We have had some stunning early summer weather this year, the kind that makes one loath to come inside at the end of the day. A few nights ago, the light was perfect so I took off with my camera and Josie, and who would follow but my three not-kittens-anymore, Elsa (the white one), Portia (the true yellow one), and Buttercup (the creamy looking one). They kept up on the whole walk. Just about all of my cats will accompany me on walks from time to time.
The shell-leafed penstemon was blooming everywhere, and I was tickled to discover a little patch of white irises. We don’t have wild white irises, so who knows how these got there, but they were lovely. Whether a bird planted them, or a homesteader’s wife years ago, who knows, but no one else knew about them when I asked Brad and my in-laws. It has been such a wonderfully wet spring, a lot of things that have bloomed that were somewhat dormant in previous years, so it may have been years since these white beauties bloomed.
Wonderful golden evening.
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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 29, 2024
It is an exhilarating feeling, riding out in the cool of the morning with husband and family and neighbors, hearing a chorus familiar voices sing out gently in friendly conversation, the soft plodding of the horses’ hooves on soft earth, the occasional metallic ringing as a shod hoof strikes stone, watching the rolling hills fall away, the row of pickups and trailers get smaller behind us, seeing the cow herd stretched out over the entirety of a pasture. It is an exhilarating feeling, as we get further and further onto the prairie or into the breaks, and one by one, or two by two, riders are left behind until the herd is more or less encircled, and the gather begins.
It is an exhilarating feeling, to be behind a growing, moving, shifting bunch of cows, a bunch that gets joined to another, and another, until the whole herd is gathered, encircled by five or thirty horses and riders. The lowing of the cattle intensifies as they mill around, looking for their calves, and eventually the cattle trickle away from the pressure of the riders. The branding pens get nearer and nearer, and the net is pulled tighter and tighter. Instead of riders every 50 or 100 yards, it is riders every 50 or 100 feet, then every 5 or 10 feet, and then shoulder to shoulder for the last push to pen the herd.
The cattle bawl at a fever pitch, like the deafening hum of a riled-up hornet nest, as mamas and babies are sorted and separated, the calves penned for branding, and cows released back to pasture. The perturbed mothers stand at the fence bawling for the calves, the calves bawl back, and the branding stove roars to life. Soon it is an ordered chaos of activity, as each member of a branding crew is assigned a role or finds a role, and the branding settles into a rhythm, like a well-oiled machine, a rhythm of ropers and wrestlers and branders, the soft hiss of ropes dancing, the smell of smoke and burnt hair, the clank as irons are drawn out of the fire, and the crackle of red-hot iron on hide. Glints and flickers of flame, clouds of shifting smoke, dust and flinging mud. Laughter and shouts and snippets of conversation punctuate the noise, and the steady rhythm is occasionally interrupted by the sudden leaping to action of half a dozen wrestlers when a calf puts up a stiff fight. And bit by bit, little by little, but faster than you’d think, the roping pens empty, the deafening bawling of the cows dies away as they head out briskly to pasture with their calves at their sides, without so much as a backward glance. With a suddenness of quiet that is jarring yet a relief, the branding stove is shut off. In the hours that follow the rush of the work, a meal is enjoyed and stories are shared and reminiscences are savored.
There is something bittersweet about the last big branding of the season, the last time the stove roars to life, the last time it cools. Ranching, for much of the year, is a pretty solitary profession. Families hunker down in the wintertime keeping animals fed and watered, and take to the pastures in the summertime with the odd jobs that are the summer routine. Fall work throws neighbors together in small groups here and there before calves are weaned and sold, but it is nothing like the community reunion of branding season. For a solid month, branding follows branding and neighbor helps neighbor, in a celebratory frenzy of work and camaraderie.
It is when the irons cool that there is really time to reflect on that, that partnership with one another for the grand and gritty task ahead, in partnerships that go back decades and generations. No one is keeping a score card, no one is counting hours helped here or there, but everyone is pitching in because there is work to do and that is what a true community does.
