June | In Hindsight

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Cynoglossum officinale – Houndstongue, Hound’s Tongue, Gypsyflower

June was a month of flying days, crazy calendars, and a frantic sense of not quite keeping up. I’m actually kind of glad it is over. The hecticness that has characterized the last four or six weeks is part of the reason that I’m a week and a half into July before getting to my reflection on June! Oh, well.

In a bit of a rush, I took a second job at the very beginning of June, so I’ve been working four days a week in Hill City, leaving at 9:00 in the morning to open the Mercantile at 10:00 and getting home at 9:00 at night after closing Farmer’s Daughter at 8:00 or 8:15. On the days I don’t go to Hill City, I’ve been working one or both of those days in Hermosa for Jack. In other words, I’ve been busy!

It has taught me a few things about myself, however, which is always a good thing. 1) I really don’t like tourists enough to sustain this schedule long-term. 2) I really love being at home. Working in Hill City leaves me drained, and sure brings out the homebody in me. So it sort of kindles that fire to get my own business set up, so I’m not having to leave home quite as often, or for such a long time each day.

We also enjoyed some unique weather and golf-ball sized hail, which amazingly did not destroy the garden! Rather miraculous.

Starting the second week of June, I was taking an online class in doll clothes design, which turned out to be a great crash course in a lot of things I think I already instinctively did in my sewing, which was great. Doing things instinctively can be nice, but to actually realize what you’re doing and why is even better. Then you can consciously focus on them, and focus on honing those skills. So I now have the beginnings of a lovely design inspiration book, and am gearing up for the pattern drafting class in October! Very excited.

Towards the end of June, we also got to meet and visit with some dear family from Texas. Mom’s cousin, Russel, whom she hadn’t seen in 25 years, brought his wife and three daughters up to South Dakota for vacation. They parked their camper outside our cabin, and we had breakfasts together, dinners together, and really enjoyed a sweet time of fellowship and companionship. It was a blessing to meet them. I’ve never had many girl cousins in my own age bracket, so it was fun to have three more who fit that category! We did some hiking, exploring of ghost-towns, picture taking, and enjoyed some great conversation.

June was a good month. I’m glad the craziness of it is over (it kind of has stuck with me in July, but a month of it is past!), and I’m looking forward to getting my life more balanced, but I guess that is part of getting settled in to a new home. Lots of changes still happening. It may feel like home, but June is kind of a reminder that we’re still figuring things out with our new life here.

Gotta love the journey.

Too much of a good thing

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

You know, in a week or so when it dries out, or later this summer when it isn’t raining anymore, we’ll all be wishing for more of this weather. And I know, I know–In comparison with the flooding down south, in Texas and Oklahoma, I’ve got nothin’ to complain about. We are now in a record-breaking June, as far as precipitation is concerned.

A thunderstorm rolled over the Hills this afternoon and dumped 1.4 inches on us in about an hour. The ground is already saturated and before too long the ditches were all churning with muddy water. A nearby practice arena was a lake, and a dam on our driveway that never has water in it probably had at least four feet of water!

I drove in from work, noticing all the water along the driveway, but was shocked to find that two of our huge cottonwood trees had snapped off. One of them completely blew down, leaving ten feet or so of trunk, and the other lost half of its bulk when one of the trunks broke off.

There was hail, smaller than pea-sized, piled on the mat in front of the door and I immediately wondered if we’d have a little water on the floor inside, since the seal around the door isn’t very tight. I was greeted with a mess. Water was everywhere, and I couldn’t figure out where it had come from! It was splashed about on the table, a rug by the hallway was soaking wet, the floor was puddled, and the dry erase boards on the refrigerator had smeared and dripped.

Then I realized the windows were open. We have a five- or six-foot overhang on our roof, so usually the open windows are fine during a storm, but the same straight-line winds that toppled trees and bent over some garden stakes blew straight in our kitchen window and soaked everything, including the refrigerator across the room. Jars with silverware in them had a good half-inch of water in the bottoms, the chair cushions were damp or soaked, and I’m sure the kittens were terrified. What a mess!

Amazingly, nothing much was permanently damaged, and we were able to dry the kitchen out. And the tree by the Miner’s Cabin miraculously didn’t topple on the cabin itself! We have a few more rock slides along the driveway, or the slides are getting bigger, but all’s well and safe. Two hours later, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the birds were singing again.

