Keeping Kith: Field Notes from the Prairie Podcast

Another windy recording! If you’ve been following along, you know wind noise has been the ongoing challenge of making these field recordings. And yes, there are a lot of windy days here on the short grass prairie, but the 100% overlap between recording days and windy days is starting to seem like more than a coincidence. So I gave the wind a chance to have its say…which also meant capturing one of my favorite sounds: the wind moving through the long needles of a Ponderosa Pine, a tree both beautiful and resilient. In other new news: Toward the end of the episode, I introduce the next iteration of “Keeping Kith,” which will be a more formalized version of this podcast. I am working on it now. The five-episode arc investigating how faith and spirituality can inform our relationships to land will come out in June as part of the storytelling endeavors of the Rural Faith Initiative. My first interview this week brought a new favorite question to combat the anxiety and despair many of us feel when we think about our rapidly changing world: What are the eco-wonders where you keep kith? What and where do you find joy when you get to spend time outside with your human and more-than-human neighbors?Also, maybe you know someone who works in agriculture or land stewardship, whom you think I should interview? I’d love to hear suggestions! Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

It’s a big week here! We’ve just had a blizzard and by the end of the week it is forecasted to be 80 degrees. Even those of us who are used to the extremes of a western Dakota spring have to marvel at the scope of wild weather we are experiencing. Honestly, keeping kith has never felt more important to me, which is why I’m very thankful this week also brings two different opportunities to gather. Finding a calm center may not be possible right now, but we can find stability, joy, and connection in the spaces we share, and I believe those are the structures that help tether us to the deep love this moment calls for.The first gathering is on the Spring Equinox this Friday…5 pm mountain time (4 pacific, 6 central, 7 eastern) and we will discuss a few upcoming events, including one for World Water Day—more on that below—as well as how we can be cultivating kithship in our own communities. Then Nicole Stone, of Dharma Wellness, will lead us through a brief intention setting activity as we think about the seeds we are sowing in our lives and communities. We will end with a chance to chat for anyone who wants to stay on the call. Message me for the zoom link.And here’s the info for our second event: On World Water Day (March 22, 2026), we invite people everywhere to pause and gather with water at 10:00 AM Mountain Time. You might visit a river, lake, spring, or ocean, gather with friends at a local waterway, or simply sit with a bowl of water from your tap if travel isn’t possible. These gatherings are intentionally independent—each person or group is free to shape their time in whatever way feels meaningful. Whether in silence, spoken words, or collective reflection, each gathering becomes part of a wider network of people showing up for water—together, at the same time, wherever we are.To support these gatherings, I’ve created a toolkit in collaboration with some beautiful healers and activists that offers simple ideas to help you host or participate in a gathering if you’d like guidance. Use what’s helpful, and feel free to ignore the rest…these are just suggestions!Toolkit for Gathering1.)Vocalizing–Participants introduce themselves out loud. Can be as simple as “Hello, my name is…I’m here to celebrate you!” directed at the water. Encourage people to vocalize love and support for the water that supports us. Every human’s voice is unique and uniquely powerful!2.)Listening–Participants can observe a few moments of silence. This time can be for listening, noticing, and meditating.3.)Setting intentions–What commitment can we make to cultivate an ongoing relationship with the water, especially local waters? How can we broaden our convictions in community to keep showing up to protect and support our waters’ health?Additional ideas to incorporate into your gathering:*Consider broadcasting live via a social media platform to invite more people into connection with their local waterways*Bring watercolors + paper and have participants use water from your waterway to paint a mini-mural*Bring instruments or add songs to the vocalizing part of your gathering. Song ideas: “Water is Life” by Sara Thomsen“Water Song” by Amber Lily*Post a video from your gathering (with participants’ permission) and add a hashtag#worldwaterday #bhworldwaterday #westernsodakworldwaterday #keepingkith*Additional Reading: The Power of Eight, by Lynne McTaggartCreated in collaboration withKithship CollectiveBetter Together: People Over PartyUnity HarmonicsRadiant Health Yoga & Wellness StudioFall River StewardsBlack Hills Environmental CoalitionDharma Wellness Institute Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Short podcast and short missive this week! Keeping Kith on the road! Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