This is a foreign concept to many modern-day Americans. We no longer live where we work, or work where we live, to give a nod to the author Wendell Berry. We have separated work from life, and we have lost the vitality of community that results from living where we work in close proximity to others who also live where they work.
No matter how the American culture has shifted in favor of convenience and economy and minimizing human inputs and nickeling and diming every transaction, ranching is still done the old way. And the old way requires people. Flesh and blood people. People who are willing to show up with what skill they have or the willingness to learn a new one. To give of their time without keeping a record of how or whether it was returned to them, and with this spirit the work all somehow gets done.
We aren’t made to live in isolation. We are made to need one another and to be needed, and the ranching life gives a taste of this. Even in my relatively short time as a rancher’s wife, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces, working shoulder to shoulder with family and neighbors, each week of the season sprinkled with these all-hands-on-deck, all-day events. It is the one time of year when the community is reminded in a real and tangible way of how much we need each other. We aren’t doing this alone.
The branding stove has been put away and the persistent smell of smoke and burnt hide no longer sticks to our clothing. It is a relief to have calving and branding over with for the season, and for summer work and rhythms to be settling into place. We’ll bump into neighbors over fences or at the county fair or other gatherings. But the energy and shared experiences of branding season will leave their impressions long after the irons have cooled.
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Originally published in the May/June 2024 issue of Down Country Roads Magazine
First, I fell in love with violets. I called them wildflowers, but Dad called them weeds, and to his chagrin they grew in abundance in the yard of my childhood home. I can remember picking them handful by fragrant handful, stuffing them into tiny vases with pride and delight. Their sweet faces were enchanting, the sleepy-eyed, quiet little things, all shades of dark blue-purple to white, with the delicate striping at their throats and their whimsical heart-shaped leaves.
Then I learned their names. They weren’t just violets, but some were common blue violets, some were dog violets. It is one thing to know a flower by sight, to recognize it in a distant sort of a way. It is another thing to know its name. It is like the difference between an acquaintance and a companion.
Thus began a lifelong friendship with the flowers.
Field guides became a favorite and treasured part of my personal library. I learned many names. Each hike or rambling walk was a treasure hunt, every parting of the grasses a discovery. For each new flower I found, I learned a new name, like meeting a new friend.
And meet them I did, learning to see the uniqueness of the flowers, not just nature’s wild and wonderful bouquet.
As my friendship with them deepened and their names became familiar, wooded rambles no longer were blind treasure hunts, but reunions, each time I wandered into their domain and sought their company. My photographs of them were no longer just photographs, but portraits. Their familiar faces became as familiar as a friend’s face, their presence was eagerly anticipated, the blooming of different flowers marking milestones throughout the year. I learned their quirks and preferences, to know where each little blossoming beauty likes to be, what hollows they haunt, what hillsides they adorn, and when they adorn them. A well-traveled trail is always new, week to week transformed by the adorning flowers, and sometimes day to day.
Columbine blooms quickly in the early summer and is easily missed, tucked away in the cool, damp hollows and ravines, her salmon and yellow blossoms hanging like pendants from her slender stem. A lucky person might chance upon a blue columbine, rare in the Hills, or even a white morph. Lanceleaf bluebells grow on the hill trail above our house, drinking up the splashes of midsummer sunlight from between the spreading ponderosa pines. Finding the hiding place of the sego lily is a reward in itself, reclusive as she is, and rather shy, maiden-white with a heart of gold. Spiderwort, not overly finicky about where he grows, sometimes in the pines, sometimes on the prairie, boasts his clusters of brightest pink and vivid purple, the local varieties almost impossible to differentiate, as they cross-pollinate with ease. Longspur violets grow in the higher elevations west of us, while their sisters, the pale-lavender larkspur violet and dainty yellow Nuttall’s violet, inhabit the more arid country around my home, flourishing on the grass-covered slopes of the foothills. And then there is the magenta gem of the summer, shooting star, thriving in the shelter of trees and ferny slopes, lighting up like her namesake when the sun is just right. Beebalm, almost a weed but not quite, spreads a mist of color over entire hillsides in the later summer, fragrant and robust. Wild roses, sweet and feisty, grow in the sandiest, hardest-packed ruts of trails, forming rollicking banks of brambles when they are undisturbed, leaving behind crimson jewels at summer’s end which, when harvested, make the most wonderful honey-colored jelly.
