thing our daughters want in the entire world is to play games with us. Honestly. It’s as simple as that. So we’ve taught them how to play Spoons and they taught us how to play “Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza.” And if we have time for nothing else, we whip out the trivia at supper time and they’re plum happy and so are we. Games are love.

And so is snuggling, which is my number three. Intentional lingering in a hug and more of them. Movies picked out together instead of watched on separate screens in separate rooms. Sitting closer in the house. Sometimes, for someone like me who is just fine with having a wide swath of space around me, I need to be more intentional with the affection, for my family and for myself.

And then sometimes, when it’s not twenty below, we need to get our butts outside together, not just for work, but for play too. Over break I helped the girls build a couple snowmen in the yard. I had plenty of shoveling to do, but I skipped that to roll giant snowballs with them instead and it was great, of course, because building a snowman is always great. And then I took off for a walk in the hills to fill my lungs with cold air and get the blood pumping. Which is my number four. Getting my butt moving. Seasonal depression is a real thing for me and that’s why I have a treadmill and the hills. My husband and I have a loose goal of running a little race this spring (and when I say run, I mean more of a slow jog. And when I say loose, I mean we’re not aiming for any marathons here.) The two of us haven’t had a shared couple goal outside of family and business in our almost twenty years of marriage, so overcoming our shared hatred of running feels like a little thing that can connect us. How romantic.

Which brings me to the sweetness. Which is number five and maybe the most important. I have enough hustle in my life, deadlines and goals and the day to day we’ve built that keep me up at night. Stress. We all have it. And it sucks more when you can’t have a backyard barbeque or get vitamin D from the sun. So I am going to try to dig a little more gentleness out of myself to see what comes back to me in the next few months. In my tone of voice and the way I brush their hair, making his coffee and fixing their meals. Our meals. It’s for me too. The tenderness.

Except maybe when we’re playing Spoons. All bets are off then. Who needs the desert when you have a kitchen table card game and better brownies in the oven? 30 below zero, you don’t stand a chance.

The saga of the missing suitcase…

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Old Man Winter is showing…

My husband and I are at a weird stage in our lives. I think most refer to it as “middle age,” but, as most stages go, you don’t fully understand it until you reach it yourself.

I was talking to one of my friends recently who was lamenting this phase as well: “I have one kid planning for college and I’m packing ‘extra emergency accident clothes’ in another’s backpack. It’s wild.”

Which brings me to a little story I’ll call “The Saga of the Missing Suitcase,” which started in early October and ended last week with the serious revelation that I need to start taking those memory supplements my mother gave me for my 40th birthday.

Anyway, God bless all my friends, co-workers and family, who, for a solid two months, have had to hear about the absolute mystery of how I could have lost an entire suitcase that contained my expensive curling iron and hair dryer between town and home when I distinctly remember unpacking it on the floor of our bedroom.

What could have happened to it if it’s not in my car, the pickup, the garage or anywhere in my house whatsoever? My mom was looking. My husband was looking. Could it be in a ditch somewhere with my sanity? Did I hallucinate the fact that I brought it inside and unpacked it? Did someone come into the house and steal it? I was mixed up and totally frazzled, and so was my hair.

“Do you remember what that suitcase looks like?” my husband nudged. “No one is going to steal it. More likely it got thrown in the trash.”

After a month of searching with no success, I broke down and bought myself a new, too-expensive curling iron and dug out the old hair dryer we use to warm up cold, newborn calves in the spring. I decided only God truly knows the fate of my wares and wondered how early is too early to check myself into the nursing home …

Fast forward to last week when I was organizing my closet and preparing to pack for a trip. Because it’s barely been above zero for the past few weeks now, I decided it was time to store the last of my summer clothes in the big blue summer clothes bin. To get to that big blue summer clothes bin, I needed to climb the stairs, open the door of the closet, and remove the stack of old picture frames and purses I need to give away from the top of that bin to get to the lid.

What I’m saying here is that it took effort.

As in, I had to dig and un-pile piles. I had to get on my hands and knees and rearrange items. It was a whole thing. Which is relevant only because when I finally got to the part where I opened the lid expecting to toss the summer dresses into storage with my shorts, tank tops and sandals, I found instead … my suitcase.

Of course I did.

Because that seems like a logical place to store an only partially unpacked piece of luggage.

Why? I really couldn’t tell you. I have no real memory of the task. But at least I was right about my missing beauty appliances sitting inside as the only things I didn’t bother putting away. I apparently just needed to spend money on a replacement for the mystery to be solved.

