First published by Amythest Review, July 2024.

It is no secret, the influence that a teacher can have on the life of a kid, and I credit Rex Cook with first publishing my work.

One day during class, I was writing poetry and drawing pictures in my notebook instead of doing my assignment. I was so absorbed that I didn’t notice Mr. Cook looking over my shoulder. He told me to get to work and to see him after school. With thudding heart I stayed after school, doomed to face my punishment. He asked to see my notebook and then paged through it.

“This is pretty good,” he said.

He seemed genuinely interested and then asked if he could take a poem and put it on the bulletin board next to the pencil sharpener so the other kids could see it. His attention to something I had created touched me deeply.

Rex knew what students needed; often it was an encouraging word, and occasionally a stern warning. Most importantly, he offered every student – human or horse — an unwavering belief in their innate goodness. He drew out his student’s best efforts because, given a little practice, they might grow into the confidence that he already had in them. Whether training up a yearling colt or encouraging a fledgling author-to-be, he always believed in our best natures. And that belief inspired us and motivated us to reach for the limits of our capabilities.

He learned about my love for horses and invited me several times out to his little ranch where he tried to teach me how to rope. It was an abysmal endeavor. After my sixth-grade year, we lost touch. I was too shy to continue the friendship and going to junior high was like moving to another planet. During our few times roping at his place, he gave me a rope to use for practice which I kept and still have hanging in my horse trailer.

Later, when I published my first book, I wanted to mail him a copy. I was looking him up online to get an address and discovered he is a well-known saddle-maker and had recently been inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

We started corresponding and I asked if he’d make me a saddle. He crafted a one-of-a-kind beauty that now, when it is not on my horse, sits alongside the rope in the horse trailer.  My husband, Bill Sullivan, himself a superb horseman, kept hearing about my teacher.

Finally, Bill said, “Let’s go see him.”

My parents had long ago left North Dakota, and in all those years since the sixth grade, I had never gone back to see him.  It was time. Bill and I spent five days with him. We saw the old homestead where he grew up, rode horseback with him in the Badlands, met his daughter, and heard wonderful stories of horses and cowboys and the spirit of the Plains. He also tried to teach my husband and me to rope, once again an abysmal undertaking, but we had some good laughs.

In returning to the places of our childhood, former homes, yards, and playgrounds are often so much smaller than what we remember. In the case of Rex, however, it was interesting to discover that the man turns out to be even bigger in life than he was in my memory. A rope in his hands is like a living thing, moving with grace and purpose. He has the same amazing effect on horses, working them in the manner he taught kids – with firmness and encouragement. Relaxed and positive, he always provided the opportunity for his students to make the right choice. Challenges were not to be avoided, but rather, welcomed as an opportunity to learn. If one explanation didn’t connect in the mind of his student, he changed tactics and tried another approach.

It was even more amazing to be the student again and see how he broke down the simple task of swinging a rope to “catch” a stationary bale of hay with plastic steer horns. It was interesting to see how my mind grew pinched by fear of failure, how my coordination stumbled over frustration. Sure, we laughed, but I was determined to do it right; to please my teacher, just as I had wanted to please him back when I was eleven years old.

Yet pleasing him had nothing to do with it. That sentiment only got in the way. To Rex, it is always about the task at hand, the matter-of-fact doing of a thing. What works. What doesn’t. He often walked away to give me space to practice. Then he’d step in again to make a suggestion.

Rex has a term for nonsense. When we talked to him about horse training methods, he nodded in agreement with some; other ideas he just dismissed as “malarkey.” Malarkey may be the absolute best word to describe those inner critics in our minds that sometimes take on the voices of people we know – maybe a parent, a teacher, or the Ex — voices whose criticisms rob us of confidence and set our minds to spinning. All these years later, Rex Cook is still teaching.

I am still thinking about this in the days since we left North Dakota, the implications of learning with an uncluttered mind. It makes me think about how I try to teach my own horse. Am I offering him encouragement or only correction? Am I allowing his mind the freedom to enjoy the task at hand? And what about my interactions with others? What kind of fears or distractions might be in the way?

Roping that straw steer taught me the necessity of shoveling out “malarkey” in order to be truly present to people, the world’s creatures, and this beautiful life at hand.

A peculiar thing happened in the produce aisle at Fred Meyer on Monday. In some respects, the incident hardly seems worth mentioning. But it has stayed with me nonetheless, a moment I may remember for some time.

