Rooted

People have asked me many times, “Why would you ever leave Wyoming to move here?”  

I half joke when I give my usual answer, “Because, when I send my kids outside to play, I know nothing is going to come and eat them.”  

After living the first thirty years of my life in Michigan, I found myself married to a rancher and living in the wilds of the west.  Grizzlies, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes were common in my backyard.  During the winter months the elk would hunker down in our hayfields.  A Sunday drive just five miles up the road, gave us hours of entertainment watching the Big Horn Sheep.  It was a great place to live.

However, after swearing I would never leave the west, I felt a pull.  I needed to be back where my roots began.  My limbs had taken me all over to great places in the west but it was time.  Married to a rancher, we moved a lot, three times in less than two years.  There were two small children needing a place to be their own, creating a point for their little shoots to attach and grow.  Our roots were ready to be grounded.  

We would need jobs and after looking at many different possibilities, from B & B owners to having a small sandwich shop, we decided on organic farming.  Now, all we needed to do was find a farm.  We knew that farm was somewhere in the Driftless.  

The Driftless offers the best of both worlds.  Want to go on a hike?  There are plenty of trails at all skill levels.  Unlike Wyoming, the trails here don’t have the occasional freshly deposited scat from a six-hundred-pound grizzly.  One does not place their three-year-old child in a canoe and meander down the Shoshone River.  The Kickapoo River is the poster child of a Sunday drift with nothing to do but admire the dragonflies.  What a joy to just walk out the backdoor with no shoes on.  The feel of dewy grass in the morning with its sudden chill, pairs well with the first cup of coffee as a wake me up.  No worries about rattlesnakes or cacti biting at your toes.

The landscape here changes with every twist and turn in the road.  Rock formations jumping out at you but Earth keeps her grasp on them tight.  Farmland rolls over the hills like ocean waves, down into swells and valleys only to crest back up again on the other side.  Baby creeks that grow and mature until developed enough to melt into a river.  With the rivers sculpting a path to their final destination. 

Except this story is not about that landscape.  This story is about a different landscape, the landscape of the people.  As impressive and beautiful the natural landscape of the Driftless is, the real fabric of this region are the people who have called this magical place home for many generations.  Having the two landscapes married together is like whip cream and a cherry on top. 

It took us just over two months of searching to find the perfect farm in a rural township in Monroe County.  A few short months later, on a snowy cold day in March, we arrived from Wyoming.  Our little farm was eighty acres of pure mystery since we bought it over the internet without actually seeing it.  It is nestled just above a small village with gentle hills who were waiting for us just as much as we were searching for them.  We set our hopes on growing all our food, raising beef, pigs and chickens.  We would sell healthy food and feed the people.  This would become our community.  We were laying our roots down and it didn’t take long before we started meeting our neighbors.

I remember telling Joel shortly before we moved here, he was in for a real treat.  Joel grew up mostly in Burbank, California.  Whenever we go back to visit my in-laws, I am shocked by two things.  First, my mother-in-law has no idea who her neighbors are.  How could she?  The other shocking thing, everyone has eight to ten-foot fences between their homes.  

A year after graduation Joel moved to the mountains of Wyoming.  He spent nearly thirty years living in an area where the wildlife more than out numbered the people.  Neighbors were enigmas he had only heard of.

“Ok, here is the deal.  People from the mid-west talk really fast and talk a lot.” I say.

“Like you?” He says.

“Listen,” I ignore him.  “Not only do we talk really fast, we will never let you get a word in edge wise.  By the end of twenty minutes they will know everything about you and chances are you will know everything about them too.  It’s just the way it is.”

Our first full day of living here found us in the Tomah Emergency Room.  Both of our children were sick with pneumonia and our little guy had it in both of his lungs, there was talk of keeping him over the weekend in the hospital.

“Oh, just look at this poor little guy.”  The nurse says as she comes in.  She turns to our daughter, “Oh, you poor thing.  Ok, dad, you and big sister are going to go with the x-ray technician, while mom and me start with this little guy here.”