Anyway, now that I’ve brought you through that wearisome journey, I bring you back to where we started, which is that weird stage we’re in where our pants are hooked on the barbed wire fence between youth and a front porch rocking chair. Because after I gave a little hoot at my discovery and promptly texted all my friends who have had to hear about this saga for weeks, I ran down the steps to tell my husband, who I found was in the middle of a shower. But the news couldn’t wait. I pulled open the door and chirped, “I have a very important announcement! Can you guess what it is?”

My husband stopped scrubbing the soap in his armpits and frantically searched the expression on my face through the steamy glass door. His heart sank to his stomach. He looked terrified. I paid it no mind. I was too happy.

“I found my suitcase!” I sang with delight and then went on to explain the whole ordeal you all just had to endure, totally oblivious to the fact that there could possibly be a more important, more heart-pounding declaration at this point in our very adult lives.

“Oh, Lord!” my husband replied with a big exhale. “I thought you were going to say you were pregnant!”

Increasingly forgetful with a small side of “I guess it’s still possible” … that’s where we’re at.

If you need me, I’m probably looking for my phone I put down around here somewhere.

Peace, love and Prevagen,
Jessie

Mom and Daughter in the Middle

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Today, my oldest turned 9. Here she is, wearing and holding all her bday presents. Her earbuds and baby doll perfectly depict the sentiment of a girl her age ❤️

“Mom, I’m disappointed about something,” my almost-9-year-old daughter said as we were walking out the door together after school art class.

“Oh no, what is it? What happened?” I asked, knowing it could be anything from spilled milk on her favorite crispito lunch (recent occurrence), friend trouble at school, or a bad grade on a test. When you’re almost 9, the possibilities of disappointments are endless.

“It was picture retake day and …”

“Oh no,” I replied before she could even finish her sentence, suddenly remembering something that I forgot about entirely “And …”

“And Daddy did hair!”

We said it at the same time, locking eyes, her looking at me for my reaction and me looking at her in her favorite stained pink Nike sweatshirt and long, slicked-back hair. 

Was this going to be a crying situation? I wondered in the 2 milliseconds before we both busted out laughing.

“I am so sorry!” I declared between howls. “I totally forgot!”

“Well,” she replied, running both hands through her mane to mimic the slicked-back hairstyle she left the house with. “But these aren’t going on anyone’s fridge.”

“Why did it have to be the day Daddy did hair?!” I wondered out loud to the gods of parenting. “And why didn’t you tell him you don’t like your hair that way?”

“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” she replied, melting my forgetful heart before her younger sister, decked out in a purple athletic tank top, grubby sweatpants and her sister’s hand-me-down cardigan, chimed in. “I’m pretty sure I blinked.”

I laughed and apologized all the way to the car knowing how much it must have killed my type-A oldest daughter to be surprised by the news without the picture day ritual of the special hair-do and special outfit we’ve done every picture day before, and no time to remedy her slicked-back hair in the mirror before the big “Say cheese!” I would have felt really bad about it all if we both didn’t think it was so funny.

Because this week that type-A daughter turns 9. We’ve been planning her sleepover birthday for weeks now, the cake and the food and the sleeping bag arrangement. She asked for teenager clothes. And also, maybe for the last time, a new baby doll.

Recently, during a late-night scroll session, I ran across the term “middle mom.” 

It’s a new-age term that describes the time in motherhood when a parent no longer has a baby on her hip, but she’s not planning a graduation.

She’s in between raising the “littles” and the “bigs,” with random sippy cups still shoved in the forgotten corners of her cupboard and neglected baby toys lying low in the depths of the toy boxes. I welled up by the light of my phone screen and switched to an online search for that baby doll.

Because as much as I’m a “middle mom,” my daughter is finding herself in a similar in-between phase of her girlhood, playing with her dollhouse and requesting that her hair be done like the varsity volleyball players we watched last week. 

She’s pulled to play pretend in the woods behind our house after spending the school day navigating the cliques and nuances of friend dynamics, wondering through tears why some kids can be so mean. 

She’s the teacher in the pretend classroom game with her younger sister and cousins and she’s upset when they switch mid-game to pretend they’re mermaids.

She believes in Santa Claus, but if she thinks about it too much, she knows that it’s just because she’s holding on.

Because it’s fleeting.

Reading stories to her youngest cousin

Fashion show for a friend’s children’s boutique

Darling girl, I know it, too. Some days I wish you could stay that chubby-faced, frog-catching, blue-dress-only-wearing baby girl.