First, some background: Remember those first apocalyptic-feeling days of the pandemic when people emptied the shelves at grocery stores? Who knew what was going to happen in the weeks ahead? When I went to Three Bears with my list and a homemade mask, the place was packed with people pushing overflowing carts. It was strangely silent. Few people spoke and even fewer made eye contact. I remember the pit in my stomach to find the only thing left in the vegetable section of the freezer was a single bag of peas. I put it in my cart.

Looking back, it marked the beginning of a shift. The competition to get the last package of toilet paper that day made us all strangers and competitors rather than neighbors and friends. I left the parking lot with my bag of peas feeling strangely alone.

In the coming days, my mask became a shield to social contact. For one thing, those of us with glasses couldn’t see through the fog of our breath. Then, after social anxiety about toilet paper abated, the raging (and absurd) mask debate made ideological adversaries between those who wore them and those who did not. For me it just became easier to inhabit the space of my small personal bubble. Get groceries and get out. For awhile we ordered online for curbside pickup.

Fast forward to Monday this week. I went to Fred Meyers, masked as always, looking for fresh rosemary. The package on a shelf was blocked by another shopper, who was pondering her choices. I waited a bit but she was clearly going to be there a while. Finally I said, “Excuse me, would you mind if I reached around you to grab something?”

She looked startled at first. Then we made eye contact. Her eyes smiled behind her own mask, and she stepped back.

“I’m sorry. Yes, of course!”

“No problem at all,” I smiled back. “Thank you.”

“Have a good day.”

“You too!”

And we actually meant it.

I momentarily had trouble seeing, not because my glasses were fogged this time, but because tears sprang up in my eyes. Our exchange of pleasantries felt like rain on parched ground. How long had it been since I talked to a stranger with kind eyes and a spontaneous smile? Eighteen months, give or take.

I read recently that just as a baby needs human touch to thrive, adults need social interaction. I was a kid when I watched a documentary about experiments in the 1950s where rhesus monkey infants were given surrogate mothers of either bare wire or wire covered in terrycloth. In a series of ever-sadder deprivations, scientists studied the fear, aggression, and neurosis that developed in these babies who lacked the nurture and touch of their mothers.

Leaving Fred Meyers that day, I realized that our self-imposed seclusion has come at a price. We’ve been living in a world of wire monkeys. No wonder everyone is angry.  I have a wonderful husband whose company I adore, so I never considered our isolation a deprivation. It has surely saddened me not to see our kids or grandkids as much as we used to. Even so, I never thought I would miss an exchange of pleasantries with strangers.

The woman standing in front of the rosemary proved me wrong. We need connection like we need food and water. We have a long way to go to bridge the chasms that have opened up around politics, the pandemic, and past societal transgressions. But I can’t help but wonder if maybe the healing of these painful rifts could start small, in a grocery aisle, with words like “excuse me,” “thank you,” “I’m sorry.”

I was working at the kitchen stove, making a batch of mustard pickles wondering if there is any way back to a more charitable view of the world than the one I currently hold. A stubborn film of cynicism colors my lens. I cannot seem to wash clean from it. As I prepared the clear jars for hot cucumbers, I realized this sticky view has been accumulating bit by bit over two years of headlines. Each day seems more appalling than the last, until now I judge strangers by their appearance.  Masked or not masked. Flags flying (some with obscenities) or no flags. Big trucks or fuel-efficient sedans. When I go to the post office or grocery store, I have begun avoiding eye contact. If occasionally I glance into the face of an unmasked, usually bearded man the gaze that returns seems to mock. “Be safe now,” one young man said to me with a smirk – long, long before the U.S. death toll reached 700,000. These days I am more appalled at people than I am the headlines.

Example: A man, a new parishioner, carries a gun into our church with his baby girl riding on his hip, just above his firearm. A weapon of death in a house of worship. I am so uncomfortable with this that I finally write to the pastor, not knowing what can be done. It is after all a free country. I have been back to church only a handful of times since the beginning of the pandemic, in part because seeing a weapon in this sacred space drives me to distraction. The pastor’s careful response: “What sin is he committing?”

Thinking about all this at my kitchen stove, I heard a brief but distinct tapping noise. Tap, tap, tap, tap. I paused from my stirring, wondering if I imagined it. A moment later, I heard it again. And then again. So I left the stove and went toward the sound in the next room. Tap, tap, tap, tap. And there she was, a tiny nuthatch tapping from inside the clear glass of the woodstove. She must have flown down the chimney. She looked me directly in the eye. Expectant. I kneeled said, “Well you are in a fix, aren’t you?”