So many names! Names familiar and enchanting and delightful. Prairie chickweed. Purple virgin’s bower. Prairie smoke. Blue flag. Dame’s rocket. Wild buckwheat. Yellow ladyslipper. Pussytoes. Shell-leaf penstemon. Cutleaf anemone. Harebells and asters and fleabane.
How sweet it is, to be surrounded by familiar, beautiful faces. To peer into the underbrush, to part the tall grasses, to look beyond what many choose to see, to seek and find and learn. To ramble in the woods in the company of so many old friends.
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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 1, 2024
What a springtime we have had! As I write this, a gentle rain is falling outside on a world becoming almost too green to look at. I love watching the animals in a rain like this. Unconcerned, unbothered, unflapped. They don’t seek shelter, or hump up their backs against it, but just let it fall and go about their business. The grass seems to double its height every day, and I think I could sit and watch my garden grow. The pastures are vivid beneath last year’s cured grasses, and the hayfield is slowly coming back to life after being stripped by hail last summer.
The forecast looks promising for continued moisture. We have had inches of precipitation so far this year, mostly in the form of rain since we had a nearly snowless winter, but the funny thing is that I look back on the last month or two, and I don’t remember when it happened.
We have no trouble remembering storms. In a climate where we measure rainfall in hundredths of an inch, we care deeply about the storms. Winter or summer, springtime or fall, it doesn’t matter. We remember the summertime gully washers, the calf-killing blizzards, the deadly cold snaps, or the heat waves that spike a whole region into red flag warnings. We remember the fire-starting lightning storms, powerline-downing ice storms. We remember the washout that fills all the dams in three hours and the wild green-up afterwards. We remember the hail that devastates and destroys, and the subsequent work re-siding and re-shingling the house. We remember the massive storm that follows a prolonged and agonizing dry spell, wrenching us violently out of a drought and providing moisture for a hay crop when we thought it wouldn’t be possible.
Good or bad, we remember those things.
But we never remember the rain. Just the rain.
Funny, because of all the kinds of storms, of all the kinds of weather events that bring chaos and goodness and growth and blessing, the gentle drizzle is the best of the best. The rain that falls gently, not driven by wind, but straight-falling rain, hushing sweetly in the grasses, trickling quietly down the windows, dripping lazily from tree branches and running softly down the sodden gravel road, slowly – so, so slowly! – filling puddles and dams and soaking deep into the ground where it can actually do the most good.
The gentle drizzle. The good it provides it provides slowly.
We do the same with metaphorical storms as well. We remember the big events, whether they bring grief or blessing. We remember the deaths and births and marriages and the marriages falling apart. We remember the big promotions and the job losses.
But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?
We remember relational storms as well. We remember being madly in love or desperately heartbroken. We remember feeling wildly loved and feeling devastatingly hurt. We remember the glittering engagement ring, the wedding (maybe), the honeymoon (maybe), and we remember each other’s failures.
But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?
We remember spiritual storms as well. We remember dry spells so critical we felt our faith would break, or being in such a vicious storm we couldn’t see our way out of it. We remember droughts breaking in a cloudburst of certainty and joy, and all our dams of hope and faith and joy being filled up overnight.
But what about the gentle drizzle? The times when a gentle heavenly watering keeps the ephemeral springs trickling, keeping the dams full in a less spectacular way? The things that keep the grass green, and ripen the crops without flattening them? The things that keep the ground soft for working, rather than pouring out everything all at once and running off?
It is easy to see why we remember storms. Real ones and metaphorical. They’re showy. A lot happens in a short amount of time, both good and bad. We remember that sort of thing. We can’t be faulted for that, but we can be faulted that we don’t remember the rain. It takes work to remember it. It is a choice to remember it.
And we need to remember it.