She sends Joel out the door with a motherly scoot.  She spends the next twenty minutes working on Thor’s vitals and medical history and we get to know each other.  I learned she goes out with her family every year snowmobiling not far from where we used to live.  We even shared the love for the bar and grill in Cooke City, Montana, the Beartooth Café.  She is Norwegian heritage, I am Norwegian heritage.  Her sister, like me, home-schools her children.  She can recommend a great second hand store that sells nicely used clothing and there is a great wine shop next door.  I now know where to go for church, where not to get groceries and if we liked to go bowling there were a few good places nearby.  All this and more in twenty minutes.

Joel comes back to our room with our daughter.  My nurse said she will be back later and the x-ray technician will be back to take our son.

I look at Joel, he is pale white.  Instantly my heart starts to beat faster.  “What is it?  Is she ok, you look terrible?”

“No, she is fine, they think we caught it early enough.”

“What’s wrong then, you don’t look so good.”

“Honey, I know I don’t tell you this often enough, but you were right.”

“Right?  Right about what?”

“You and your people do talk fast.  You all talk a lot and that woman who was taking x-rays, now knows just about everything about me except my social security number.  I know her cousin, what’s his name, Bob or something, lived in Idaho but wanted to live in Montana but would be just as happy if he were in Wyoming.  Or something like that.”

He is exasperated, I can tell.  He had to say more words in those twenty minutes than what would be expected of him to say in a month.  This will be good for him.

What makes a neighbor?  Is it the person who lives directly on either side of you?  The family across the street?  Someone who is, “as the crow flies” away?   Could a neighbor be someone down the road who just happens to stop by every now and then to ask a favor or offer up some news?    I believe a neighbor is a little bit of all of this, and then some.   It means anyone who cares enough to step in and take on the role.  You have many neighbors when your barn is burning down to the ground.  The volunteer fire department are neighbors, the same people you attend church with, buy your gas from or the neighbor who lives right next door.  They will risk their own lives just to save yours.  That is a great neighbor.  Your neighbor could be someone you never met, until after the flood that decimated your small village.  Perhaps they wanted to donate their time, helping hands, or maybe something to place in the silent auction to help raise funds for those in great need.  He very well could be giving you the last dollar in his wallet and even though he needs it, he felt you needed it more.  Your neighbor could be someone you don’t get along with, perhaps their cows are always getting in your corn and they don’t like your politics.  The day you lose a loved one, they are one of the first to show up in their Sunday best at the visitation, they reach out a hand and pull you in for an embrace.  Their words help to sooth your pain.  The feud can continue back on another day.  These are not random people in a community.  These are neighbors.

Our bedroom is hardly a bedroom.  With two sick kids there has been very little in the way of setting up home.  If you call a mattress flung willy-nilly on the floor and a table lamp without a table plunked down next to the bed, a room, then we are looking good.  There are random boxes with exploding tops as frantic hands were searching for missing items and why is there a box with KITCHEN in bold letters up here?

“Who was that?”  I ask.  I am laying with our son up in our bedroom.  It’s mid-afternoon.  The rasping sound from his lungs are trying to keep pace with the wheezing of the cool mist humidifier.

“I’m not sure, she said she was a neighbor.  How many neighbors do we have here?”  My husband is perplexed.

“Why?”

“Well, she is about the tenth person who has dropped off food today saying they are a neighbor.”

I have been upstairs with our son since we came home yesterday from the hospital, afraid to leave him.  He has to have breathing treatments faithfully. 

“Yeah, we are not going to need to cook anything for a long time.  You should see all the food people have been dropping off.”

“I feel so bad, I should at least come down and meet them and tell them thanks next time someone stops by.”  I say.

“Don’t worry, I told them about Thor and all of them said to tell you they hope he is feeling better and if you need anything or help just to call.  A few of them said they would stop back by in a week or so.”

I start to cry.  Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but I am really emotional.  This is exactly why I wanted to move here.  I needed to be in this community.  I wanted to feel the branches from their trees wrap up my family and help our roots take form in the soil.  The people that live here are like the rocks that frame the landscape.  They are solid, reassuring that they will be here tomorrow.

My husband forces me to take a shower.

“I’ll come and get you if Thor wakes up.  Go down and unpack a few things.”  He tries to convince me it would be fun.

I go into the kitchen to make some strong coffee.  There are boxes everywhere and I am mortified to think people have been stopping by to this mess.  A living room chair next to the refrigerator, a box of bedding tipped over from my frantic search for a beloved blanket for Thor and underwear on the kitchen table, not a good first impression.