These blue-gray birds are shaped like little spearheads, sharp at the beak and blunt at the tail. They’re insanely fast in flight and creep up and down trees, tapping at the bark for insects. Omnivorous, they also enjoy our birdfeeder, especially now, before the deep cold of winter. This one apparently took a wrong turn. She tapped again and flew against the glass.

I opened the iron door just a crack, enough to reach my hand through, but the bird was fast and took her opportunity to escape. Just when she thought she was free, she flew into the picture window beating her wings up and under the drawn shade. I reached up and gently grabbed the fluttering bird. She was so tiny. I held her easily in one hand but cupped the other hand over her to lighten my grip. She grew still in the dark of my grasp. I could almost feel the hammer of her heart in my palm. I walked out onto the porch and uncurled my fingers. She flew away so fast, her gray feathers barely registered as a blur.

I went back to the stove, strangely buoyed. It made me happy to extend a favor to this small creature. I’d just been thinking about how to escape this feeling of cynicism, as dark and grimy as the inside of a cast-iron stove. Was the universe telling me something? If so, was I the bird or the rescuer? That just made me laugh, and it occurred to me how playful the golden leaves of autumn fall outside my window. Those deepening furrows in my brow change nothing. And as I went back to finishing my pickles with a lighter heart, I felt a calm, abiding sense of simply being held.

There were 1,800 entrants in the nation-wide NFPW contest.  The award for this book review was especially gratifying since Katy and I graduated from the same Spalding MFA in Writing class of October ‘03.

I earned another FIRST PLACE in “Specialty Articles – Agriculture” for the article published in Alaska magazine “Sweet Cherry Rumors.” I also earned two second-place awards and an honorable mention for other articles in various publications. The combined awards in the NFPW contest earned THIRD PLACE in the national sweepstakes.

In other news, the documentary Canyons and Ice: The Last Run of Dick Griffith, that I co-produced with Andy Trimlett, is airing on 39 PBS stations around the country this summer. The film is a companion to the book and chronicles Griffith’s last, historic run through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River.

As for what I’m doing now? I have been writing to my one-year-old granddaughter (and all my grandchildren) about these days of quarantine, pandemic, and civil unrest. Eva will not remember these unprecedented historic events, so I am writing these letters to her future self. Included with the news are stories about the rhythm of daily life on our little farm – the arrival of cranes in springtime, the planting of our garden, the antics of dogs and horses. I’m throwing in a bit of advice here and there from her “Oma.” Writing is cathartic in these strange times, and Eva is the unwitting receptacle for my musings. This entry was recently published by 49 Writers.

One-Year-Old in Quarantine

Since we cannot see you in person,

The video shows your arms out,

your face frozen in startled wonder,

as if you had been transported to another universe,

which of course you had. There is an entire world

Outside your little house in the big woods.

You slowly, carefully squatted

Orienting yourself closer to the safety of earth.

Closer to the ground, your

Tiny fingers picked up a rock.

It was as if holding something in your grasp

Brought you back to yourself.

The “wow” of something you can carry is

Less overwhelming than the “whoa” of the cosmos,

We are all, little Eva, grasping at pebbles.

It won’t be long before we’ll be swapping winter bunny boots for summer footwear. Our assortment of boots sits on a shelf in the mudroom, out of reach of Lily, our shoe-chewing Aussie pup. The collection clearly shows that I prefer boots to pretty shoes. When I shop, I’m looking for comfort and mileage. I’m looking for a long-term, hard-working relationship.

              Sadly, like good dogs and honest horses, boots have a limited lifespan. I have outlived five dogs and two horses. Now friends are telling me it is time to say goodbye to my old cowboy boots. My husband even offered to take me shopping. 

              The boots are literally coming apart at the seams. The inside lining has long since ripped out. They are tattered and stained. All that remains are worn soles, cracked leather that lets in daylight, and a whole lot of memories.

              I bought them more than a decade ago in North Dakota in the small town where my late mother- and father-in-law at one time owned a working cattle ranch. We rode many miles checking and mending fences in the hot Dakota sun. In early spring, we pulled calves and watched newborn babies totter at their mother’s sides. We rounded up cattle on horseback and moved them from one pasture to another. We branded and vaccinated bawling calves in old wood-rail corrals. We hauled hay bales and planted trees and watched for deer that the guys would hunt in the fall. The day my father-in-law and I lay my sick horse to rest, those boots stood on prairie soil as our tears watered the ground. My old boots hold the memories of ranch life, hard and dusty but good.