My most trusted tree friends…the hush hush trees… so magical!If you’d like to read an essay about these very special trees, you can find one here.In other, not-so-surprising news, I have not-quite-intentionally given up social media for the time being. But I am determined that we stay connected! So, I’ll keep posting here, but we are also planning in-person events this summer, including the Keeping Kith Festival June 6th!! If you are anywhere close to Bison, SD, you should come :)Also, I feel like you can hear the wind come up during my diatribe against billionaires, which I will take to mean the wind agrees with me... Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

This morning, my husband and I were talking about how, despite the fact that time does seem to be going faster and faster the older we get, this January was 10 full years long.“I can’t even remember Christmas,” my daughter piped from the back seat.Technically, we are halfway through winter, but considering that winter storms often arrive here on the western plains well into April and even May, we are at best a quarter of the way through. And if February feels anything like January did, we have another arduous decade ahead.This obviously isn’t just, or even mostly, because of the weather, but what we are facing as a country and a species feels just as intractable as the frozen soil that stretches as far as the eye can see. When the cold is this deep, it is hard to imagine it will ever be spring.Enter stage left, a midwinter thaw, carried by the chinook wind…and suddenly there are—briefly—puddles, the smell of mud, the sense memory of warmth, the freedom to throw off our winter coats, if only for a few hours…it isn’t spring…not even close…but the earth stirs, gently moving, tilting, turning toward the next hour, day, month, until one day it is. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Much of the US is bracing for a massive winter storm, and the rest is bracing for more deep cold. Last week’s high winds have continued on and off for us as well. The weather feels like a metaphor for the kind of disruptions and hardships reflected in all manner of news, near and far. Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, trudging across the ice and snow, barely able to bend over because I’m so bundled up, feels like a metaphor almost too on-the-nose to believe. I am tired, and it’s a long time until spring.I also am consumed with the question: ‘What is mine to do?’ The answer comes back clearly when I get still enough to listen. Keep Kith. Love your neighbors. Let them love you back. But getting still enough to listen is the hardest part of the whole process. Lying in bed, the time that should be the quietest, is the time my mind is most likely to run wild with worry and dread. I lived in New York City during 9/11. I lived in China in the late ‘90s. I’ve known fear and chaos on a city-wide scale. I’ve seen firsthand the conditions wrought by authoritarianism. And I don’t want any of that for us. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life that I was certain I was right about. I’ve been humbled again and again by the ways the circumstances of my life blinded me to the suffering of others until I was forced, often in embarrassing and painful ways, to examine how much of what I assumed was available to everyone was not. It has made it difficult for me to trust myself. My default setting is now to always look for the other side of the story. To question my assumptions before barreling blindly ahead.What I’m trying to say is the struggle is real, but it’s worth it. So let’s keep trying to be better neighbors to each other, to the grasses and the birds, and to ourselves. Let’s keep kith together. We all deserve it. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

My second recording session for Keeping Kith proved even more dramatic than the first. Part of what excited me about making these recordings was that I would have no idea who or what would join me, but I knew it would be interesting. In my experience, inviting kith into conversation is never a boring endeavor.Horses, VERY high winds, sudden snow, and what a crazy time it is to be human-ing are all present in this missive, as well as thoughts on how we might rebuild our relationships with our kith going forward…Meanwhile, as a former Minneapolis native, with many friends and family still there, I questioned whether I wanted to continue with this project in light of everything happening to the people and city I love so much. All my big ideas and small joys seem silly set against not only what they are enduring, but what certainly seems to be coming next if too many of us decide to continue treating the well-being of our neighbors (human and otherwise) as somehow separate from our own.And then I remember my commitment to my kith—my sheep, the grass that nourishes them, the endless colored flag of sky that paints itself anew every morning and evening, and I stopped to marvel at the beauty of it all. So, I’ll be back next week with another recording, and I will leave you today with the final paragraph from this week’s column (which was about motherhood):“The reason I am thinking of motherhood this week, though, is because every night as I’ve lain down to read bedtime stories, or give bedtime snuggles, I’ve been thinking about how much