Growing up in Valley City
I moved to Valley City from Wisconsin in the summer before third grade. I had visited there many times before to stay at my Grandparent’s’ farm and my other Grandparents’ house in town. Staying at the farm was always so magical. The drive to Valley City from Wisconsin always felt so long, but eventually, as we would near the farm, we’d drive by the fields of wheat and tall grasses and I’d begin to feel this anxiously excited feeling within myself…”we’re almost there!” Soon after passing by the fields of wheat, we’d turn down the gravel road…and that’s when I knew…”we’re basically at the farm”! Driving over the wooden bridge that carried us over the railroad track, showed me how close we really were to the farm and shortly after that, we’d turn into the driveway, step out of the car and listen. Crickets and Cicadas were always singing, the gentle breeze through the trees could always be heard and felt and if I looked straight ahead of me, I could see the windmill and the rusty old play set that touched something deep within my soul.
The mornings were filled with the smell of pancakes and coffee as my Mom and Grandma would be downstairs in the kitchen cooking animal shaped sourdough pancakes to dip in Maple Syrup or sugar. After breakfast, we’d run outside and feed the cats the food scraps from the morning and then get to imagining, playing and creating on the farm! We’d climb and jump in hail bails, turn horse trailers into French cafe’s, mow the lawn with the riding lawn mower, ride the horses (oh the beautiful smell of the horses, I loved it so much!), find and hold the kitties, pick peas and beans in the garden and bring them inside to eat them and prepare them…I could go on and on. Life at the farm was so magical…I was definitely in my element there.
So when we moved from Wisconsin to Valley City, although it felt like quite a shift, it was also a dream come true. I did spend quite a lot of time at the farm after we moved back, but as it happens sometimes when you’re so close to something you love, you sometimes forget its there as other things that were closer had my attention. In Valley City, we lived on the Cheyenne River that flowed through town and I lived in a neighborhood that magically had three other girls to play with! So, most of my days looked like this: wake up (with so much excitement for the day, I almost felt anxiety about sleeping any longer), jump out of bed, run downstairs, have breakfast and run down the street to play with my friends and swim in the river ALL DAY until…my Mom would yell down the street, “Beck, supper time”…and then I would run home, eat supper and go back to my friends’ house to play and swim some more before finishing the night with a game of “kick the can” as it was getting dark. Then I’d come inside, have a snack, go into my room and the minute my head would hit my pillow, I was (as my Mom would say) “out like a light”. And then I’d wake up and live that incredible life all over again the next day.
Valley City was and still is a small town, sometimes I even think of it as a “village”. When people would come to visit, my Dad would say, “Welcome to Valley City, turn your clocks back 20 years”, and that’s what I’ve always loved about it. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone and looks out for everyone. Where you can walk down the street and someone you know is right there, excited to talk to you and really hear how you’re doing.
I didn’t realize the significance of my Ancestral gifts while I was growing up there, but I definitely was raised in those gifts with my Mom sewing and making fresh homemade meals everyday and my Dad getting a deer and intentionally saving the meat for the year in his upright freezer out in the garage. My Dad loved to cook meat and potatoes and cucumber salad. He loved to garden and plant seed starts inside in the winter. He loved to make pickles and can things. The gifts my parents received from their parents while they were growing up stayed within my parents and they lived those gifts and shared those in our life together as I was growing up.
The house we lived in was on a beautiful plot of land that backed up to the river and had a forest in the back part of it. There was also a bridge in the backyard that went over a little hill that sometimes collected water in it. The deer and wildlife would walk thru our backyard often and my parents would throw food scraps outside for them to eat.
A mile high bridge called the “High-Line Bridge” went across the North side of town and it was always so beautiful to look out and see it. Trains were always going over the bridge as well as the other train track that ran along the hill sides of the east side of town and beyond. Hearing the trains in the distance was always a calming sound…the same way as if someone who lived on the ocean would be attuned to waves washing up on the shore.
The storms in Valley City were always so beautiful as dark clouds would roll in from the north and the sky would grow really dark and then rain and hail and thunder and lightning and then share a beautiful rainbow.
Life in Valley City was so connected with nature, so connected with family and friends and play and adventure. And also so connected with slow living and relaxing and being in tune with how the air smelled and what that would mean about the weather that day.
Moving from Valley City to the big City after graduating high school, I took a journey of forgetting my deep innate connection with nature and life in that simple and sacred way. My path would wind me back to it though, of course, for Valley City…she lives in me…in my heart…and my entire being…always.