I get the coffee brewing, when I really start looking around the kitchen.  This is when I see the food.  There is all kinds of food stashed here and there wherever there is a space on the counter tops.  Hamburger buns, hotdog buns, sticky buns are strewn about.  There are pans of various sizes and shapes  covered in tin foil, I lift the foil and see sugar decadence under all of them.  There are bars made from cereal, fruit filled oatmeal bars, cookies with candies poking out.  Not to mention the store bought cookies with colored frostings and rainbow sprinkles.  Someone brought chocolate brownies with a peanut butter chocolate chip frosting, I love that neighbor.  Three cakes, one chocolate and two yellow are right next to the coffee pot, perfect. Then I see all the bread; round loaves, long loaves, homemade and store bought loaves.  There are dinner rolls like the kind only served at the holidays or a funeral. 

My coffee is done perking so I open the fridge to get some cream.  I start to cry all over again.  My entire refrigerator is full top to bottom with casseroles which are smothered in crushed potato chips and shredded cheese.  Only in Wisconsin.  There are two lasagnas and someone brought a cheese platter with nuts and dried fruits.

Any spot in the fridge that could, was also crammed with bags of pre-made salad.  Like little veggie pillows tucked around Pyrex and Corning wear to keep all the dishes safe and snug.  It wasn’t enough to bring a bag of salad, everyone feared we had no salad dressing to go with the spring mix blend.  Please don’t even get me started on all the different Jell-O salads.  I do a mental checklist, main course, check.  Side salad, check.  Rolls and dessert, check and check again.  The only thing missing?  What wine do I pair with tonight’s meal?  According to our new neighbors we drink a lot of Riesling and Moscato, yeah, they brought wine too. 

In less than two days our new neighbors graced us with enough food for a month.  We had to freeze much of it so as not to waste.  At a time when we were new, had very little understanding of the lay of the land, and two very sick children to tend, they quietly show up in random order and bring us the gift of nourishment. 

“I think your wife and I will get along just fine.”  Says Debbie pointing to the recycle bin full of empty wine bottles.

I can say the families who have lived here the longest, are very comfortable in telling you how it is or is done.  They hold nothing back.  There is a certain ease they have in driving over just to tell you that the maple tree in your back yard needs to come down or when you thin out your flowers, they will take the peonies but not the day lilies.  They will tell you your son needs a haircut and ask, “What church do you belong”, with a raised eyebrow.

We removed what we felt was an unsightly hedgerow from our front yard.  The next day a neighbor drove in as we were raking up the last bits of the hedge.

“Now why did you go on and do a thing like that?”  Obviously upset.  “That was a perfectly good hedge.  It had such pretty flowers.”  She said what needed to be said and backed out of our drive, we never saw her again.

I knew then, like I know now, if they didn’t care they would just keep on driving and say nothing, until the next morning over coffee at the gas station with all of our other neighbors. 

My favorite is my neighbor Jenny.  Jenny was one of the first neighbors I met when she and her husband came snowmobiling through our yard a few days after we moved in.  She spun around a few times, caught some air off of a pile of snow and does a sudden spin and stops right in front of our porch.  She peals off her helmet like one of those slow-motion clips of a twenty something fashion model in a commercial for hair care products.  From under this helmet, after all that drama, was the sweetest, littlest seventy-year-old grandma.  She walks up our porch and introduces herself and her husband, “Glenny”

“Hi, nice to meet you, would you like to come in?  Can I buy you a beer?”  I ask.

“Sure, we’ll only stay for a minute.”  Her smile is warm and reassuring.  “Oh, I got my own beer.”  She pulls a can of Miller Lite out of her pocket and walks right on in to our kitchen, like she has done this a hundred times before.

Our son walks in to see what all the action is about.  Jenny quickly picks him up and holds him in her lap and proceeds to give me a lecture on the fact that he is not wearing any socks.

“Look at him, oh you poor baby.”  She says and then turns to me, “You need to keep that boy in socks.  He’ll catch pneumonia if you don’t.”

When she stopped by in the early spring, she gave me a scolding about my weeds in the front flower bed.

“Why aren’t you pulling out the weeds?  You better get ahead of them before they get out of control.”  She pulls a Miller Lite out of her pocket and bends down and says,  “Look here, all you do is grab them right here and give a good pull.”  She demonstrates and pulls a clump of weeds out of my garden.  Jenny stayed until her beer was gone pulling weeds with me. 