I love my kids, how desperately I longed for them before they were born, and how thankful I am that I got to become a mother.This week, lying in the dark, feeling their soft breath slow as they slide towards sleep, I’ve also been thinking about what a mess we are in right now and how daunting it is to navigate. But as I hold my babies, who aren’t babies anymore, I’ve also been thinking of you–all of you, and everyone you know, and everyone they know. No one, no matter where or how or to whom they were born, is any less deserving of the kind of love a mother feels as she cradles her child in the quiet of a long night.So, I am sending this out to all who read these words with the hope that the next time you lie down to rest, you feel that love. You are as cherished by creation as the most longed-for child. You are sacred. You are beloved. We all are.” Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been thinking a lot about listening.If you’ve been with me through Little Pasture on the Prairie or Our Little Pasture, you already know this work has never really been about me alone. It’s been about weather and seasons, about sheep and grass, about the way a place shapes a life if you stay long enough to notice.This new project grows directly out of that practice, but it shifts the center of gravity.I’ve bee alluding to this for a while, but I’m beginning a weekly field recording series called Keeping Kith. Each episode is recorded outdoors—while I’m with the flock, in the barn, or walking across the prairie—and left mostly unedited on purpose. I don’t clean up the wind. I don’t remove the birds or the sheep or the long pauses. Whatever arrives gets to stay.The idea behind this is something I’ve been calling kithship: a kind of belonging that comes not from shared blood, but from shared place. Over time, the prairie itself has become one of my closest collaborators. The wind sets the tempo. The season shapes the tone. The more-than-human neighbors decide when they want to join in.This isn’t a polished podcast or a scripted essay series. It’s closer to a field note you can listen to. A weekly act of witnessing. A way of letting the land speak alongside the human voice instead of behind it.You’ll still find my writing at Our Little Pasture. That root system isn’t going anywhere. This project is simply another way of practicing attention—one that feels truer to how this place actually sounds.If you’ve ever read a piece and wished you could hear the moment it came from, this is for you. And I’ll also add, at this particular moment in human, and especially American history, I think listening—really listening—with compassion and tenderness to our neighbors is a practice that can only help us navigate the complicated challenges ahead. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I uploaded this video last week to social media. It was one of those awesome moments when I suddenly felt a lot of clarity around the role technology could play in our lives if we collectively decide to make it so. The self- and community-discipline required to make it a tool of connection instead of polarization is definitely a topic worth discussing anyway. It’s so easy to vilify technology or lament the ways it is taking over our lives, but it’s also opening doors and windows of collaboration and communication, and that is equally beautiful to behold.After I posted this video to facebook, my cousin added a comment. My mom had eight siblings so I have A LOT of cousins. This particular cousin lives in Arizona, and if not for social media, it would be very hard for us to keep track of each other. In his comment, he related a story about his mother gifting him wind chimes before she passed away. The wind chimes now hang in a big tree in his yard. In the summer, the leaves muffle their ringing, but when the tree drops her leaves, the music of the chimes reemerges, and that music is a beautiful reminder of his beloved mother. I’ll tell you what, friends, that story—and the fact that he was able to share it with me as effortlessly as if we’d been sitting in his yard listening to the same tree rustling in the evening breeze—just…breaks me in the best possible way. As we navigate all the systems and institutions that are collapsing or undergoing radical transformation with the advent of so much innovation, the gift of a simple story about a relative or old friend, the symphony of the flickering sunset against the last of the autumn leaves, the brand new baby we may not get to hold but still cherish, these things are still just as precious, just as present, and just as important to share with each other. Celebrating that needs to be part of the map we use as we move into the uncertain future, keeping joy and belonging as the guideposts. We may not know where we are going, but I’m beginning to believe that is how we will find the way… Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I spent a hour sitting on a hillside in the rain this morning. As regular readers know, we brought home some “milking sheep'“ last summer, so while most of the flock had their babies in the spring, I kept two ewes separate so they could lamb in the fall and be milked through the winter. This week, one of those ewes, Millie, had a set of twins. The