              The boots also saw many fine experiences on trails in Alaska. One day, attempting to keep my boots dry as we crossed the Little Susitna River, I draped my feet up onto my horse’s neck. A school of salmon swam by and bumped into my mare’s legs. Startled, she wildly leaped out of the water, leaving me and the boots behind for a thorough dunking. 

The boots accompanied me twice as I went airborne off my new horse. That set me on a journey to learn a new kind of training and riding that expanded far beyond the cowboy way. I discovered that horses had more to teach me than I could have imagined.

              Not long ago, I took my husband up on his offer and bought that new pair of boots, but I confess I’m having trouble parting with the old ones. The new boots are young and inexperienced. They are strangers to my feet and have not yet melded to my stride. They haven’t yet kicked manure, been buried in mud, or pressed their heels against the flanks of a horse. Every time I slip into my old boots, it feels like a hug from an old friend. To think about throwing them in the trash seems disrespectful somehow. It seems far more fitting that they should be laid to rest under a tall birch tree.

              When I shared these sentiments with my husband recently, he listened without laughing. Then quietly he said, “I’ll dig a hole.”

              So someday, when the ground thaws in spring, we’ll bury the old boots. I won’t be parting with the memories though. Those I’ll hold dear for the rest of my days. Soon it will be time to take some brand-new friends out of the box. And maybe the best way to get acquainted will be to go for a nice long ride together.

“LILY!”

The mess was clearly the handiwork of the younger of the two dogs, eighteen-week-old Lily Blue. Our granddaughter, Aurora, chose the name when we announced her arrival into the family at Easter dinner. Lily’s second name, Blue, is after the dog whose legacy preceded her. They even share some of the same markings.

We wound up with two dogs in quick succession in the same way couples often wind up with two kids back-to-back. The first child is so easy-going and joyfully compliant that we congratulate ourselves on our amazing parenting skills. “This is easy and fun, let’s have another!” Then number two comes along and our pride gets roundly thumped and taken out with the trash – much like that pile of bread dough on the floor.

The older of the two dogs, Essie Lou, is a border collie and is by far the smartest dog we’ve ever owned. Her intelligence is a tad unsettling because you wonder if she just might be smarter than you.  Someone once asked, if we got lost hiking in Alaska, could she help us find our way home? I answered, “Yes, and probably figure out my taxes along the way.” Essie Lou’s greatest anxiety in life is that she might displease us and so any reprimands to this sensitive dog must be measured and calm; followed by lots of love and assurance that we do indeed adore her.  

Then came Lily.

We cannot remember Essie Lou destroying a single item even through the insatiable curiosity of her puppyhood. (Might we have amnesia about her youth in the same way that parents forget the pain of childbirth or the challenge of raising teenagers?)

Although she is the epitome of sweetness, to date Lily has shredded my reading glasses, my husband’s hearing aids, a pair of Carhartt’s, the wooden stair banister, and a corner of the leather couch. Lily is also a thief. She pilfers from the laundry, the garbage, and the grandkids’ dollhouse. She once stole from the table, a crime we discovered only after her pink belly was as round as the blueberries that were in the muffins she consumed. Why wouldn’t she check on what tasty morsels – like cinnamon rolls – might be awaiting discovery on countertops and stoves?

Lily is an Australian Shepherd, another herding breed. Along with being smart, they’re known as “Velcro dogs” for the strong bonds they form with their owners. It is easy to keep Lily under close supervision because she’s always underfoot, except when she quietly exits our space to explore her world. The results of her forays have become self-evident.

We asked our friend, 92-year-old Dick Griffith, who was once a sheepherder in Wyoming, how to train these dogs. We have horses and the dogs have a natural drive to herd them, which can be problematic without some direction. I was gathering the horses up one day when I heard the thunder of galloping hooves coming at me from behind. When I turned around, one of the horses was running toward me full tilt with a border collie on its heels. “Whoa!” As far as the dog was concerned, she was just doing her job, helping me bring in the herd.

Dick said you don’t have to train these dogs – they learn what to do by watching older dogs do their job. Essie Lou has always adored Dick; we put her indoors when he leaves, or she will follow his car out of the driveway. Now Lily has also glommed on, following Dick around and laying at his feet to nap. We’ve decided that either sheepherders have a secret handshake or it’s in the blood. They certainly seem to share a kindred spirit.

Maybe Lily and Essie Lou have adopted Dick as the old dog that will teach them what they need to know in life. He’s certainly taught us a thing or two over the years.

Meanwhile, Lily is educating us on how best to puppy-proof our surroundings and the importance of keeping the cinnamon rolls out of reach.