New Project

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Given that my portfolio of wildflower photographs is growing in leaps and bounds, I thought it was time to start a wildflower identification project, partly for my own reference, partly for anyone else who is interested in wildflowers. These will be mostly flowers from the Black Hills, but I have a fair number of Illinois flowers in my portfolio as well that I’ll probably include in this project.

So my new page on this website is called Botanical Reference, and will be precisely that: a reference for wildflowers and, as I expand my photographic portfolio, pictures of their leaves, fruits, and notes on their growing locations, etc. This might be a little ambitious, but it is worth being a long-term project.

Enjoy!

Blooming June

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The Black Hills are dressed in their best and most glorious finery. Wildflowers are sprinkled, sometimes lavishly, on hillsides and in valleys, the creeks are full to overflowing, and everything is green and lush and fragrant. It is always fun to see the Black Hills through the eyes of a visitor. Even though I’ve only lived here for four months, this has always been our home away from home, and consequently seeing it sometimes becomes, well, daily life. There is nothing like a new pair of eyes to renew my own love of this region.

Mom’s cousin Russel, his wife, and their three daughters have been staying with us since Sunday. I’d never met any of them, so it was fun to get to know my second-cousins from Texas! We all went down to the Mountain Lion Cave last night (or as close as we could get without crossing Battle Creek), and this morning my second cousin Julie and I headed out on an excursion. The rest of her family and Anna were going to Reptile Gardens and, as fascinating as I am sure it is, neither of us was particularly interested in spending hours there.

So out we went to Spokane and haunted the ghost town for a few hours, drove Iron Mountain Road, and visited Little Falls. The flowers were beautiful, and any little hollows or depressions were full of water, frogs, and mosquitoes. The thistles were becoming the prize-winning sort, and mushrooms were in abundance.

Violet and creeping wood sorrels flashed little glints of color in the shorter grass, their heart-shaped leaves green and moist and plentiful. Wild roses and geranium, blue-eyed grass and purple clover, asters and dandelions, all were tucked under trees and nestled into hillsides, along paths, thriving. The flowers and berries were peeking daintily from the Solomon’s Seal, and the lichen was thick on fallen branches and damp wood.

While on first glance not much had changed (it is a ghost town, after all…), when I looked closer there were dozens of new forms of botanical life, flowers that hadn’t been in bloom on our first visit, overgrown and flooded paths, and new clusters of mushrooms growing in the rich layer of decaying leaves and pine needles.

The house looked pretty much the same as before–the broken windows, rusted hinges, rotted floorboards, and the swallow’s nest in the stovepipe–but when on the hunt for details, I suddenly noticed many things that had escaped my eye before, such as the remnants of wallpaper in the house, or the lichen-encrusted nails on the windowsill, or the broken blue Mason jar and the scrap of blue and white wallpaper. The nest had a swallow in it this time, and little plants were growing in the moist earth where floorboards were missing. I noticed “love notices”, where boys and girls had written their names together on the walls. What an old-fashioned and romantic little spot.

Outside one of the windows, there was a layer of shattered glass. My camera is a bit finicky, and after taking one properly-focused picture, it suddenly stopped focusing on the glass. Instead, it was focusing on the reflections of the trees in the glass. The effect was enchanting!

Beauty may be subtle and well-hidden, even when in plain sight. It is hard to see beauty in the mundane when one is only looking for the mundane, or when one is overburdened with the world. A certain optimism is required for seeing exquisite beauty in the drabness of rotting wood or broken glass. Optimism is not my natural state, but I find it exceedingly difficult to be pessimistic when I am surrounded by God’s beauty, and his little gifts. I passionately think we should nourish the vision to see those beautiful details. The world is a bleak place, but there are so many tiny joys and gifts given to us each day by a loving Creator, if we have the eyes to see them.

The smell of work

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

I’m sweaty, covered in chaff and grass and bug bits and residual sunscreen. In spite of the sunscreen, I’m probably burned. I’m thistle-pricked and my eyes feel gritty. There’s dirt under my nails and motor oil on my jeans. I’m tired and I smell like work. And I feel refreshed and rested at a deep soul level.

The soul needs cleansing from the rush and maze of life, and after many consecutive days working in a little tourist town, I was simply aching for the outdoors! A few weeks ago, I took a second job in Hill City, so now I work morning and early afternoon at the Mercantile and at 3:00 I head over to the Farmer’s Daughter and work there until 7:00 or 8:00. Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful for the work that God has provided so quickly in our new life here. But I am a dedicated introvert. Being around people that long drains me. And I mean drains me.