other, Godiva, looks ready to have her own babies any minute.Now, lambing this time of year has some risks. Namely, that is can still be very hot, which will make labor arduous. Waiting until later in the fall puts us up against winter, however, which is even harder on the moms and babies. Consequently, I was keeping an eye on the forecast, hoping it would stay temperate. What I did not even think to worry about was rain, because, well, in western South Dakota, moisture comes in sudden, fast-moving storms or not at all.The day Millie’s twins were born, it was unseasonably cool, but not cold. Perfect birthing weather. The next day was warmish and sunny. The next day it started to rain, and it hasn’t stopped since, which is how I found myself on the hillside.This morning, it wasn’t cold enough to be considered cold, but the wind had picked up, and I was concerned. Sure enough, when I went to check on the babies, they were doing ok, but not great. I tucked them both in my coat, hunkered down, and tried to decide what to do next.At first, I didn’t want to bring them all the way back to the barn, as their mom is shy and I knew it would stress her to be moved. Also, it is still August, and it was only supposed to be raining for another hour. As of this writing, however, I have moved the little family (plus Godiva) to the corral beside the barn, as it has been raining all day and the forecast is now predicting more to come with dropping temperatures. But, what I actually want to tell you about is the podcast I happened to be listening to for part of that hour on the hillside. Since I can’t figure out how to reformat this post in substack, my video talking about the podcast is shown first above, the youtube version of the podcast comes next, and underneath the photo below you can find the link to just the audio of the podcast is that is your preferred method. Anyway, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on his thoughts, and I am not going to say too much more just now…other than this does feel like a portal I’ve been moving towards for a while now, and an articulation of why it has been so hard for me to write anything lately.Meanwhile, the picture below is Millie’s babies after they’d been warmed up in my coat but before they got moved to the barn. I don’t want to clog up your inboxes with more emails, but I will put an update about them on social media in the coming days for those those who are interested Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been hinting about campers for a while…and here’s why: I’ve been working for the last few months to start a traveling theater company!! I’m including our new mission statement below. (As well as our logo, which I LOVE.) I’m also posting an essay I wrote in February, which offers a tiny bit of our origin story.Friends, I am not being hyperbolic when I say this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a project…my first true love was musical theater. Singing along to cassette tapes of Broadway musicals was how I found my voice. And now, to be finding ways to perform AND bring musical theater to rural audiences…EEEEEKKKKK! It’s just too wonderful to believe.Roots & Grass Theater CoRoots & Grass Theater Co is a new initiative to bring high-quality, interactive, ecosystem-specific music + theater directly to underserved, rural communities. Our traveling productions are more than just performances–they are immersive, regionally-inspired experiences that celebrate the unique stories, landscapes, and culture of the prairie. We transform barns, fields, and main streets into living stages, forming connections through art that’s rooted in place and designed to inspire a deeper awareness of organic community.In the next 12 months, we will launch our first two regional tours. One will be a semi-staged production of ‘The Grass Widow,’ a folk opera written and performed by Eliza Blue in collaboration with Jon Bakken, Sandra Kern Mollman, and Talon Bazille. The other will be an adaptation of ‘The Adventures of Pearl & Theo,’ an interactive readers’ theater-style show aimed at young audiences. Both shows will utilize the R & G camper that serves as a set, stage, and housing for performers on the road. Birthday CampersI have long believed that what happens on your birthday says a lot about the year ahead. This is mostly because what you decide to do on that day says a lot about what you value at that moment. But that's not the only reason. It is also because I believe life is more mysterious and crafty than most of us realize.I came up with this theory in my twenties, and after seeing it proven year after year, I started to make birthday plans based on the year I hoped lay ahead. Did I want to travel more? A birthday trip. Did I want to focus more on friendships and homemaking? A cozy dinner party.At some point though, I had to admit that the unexpected things that happened on my birthday almost always were more defining than the events I’d orchestrated.Once I became a mom, celebrating birthdays changed a lot, but the theory held. For several years in a row, when the kids were tiny, one or more of us had the puking flu on my “special” day. Talk about a terrible omen! But that did feel accurate–most of those years revolved entirely around caring for