Life isn’t made up of storms, although some people do seem to have more than their fair share of stormy happenings. Sometimes I think we look for storms as the answer to our problems, whether it is an actual meteorological drought, or a metaphorical drought. We, in a way, like the show of the lightning and the roll of the thunder and the downpour that is unmistakable, watching the dams fill up in a matter of hours. We also brace for storms, sometimes going through life expecting to get flattened by a microburst at any second.
But life isn’t sustained by storms. It doesn’t take a storm to bring change, and a lot of times the change that a storm brings is short-lived, doing much less good than a much less spectacular gentle rain.
Gentle rain…Those daily graces God pours out. The sustenance, even if it seems meager. The spiritual sustenance, the physical sustenance. Like the daily awaking next to a beloved though imperfect spouse, the shared morning routine, the shared meals and quiet companionship of faithful marriage. Like watching the day to day and year by year growth and change in a loved one, or in oneself. Like the hindsight awe of getting by, even if it was tough. Like comfort in loneliness, even if it is years of loneliness. Like all of the millions of little things that can easily be overlooked or taken for granted.
That’s what life is made of. So, remember the rain.
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The funniest sights of calves always involve their tongues. Either they forget they have one or they can’t quiiiiiite reach. This little guy was super determined to reach his little hind end, and was occupied for quite awhile doing so. I left and came back and he was working on the other side. Perseverance!
My favorite is seeing a baby calf, a little dozey-looking, probably just finished nursing, sitting there with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. Sometimes he has a milk mustache. It always makes me laugh, though half the time I don’t notice until I’m looking through pictures later.
Funny little critters.
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We really don’t go on dates. We didn’t when we were dating, and we don’t married. Maybe someday we can change that, since I really do think it is a good practice for married couples, but honestly our marriage reflects the simplicity of our “dating” life. We did life together. We worked together. We cooked meals together. Picked apples together. Worked cows. And these two photos? I took these just recently, but an awful lot of our dating and engagement was spent just so, and I would occasionally sneak photos of my favorite view when I was riding with Brad to check cows, or check the calving pasture, or check water, or whatever. I fell in love looking at this view.
And it made me think of something. This particular day, I had been busy with all sorts of things, we had vaccinated cows all morning, we were having a couple from church over the next day, and I had a house to clean, bread to bake, some writing and photo editing to do…So when Brad asked me if I wanted to go with him to check the calving pasture, I could have come up with a dozen excuses not to.
But here’s the thing: Those things can wait. They 100% can wait. But I will NEVER be disappointed for investing in my marriage and in my friendship with my husband, even if it means not getting the bread baked when I wanted to get it baked, or even if it means I have to do a bit of cramming to get my writing done, or to get housework done before guests get here, even if it means I don’t get the walk in that I wanted to take with the dogs, or whatever else.
Even now, while we don’t have children, time invested in marriage is priceless and precious. And, ladies, we can be way too prone to think our husbands aren’t romantic enough, or aren’t obvious enough in how they “pursue us.” We can complain, even if only in our ungrateful little hearts, that our husband isn’t doing this or that, and why can’t he just do X?
We have been fed a cultural diet of personality studies and love languages and other semi-worthless psychoanalytical drivel–“worthless drivel” because it is wielded as a weapon against those closest to us, rather than employed as a means of understanding our own quirks better so that we can moderate those quirks better, or understand our spouses better so that we can love them better. Those semi-worthless personality studies and the love languages garbage are used as a way to find fault with our spouses and families, rather than as a way to seek personal growth and maturing.
Have you ever heard someone say (or maybe you’ve said this yourself), “I know he’s trying, but it just isn’t my love language?” Talk about damaging. That way of thinking is poison.
So, when our husbands invite us to join them in their tasks? When they express enjoyment simply of having our company? That is showing love. That is investment. That is pursuit. And it is priceless. It might not look like a fancy restaurant and a bouquet of roses, but aren’t those things a little predictable and overrated? Be thankful for your husband, and look for the ways he loves you. And be willing to set your preconceived notions and prejudices and preferences aside to allow him to love you the way he knows best. It might come in the shape of a dozen roses, or it might come in the shape of riding double on the fourwheeler checking calves.
I know which one I’d pick.
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