If they didn’t care, they would just keep on driving by, without a word spoken.

It doesn’t take long after we moved here for the winter thaw.  The mounds of snow are melting fast back into the soil.  Our roots follow the melting snows and start to take hold.  There are many invites to suppers, last minute bar-b-ques, impromptu cookouts in the shops of local farmers.  Still new to the area getting directions to all the festivities has its challenges.  To make things even more of a challenge; everyone here goes by a nickname.  I swear, no one here is called Steve or Kevin, Barbara, or Sue.  It’s Weiner, Digger, Captain Crash, Big Steve, Jinx, Kool-Aid, Princess and Sugar.

  This is a typical conversation over directions to a cook out.

“Ok, your going to drive up Summit for about five minutes.” Says Digger.

“They don’t call it Summit anymore, I’ll tell em.” Says Weiner.

“Now wait a minute, I know how to get there better than you.  Just go up that road where the old barn used to be back about ten years ago before it got hit by that cyclone.”

“Wait a minute, did you just say cyclone?”  I ask.

“Yeah, came right down the valley through town.  Took off the roof to the church.” Starts Digger.

“It wasn’t the church that lost its roof, it was the old bank that became the grocery store after it was the hardware store.”  Interrupts Weiner

“No, it was the Parsons place for few years, remember?”

After about twenty minutes of Memory Lane and what I hoped was friendly banter between two friends, I get my directions, or so I think.

“You need to drive down Summit which really isn’t Summit any more.  After about five minutes turn left at the barn that burned down and go about a quarter of a mile and turn at the Schmitz’s old place.  You are going to drive for a mile and veer right, no left, at the big tree that was hit by lightning back in the eighties and after the farm with the big red barn you should see the shop.  Park anywhere.” 

I frantically try to remember everything as it is being said, because he is talking real fast.

The fact we are invited to many gatherings, it must mean they have claimed us as one of their own.  There is the Thirsty Thursday group that meets at tunnel three.  There is a small picnic area and each week a different family brings the meats and everyone else brings sides and desserts.  Opening day calls for a shop cook out with venison or chicken, whichever comes first.  Which reminds me, let’s not forget all the chicken-Q’s every community has through out the year or community Thanksgiving dinners.

The women love these events.  It gives them an honest outlet to try and out do each other with their new favorite recipes.  It could be a noodle salad they had the week before at a baby shower.  Perhaps it was in a magazine they read while at the dentist office.  Wherever the recipe was found, it was their moment to shine.

Another interesting observation I have noted, women and men generally sit apart from each other.  I think it gives everyone the freedom to really talk and say what is on their mind.  It could be any likelihood of topics but in the end it comes down to a legitimate way to dissect truth from rumor.  This is a time to catch up. The men like to sit and rib each other about their tractors or trucks.  They snip at their blackberry brandy and the jokes get louder and the ribbings a bit deeper.  In the end it doesn’t matter.  We are amongst neighbors and that is what one does when they are a neighbor, love, live, laugh, because in the end, we are all rooted in this together.

We have lived here exactly eight years as I right this.  Many neighbors have come and gone.  In the time we have been here we have laughed and cried with our neighbors.  We have been to many celebrations as in weddings, graduations and open houses.  Our arms have reached out to give a soothing embrace after someone has passed.  We have been the neighbor that no one knew at a fundraiser or two and rolled up our sleeves to help out when a neighbor was in time of need.  We have taken our fair share of food to shop parties, church pot lucks and I have been honored to take over a freshly made loaf of bread and a veggie pillow to a new neighbor who has moved in a time or two.  I can lay in bed at night and know which neighbor is driving down the road by the sound of his truck.  I walk every day and get more exercise from waving to my neighbors than walking.  Our roots have gone deep enough that after eight years we feel solid and grounded knowing this is our landscape and these neighbors are our family.  Like the local saying goes, “Same tree, different branch”.

 It has taken thousands of years for nature to carve her landscape here in the Driftless.  It has taken many generations of families to carve out the fabric for good neighbors.  I look forward to spreading my branches and carving out a little bit of landscape.

Now when someone asks, “Why would you ever move here from Wyoming?” 

I answer, “Why not?”