and cleaning up after children. I am nostalgic for it now, but that was a very emotionally and physically exhausting time.Last year, on a whim, I looked up airline tickets to NYC, a place I lived in my 20s and still love. Amazingly, I found incredibly cheap flights, so I spent my birthday showing my husband and kids a place that still holds a huge place in my heart. It felt like my young adult self and my middle-aged self were meeting for the first time, and that has been a very accurate metaphor for the year in so many wonderful ways.Which brings us to this year’s birthday shenanigans. Tempted once again to try and influence fate, I told my husband all I really wanted for my birthday was a camper for my traveling summer shows, as well as camping on our land (preferably while sheep graze nearby). Some of you may remember that I bought a tiny teardrop camper a few years back for a similar purpose. I loved (and still love) that camper like a person, but I clearly wasn’t thinking about the future with that purchase. By last summer, it was already impossible for me and the kids to use it for gigs as the three of us could barely squeeze inside anymore, and truth be told, my husband had always been too tall to fit comfortably.There were a lot of layers to the problem of finding a new camper, however. Like most things in life, when it comes to campers you can either find something that is cheap but needs a lot of work, or something that is very expensive (and will probably need work soon, because, well, it’s a camper…) In other words, you pay with time or you pay with money.The other barrier was finding something small enough that my smallish vehicle could tow it, but that could also sleep all of us. Finally, though I was more than willing to compromise on this aspect, aesthetics are not entirely irrelevant, and I was secretly pining for an old-fashioned canned ham-style camper. After many laborious months of searching, I was fairly sure that the camper of my dreams was not going to materialize EVER, and certainly not for my birthday. But somehow I still hoped birthday magic would intervene.I’m going to skip to the end here because of word count considerations, but in a truly stunning twist, I didn’t get a camper for my birthday…I got two. One will be for family camping in the pasture, one will be for gigs when it’s just the kids and I. Both are adorable, vintage, and also “rustic,” which means no amenities whatsoever. I don’t mind a bit. And I don’t know what that portends for the year ahead, but I’ve never been more excited to find out. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve always found the concept of ‘Earth Day’ a bit odd. Like so many modern American rituals, Earth Day highlights the way our ‘celebrations’ have become more about anxiety than joy, more about forgetting than remembering. I could put it a different way by asking the question: How is every day not Earth Day? How is every day not a celebration of this amazing place we call home? How is praise for this planet not embedded in every other celebration and ritual we perform? To set aside a day once a year and call it ‘Earth Day’…well, it just feels weird to me…A few years ago, a friend sent me this youtube video of a song called ‘The Lost Words Blessing’, which is part of a larger artistic undertaking. (*It’s also the song I’m singing in the video posted above*) Their website describes the project like this: “Conceived and commissioned by Folk by the Oak festival, Spell Songs is a musical evolution of both The Lost Words & The Lost Spells books by acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane and award-winning illustrator Jackie Morris; creating a listening experience that intersects music, literature, language and art, as a call to reawaken our love of the wild.”The shorter way they describe it is this: “Singing nature back to life through the power of poetry, art and music.”The album, and specifically the song from that original video for The Lost Words Blessing, created a subtle shift in my known universe and became a container for much of the work I’ve done since. And yet the description “singing nature back to life…” has never sat well with me. It’s similar to how I feel about Earth Day, and I think it’s because we ARE nature. We ARE the Earth. Everything we are made of is a natural material generated, created, and birthed by the Earth. Human beings are not distinct from the Earth, and neither are the things we create. Does this mean we humans aren’t currently creating and disrupting systems on a scale that may be unprecedented in geologic history? There’s plenty of evidence that, yes, we are. But even that is part of the Earth’s “natural” cycles, because we were created by the Earth. What we sing into being, the Earth sings first, because she sang us into being. Are we also potentially creating conditions our species (and many, many others) can’t survive? Also, yes, and that is a conversation worth having, though not the purview of this post. So I sing this song not because I think it will bring nature “back to life.” Just as I don’t think setting aside one day a year to celebrate Earth will somehow halt the juggernaut of human con/de-struction. Not to save the planet, which I suspect will continue to birth new