IMG_7362.jpeg

But then you look at me and laugh the laugh of a young lady who knows what’s important and what to let go. You laugh the laugh of a girl who understands how lucky she is to have a dad who does her hair and a crazy mom who forgets things and then, well, I’m so happy to be in the middle with you.

And happy to have a perfectly imperfect photo to look back on and remind me.

Taking care

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It snowed for the first time on our drive town this morning. It started with rain and then suddenly we have a new season on our hands. I was not prepared, of course. My oldest daughter doesn’t fit into her snow boots, snow pants or coat. Two of the three things are still coming in the mail. The third I forgot about until the drive to town.  I wonder how a weather change could have snuck up on me like this, as if I haven’t lived with the promise of snow any moment my entire life.

I wonder how I am surprised every time I realize my kids grow, as if I don’t watch it happening with every second helping of oatmeal and spaghetti.

Waiting around every corner is a way to fail at parenting. I spent the past three days away from my family, on the other side of the state performing and singing for my supper as I do. I never worry about leaving the kids back at the ranch with my husband on the scene because, honestly, he has about as much control as I do at any given minute, which means sometimes he doesn’t. We’re aligned in that way. Neither one of us is too uptight because we’re both bordering on being a little too laid back. And so I understand that a spic and span house is not in the cards for me when I arrive home from a long weekend away, because, frankly, it isn’t really in the cards for me when I stay home.

But when I’ve been driving for six hours and surviving on coffee and fast food and I arrive home past bedtime and find a bowl of crusty butter noodles and a bag of open and half-eaten sour cream and onion potato chips on my bedroom nightstand I couldn’t help but wonder—if the kids were going to eat every meal and snack of the day in my bed, they could have at least hidden the evidence.

Judging from the countertop relics, it looks like they had fun without me. They made brownies and quesadillas. Ate Halloween candy and made friendship bracelets. The entryway indicated they rode dirt bike and shot bows. A phone conversation said they had friends over and ate goat steaks and who knew, goat steaks are good!

I reported from the road that things were going fine. I was on my way home and I still had hours to go, so my husband stayed on the line to visit. We talked about the cows and the water tanks, holiday plans and shipping calves and the big drama that occurred when our youngest found the elf on the shelf hanging out in a drawer like a civilian stuffed animal.

It was almost a tragedy, but he saved it somehow and he thinks the magic can continue.

Like I said, a parenting fail just waiting around every corner…

On our way home from school on Election Day, my six-year-old asked me if I would be happy if she wanted to run for president. I said I would if that’s what she wanted. And then she said, “No, I don’t think I would like that. It would be like having 100 bazillion kids to take care of. That’s too much.”

The next morning, we woke up and the nation decided on a new president. Some were devastated. Some were elated. Some were just happy it was over.

And despite the six-year-old’s sentiment, or where you fall on the scale of scared and elated, I’m here to remind you, the taking care of one another has always been up to us.

Do your boots still fit? Do you have a warm coat?  Can you stay for supper?

Red Barns and People Get Old

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The Official Music Video for Red Barns and People Get Old has just been published. Please take a moment with this special and personal story about generational ranching and the hearts and land involved.

Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing with the people in your life who may see a familiar story in this song.

Red Barns and People Get Old: Written by Jessie Veeder
Starring: Cody Brown, Carol Mikkelson and Rosie Scofield
Special thanks to Patty Sax
Directed by: Nolan Johnson DoP Editor/Editor: Steven Dettling
Video by ‪@quantumdigital1404‬

Recorded at ‪@omnisoundstudios‬ ‬ Nashville, TN
Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Bill Warner, Engineered by Josh Emmons and Bill Warner

jessieveedermusic.com

Night worries

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This morning I dreamed of the rain.

The window to our bedroom was open and in my dreams I smelled it and heard it falling on the oak leaves still clinging tight to the branches. In our bed, between my body and my husband’s, our youngest daughter slept. Sometime during the darkest hours of the night, she wedged herself there, as she usually does, on a sleepy hunt for her father.

She is still only six. Or, she’s almost seven! She should sleep through the night on her own by now! We go back and forth on where we land with this, but in the middle of the night when the child needs someone to hold on to, neither one of us feels the need to fight it too hard. She’ll be grown soon. The bed is big enough. She won’t need us like this forever. I pull back the covers and I let her in.

I woke this morning to my alarm singing. Last week at this time, the sky would have been pink with the sunrise. This morning it was black.