So yesterday, I was only scheduled at the Mercantile and made my plans accordingly. All day long, I looked forward to getting home, catching the horses and going out on a ride. So that is exactly what I did. In case you might think I’m just an out-and-out cowgirl now, I need to clarify–Horses are a fear I’m working on conquering. I love the animals. I love the feel of a good ride. The smell of horse, the sway and movement of the saddle, and the rush of energy while riding a working cow pony, when the animal gets eager and excited to be doing work. But horses are big. They are independently-thinking creatures who really have no good reason to let a human being climb on their back, must less to remain there. Maybe I just have a good appreciation for that fact right there–If this 1000 pound animal suddenly ceased wanting me on its back, it could remove me. And quickly, too.

However, yesterday I managed to make steps in conquering my trepidations and took Frosty out on a ride. Jimmy came, too–Can’t let his girlfriend leave without him! And I do believe the horses enjoyed it. And Frosty loves to run. I’m too cautious of a rider to just let her go full throttle…Not to mention, she has a stubborn streak and has tried to buck me off, once-upon-a-time. If she had really wanted to buck me, she could have, but she bucked hard enough to make me a little careful with her. But either way, there are just too many trees, holes, fences, rocks, even when in an open meadow, to let her go full tilt, but she got some of her energy out. And it was a beautiful afternoon for it. We weren’t out that long, maybe forty five minutes, but when I started hearing thunder I thought it wise to head back. There were other places I wanted to go, but Frosty is a tall horse and is a little hard to mount if she isn’t standing quite still. Which she usually is not. Too many fences to open and close. I decided to leave further exploring for another day. Anyway, it was a good way to end my afternoon.

A short photographic excursion followed the ride…It has been so wet lately, the cow pies are all sprouting mushrooms. And they are surprisingly pretty mushrooms, especially considering the mundane nature of their host…And it just keeps getting wetter–We had an inch of rain last night, some hail, and a marvelous thunder storm. Starting to wonder where all the water will go.

There is a shack out in the corrals that is mostly tumbled down now, but the remnants of a dirt-moving business are left piled inside. Old dynamite casings. I was actually able to get a good picture of them–In the last month or so, one of the walls fell in, so it is actually possible to climb in without bringing the whole shack tumbling down on top of you!

Finally, today I headed to Jack’s to mow. He’s got a big place, and the mowing took me a solid five hours, and I weeded for another hour or so. It was warm, but there was intermittent cloud cover and a gentle breeze. Not to mention, the breeze while riding a zero turn mower keeps a body pretty cool! Sometimes I still get a chuckle over my radical shift in direction. I never would have thought three years ago that I’d be graduated college and mowing for a local rancher. Just wouldn’t have occurred to me.

When I came home this afternoon from Jack’s, I passed a vehicle pulled off to the side of the road with the flashers on. I turned around and came back to see if they were having car problems. No car trouble. Just a photo shoot. They were apparently tourists getting pictures of the beautiful scenery. There was a little rush of delight when I realized it–This is the view they were enjoying, a view of the Adrian ranch. It brought back all the excitement of moving out here, the excitement that has almost become normal. It reminded me just how glad (it seems too drab a word to use) I am to be out here. It reminded me that God knows our hearts and, while he doesn’t answer every dream or prayer in the way we think he should, he does, I believe, give us desires for reasons, and I was struck once again by how amazing it is that a little girl’s dream of South Dakota should become a reality fifteen years later. God is good.

After five and a half years of college, five and a half years of working my brain, hard work feels good. The smell of work is sweet. And I’m realizing in many ways that my soul truly feels cleansed when I am surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation, exhausted by blessed hard work, sore and dirt-covered, and breathing the fresh air of wide open spaces.

Signed, sealed, and delivered

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

This lovely surprise was waiting on the cabin porch when I got home from Rapid today. I had just started wondering if it would ever come, if I would ever manage to be an official college graduate, and it finally arrived! A second surprise was waiting–Instead of cum laude written on the diploma, magna cum laude was inscribed there, an exciting flourish with which to end my undergraduate career.

It is good to actually be finished. College is hard for everyone, or for everyone who takes college seriously. For different reasons, too, no doubt. Mine was difficult because my transfer to EIU came at a particularly challenging time in my life, shortly after which my family decided to move to South Dakota. To be confronted with that answer to prayer and fulfillment of dreams but still to have a minimum of two years left in school made it difficult to focus or to put my creative energies where they needed to be. Not to mention, such a radical change of life direction also changed my feelings towards having a college degree, or this particular college degree. I began to peel back layer upon layer of priority and started to realize that, in spite of my love of music and the performing arts, there was a deeper hunger and desire that had been necessarily quieted because of where I was in life. Little notes I found in old journals and schoolwork, like “When I grow up, I want to have horses and live in South Dakota,” started to resonate with so much more meaning. That was 9-year-old Laura talking, and the part of me that had dreamt that as a little girl began to wake up again. Imagine what a challenge it was, then, to be so close to something so dear, but two years away! Or perhaps you can imagine it, and you wonder what the big deal is. Fair enough.

But then the college work itself–After failing a recital preview, struggling with vocal technique, and failing a skills test over a single mistake, I began to wonder if it was possible for me to even finish, or if I’d have to change my degree. After successfully finishing my junior recital, I felt better about graduating, but then right in the middle of a fantastic last semester and one month before my senior recital preview, I found out I needed surgery. In some ways, I recovered quickly, but my stamina was completely sapped. All the comfort I’d felt with my literature was suddenly gone, and I struggled just to get through a phrase of music.

We were supposed to move out here to the Black Hills in December, but my recital wasn’t finished–There were some annoying acrobatics to accomplish related to scheduling the recital, but it was eventually scheduled–Just as it was looking impossible, my review was passed. Recital was given. Degree complete. God is good.

God is faithful. That is one of the biggest things I’ve learned through my whole college experience. He allowed me to go to college, to earn my degree, and to finish up without a cent of debt. What a blessing! I can’t even begin to describe how free I feel, or how grateful I am to God for helping me to do that. Even being directed into music, even some of the dissatisfaction I felt while working towards my bachelors degree, I can see now how God used those things to prepare me for this major transition in life, moving to South Dakota. If I had been completely in love with my music at EIU, the same way I was at Parkland College, I would have been tragically torn over this move to South Dakota. In fact, I might never have made it at all. My intent was graduate school, but that changed pretty quickly when we decided to move. If I had found all the creative fulfillment I craved pursuing my music, my love of writing might not have been rekindled. My love of textile work might not have been rekindled. And my dreaming self might have been content to simply ride one wave after another of creative satisfaction in music. But I think God obviously had/has other plans. Music will be a part of those plans, somehow, somewhere, sometime, but it won’t be the pursuit I imagined it would be, five years ago.

God allowed me to work alongside some fascinating and wonderful musicians. Working alongside them, both the professors and the students, I realized that I didn’t have the drive or determination or do-or-die mentality they had in relation to music. Music is a brutal field. You need all of those things to survive in it. You must have a conviction that that is where you belong to survive in it. Or you must have a love for music that can’t be tarnished by judgement, criticism, exhaustion, or fear. I lacked a number of those things, at least in relation to my music. I find that they are present in other areas of my life and interactions, but often lacking in my musical life. I realized that my colleagues got excited about music in ways that often didn’t move me. Taking some non-music classes, I realized I was fascinated in other ways and by other things: research, history, and…pirates, to name a few.

Yet, many of those fears, fears of judgement or criticism, fear of failure, many of those things confronted me head-on at EIU, and I think I grew a lot in those areas. Some of it was simply by letting go of my identity as a “musician.” This is something I’m still working on, but my ultimate identity should always be “Child of God,” not “musician” or “seamstress” or whatever other title I can give myself. As human beings, I think each of us has a desire to be known for our accomplishments, to be something, to have significance, to be known, or known as something in particular. That something in particular will be what is most central to our life, and that thing most central to our life should always be our faith. Sadly, it isn’t always. Our love of God is overshadowed by worldly pursuits, by the cares of the world, by busyness and exhaustion and stress. But when we do let something else become our identity, we need to ask God for forgiveness and acknowledge and affirm that he is our King, our Head, and our Identity. Anything less is idolatry.

Anyway, I’m an official college graduate, and I just praise God that he brought me through to where I am now! Thanks to so many people at EIU who supported me, from Jerry Daniels, my voice teacher, to Jerri Hinton, a dear friend in the music department, to people outside of the department who blessed me in so many ways: April Lee, who mentored me, Dan Hagen, who taught me to love journalism, and Charles Foy, who fascinated me with pirates. Thanks to all my classmates and friends who inspired me and gave color to my college career. And of course, much, much love to my family, who was always there for me, putting up with my emotional swings, frustrations, and exuberances, and to whom I could always come home at the end of the day.