“It’s time to wake up,” I huffed into the dark as my bare feet searched for the floor.

“Did it rain? Or did I dream it?”

My husband rolled over to try to wake our daughter and told me it wasn’t a dream. I pressed my face to the window screen to smell it the way I smelled it in my dream.

Even with the rain falling, my sleep wasn’t restful. My mind woke my body to worry about bills and things I shouldn’t have said and the work I should have done by now. And then enter the state of the suffering in the world, then of people I know and love, and things I can’t possibly change. Not at 3 am. Not ever.

Why is the quietest part of the night the loudest in my head?

Last week I visited a tiny town in North Dakota to play some music for a special event. In my career as a touring musician, I’ve had the privilege of learning how so many rural communities choose to bring people together, on a blocked off Main Street, in a Legion Club steel building, in an old high school gym, in parks and on patios. I perch myself up behind a microphone to tell stories to people listening intently or to a room full of folks who just want to visit, my music the backdrop to their conversations about the weather, the hay crop, the football team, the latest local tragedy or scandal. I use the word privilege because I regard the opportunity that way, even when the night is long and it feels like no one is listening. I get a front row seat to watch it all play out, who’s refilling the punch bowl and swapping the casserole dishes. Who’s folding programs and is the only one who knows how to turn on the old sound system. Who makes her rounds to each table to say hello. Who sticks around after to put away the folding chairs. Who’s kid grabs the big broom when the room is all cleared out.

Usually, I’m sent down the road with an extra centerpiece or noodle salad or a bag full of sandwiches and plenty of kind words and “thanks for coming all this way,” sometimes apologetically, as if their community isn’t as deserving of a visit as any other community in this country. 

The air feels heavy as the weight of an election year makes big waves, moving through our conversations, across our kitchen tables, streaming through our speakers, screaming in the street. I lay awake last night and wondered, after all my life experience on the road and working in small towns, why it’s easier to holler enemy than try to understand one another. We’re making rivals out of our neighbors. It’s unsettling.

If I’m being honest, I’ve written and re-written the next two paragraphs a dozen times. Because I’m not sure what to say next. Here’s what I chose: Maybe you too were up in the quiet hours of the night with a loud head and a heavy heart. Maybe you felt lonesome or helpless, even with someone lying right next to you. Maybe you stood up and walked to the kitchen to feed your body and look at the moon. Maybe you slept soundly and dreamed about rain. Maybe you didn’t sleep at all.
And maybe, in the midst of your insomnia, your daughter crawled in bed with you because she needs to be close. She needs to feel safe and loved. She needs something to hold on to.

And maybe, in the most tumultuous times, we could be brave enough to consider she’s all of us…

He got stuck..

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Photo out our back window on Saturday of the Bear Den Fire raging just five miles or so to the North West of the Ranch. Chad and countless other first responders, ranchers and community members spent hours and hours in 50-70 MPH winds trying their best to battle the dangerous spread.

On Saturday we had wild fires rage across Western North Dakota. Over 100,000 acres of cropland, federal land and private ranch land has burned. Two fires, one just to the northeast of our ranch surrounding the town of Mandaree, is only 40% contained as of yesterday. The National Guard has been working to contain this one and one in the badlands to the south west of us for the past five days. Homes, pastureland and livestock have been lost. Worst of all, two lives were taken by these fires, men who were trying to fight them in the area around Ray, ND. Please send us prayers for rain. And if you feel inclined, here’s a link to help aid the ranchers who lost so much this past week.

The North Dakota Stockmen’s Association and North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation have teamed up to support cattle-ranching families in North Dakota who have suffered catastrophic losses in the horrific wildfires. In addition to their own $50,000 gift, the NDSA and NDSF are inviting others to join with them to provide financial support to help these ranchers rise from the ashes and rebuild their herds, their homes and their hope. Checks can be sent to the North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation with “Out of the Ashes” written in the memo, or credit card gifts can be made at https://app.givingheartsday.org/#/charity/1576. The NDSA and NDSF will distribute 100% of the money raised to the victims of the wildfires through an application and nomination process. Applications will be available later this month. The NDSF is a 501(c)3.

The latest information about the state of these wildfires can be found here

Many of you have checked in on us as this news has developed. We were lucky as the wind was favorable to blow these fires away from our homes and the ranch, but many of my friends weren’t as lucky. And with the dry conditions and hot spots still looming, we’re not out of the woods until the snow falls. Thank you for your concern and thank you to the first responders who are working to keep us safe.

With that, lets move on to a more light-hearted predicament we found ourselves in last week on the ranch. I write about it in last week’s column:

He got stuck…

Last week I looked out the window to find my husband walking through the home pasture gate in the middle of the morning, like I do when I take a little stroll except my husband hasn’t taken a little stroll in his entire life. So naturally, I could only conclude that something did not go as planned.

And probably, more than likely, the man got something stuck somewhere…

Around here, no one really gives anyone guff about being stuck, because you never know when it could be you. Because, inevitably, it’s gonna be you.

But the man, he walked almost two miles in pretty cold 50 mph winds just to avoid the call to me or his father-in-law for help. I asked him why he didn’t use his “phone a friend” option and he said a guy who gets himself stuck so stupidly probably deserves to walk a good mile or so, you know, as a sort of lesson or punishment or something.

But walk-of-shame or not, he did need help, so he rounded up another side-by-side and me, his wife, who was wearing the entirely wrong outfit for traipsing around in 50 mph autumn winds miles from civilization (which is almost always my outfit choice in times of impromptu crisis.)

When I tell you this is not side-by-side or ATV country, I mean it. The denial of this fact is what lands us all in the sort of stuck-up-to-the-floorboards predicaments my husband found himself in that day. Because we live on the only quarter of North Dakota that isn’t entirely flat. We live where the hills drop down to form coulees ripe with springs and creeks that hold water and mud at different levels at different times depending on the season or the mood just to keep it sketchy and iffy and dangerous. And in those coulees the thorns and the brush patches thrive and twist and tangle over cattle and deer trails, letting enough light in to make you think you can make it through without a tree branch to the face, but usually you can’t, especially if your little sister or big brother is riding in front of you, scheduling that branch release to land just right.

Anyway, you can avoid the brush and the big canopy of oaks and ash trees if you keep to the hilltops, but you can never avoid the rocks and the holes and the craters on the edge of the badlands, so this is why we ride horses mostly. And, well, honestly, we’ve had to pull a good handful of horses out of thick mud and ravines in our days too…

But we forget all this somehow when we think we’re just gonna go check something quick, as if the fact that we’re in a hurry changes the landscape in some way. And that’s what my husband was doing that day he hopped in his all-terrain-vehicle and decided to go look for a missing bull, you know, real quick.

“What were you doing?” I asked him when het got into the house, cheeks flushed and a bit winded from the ordeal.

“Yeah, I’m stuck. Like, way back east.”

And I tell you, between being raised by my dad and being married to my husband and being, well, me, I have seen a lot of serious stuck-in-something-or-other predicaments and so I wasn’t surprised to find that this most recent one was no different. A classic case of “the crick bottom looks dry enough” and then, surprise, surprise, it gives way to the stinkiest, stickiest, black mud that Mother Nature makes. I know. I’ve been here before myself, I just happened to be a little closer to home.

And I tried not to say anything. I did. I stood there and took my directions as he hooked one bumper to the other with a random old calf roping rope that was in the back of the second ATV. I wondered to myself silently why on earth my husband didn’t bring a tow strap or a chain since he knew the task ahead of him. But I didn’t say anything. Not even when he instructed me to gas it but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, and we went on like this not moving a nudge for a good 30 to to 60 seconds before his makeshift tow-rope snapped.

Then I couldn’t hold it. I had to ask, why. Why no tow strap? Why no chain?

Because he thought he had one.

Fair enough. Been there. But I was certain then that both of us would be walking home in no time and wished I wouldn’t have worn these stupid leggings and no wool cap like a dummy.

So then, because I couldn’t help myself looking at the cliff-like, brush tangled terrain in front of the stuck-side-by-side, I had to add ,“Where were you gonna go if you actually made it? “

I didn’t get a real clear answer on that one…

But the man is nothing if he’s not determined. So out came the shovel (he did remember that), a bit more rearranging of the rope, a bit more shoveling and five or six more “gun its” and well, what ‘do ‘ya know, we were out. 

So off we went, me following him following our tracks back to the house. It was a miracle!  I never doubted it! Sorta felt like a date then. I wonder if he learned his lesson…

And now, because I am publishing this for you and Jesus to read, I suppose to be fair, some day I’ll tell you how I got the side-by-side stuck between a tree and the dog kennel in our yard this summer. Well, my side of the story at least.

Stay safe out there. If you need me I’ll be hosing the black mud off the side-by-side and my stupid leggings…