life through generative destruction with or without our species. I sing it because I love singing. Because when I sing I don’t feel as angry. I remember anger is often just grief that’s trying to find its way home. I remember that I love being part of this Earth choir. I remember that I am a beloved child of creation itself. This song didn’t start with me, and it won’t end with me either. But, that is the macro…the micro is that this song has walked with me through the deepest griefs of my life so far. When I found out one of my best, deepest friends was dying of inoperable brain cancer, I listened to this song over and over while I walked and sobbed. When I think of what we are losing now, what will lose, what we have lost, when I am overwhelmed again with weeping, this song reminds me to “let the heron still my breathing…” It breaks my heart and heals the wound at exactly the same moment, as every good spell should.And that’s why, though I distrust the language used to describe the song, I trust the song, and I trust the singing, and I trust that one way or another, we will sing each other home. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I recorded this the other day to put up on social media, fully realizing the irony of posting about my frustrations with posting. And then I realized there was no way the algorithm was going to show it to anybody, so I just posted it here instead. If you are reading this now, you already found my substack and you don’t need to watch the whole video, though there’s a pretty good explanation at the end about why I appreciate this platform in its current form. Hopefully, it will remain a place where people can find my work without having to be inundated by ads…In other words, the video is basically me venting while I do chores…but the struggle is real! I want to connect with people, but I’m also weary of feeding a machine that doesn’t need more food. All of which is to say, in 2025, I am going to continue to mainly use substack for my writing and music, but also as a way to tell you about the gatherings that I hope will bring more of us together in real life. If you haven’t already, please subscribe, and make sure to check your junk mail folders, as I know they can get sent there.I’ll be sending more info soon about the latest project I’m working on, and I’d love to hear more from you all. What are you planning for 2025? Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I spent last weekend at the Festival of the Book in Brookings, SD. Got to meet some amazing authors, including Trent Preszler, whose book Little and Often was the ‘One Book South Dakota 2024’ for good reason. He’s also a very cool guy, and watching him build boats on Instagram is my new favorite relaxation technique. BUT the highlight by far was getting to perform selections from our ‘folk-opera-in-progress’ with my musical partner Jon Bakken (who also happens to have a new book out…) I’ve played a lot of great music with a lot of great folks over the years, but the Grass Widow is in its own category. These songs just…I don’t know…have their own life, and it’s an honor and a pleasure every time we get to play them for people. So we are going to take the show on the road next summer! Hopefully with a fuller sound (aka other musicians and actors.) How big and how much we tour is wholly dependent on funding. We aren’t going to do a full staging…yet…this will be readers theater style. We will leave costumes and sets for the next iteration. We’d especially like to bring this production to rural spaces and small towns, so if you think your arts org or front porch or main street needs more musical theater send me an email!And please enjoy this tiny preview video. I made this earlier in the summer for the folks over at Rural Strategies but it gives a little of the opera’s backstory. You can also find our ‘Rough Drafts’ recording here and here if you are interested! Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

This a podcast from 2021, but how fun that many of the dreams I describe here are now coming true…I still believe (as I describe in the podcast) that what we leave undone is as important as what we do, but I also am heartened by the things that get done s l o w l y, coming to fruition with their own sweet timing. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

For my weekly print column, “Little Pasture on the Prairie,” I wrote about my friend and fellow musician, the late Kevin Locke. The column is below. Above you will find audio I describe in the column of Kevin playing a song on my porch from May 2022…I am sitting on the front porch of my tiny writing shack. The wind is blowing hard today, but still holds so much sweetness. You can tell it’s autumn, but summer isn’t long past. There are birds and bees (and, less romantic, wasps) buzzing and fluttering through the gold and green leaves overhead. There are robins, wrens, all manner of finches and sparrows, and a pair of brown thrashers that have been summering in the windbreak this year. They seem to be everywhere all at once. A quick google search earlier in the season informed me that brown thrashers are “inconspicuous” birds, but that has not been my experience. These particular ones seems to love my tiny house, and I often hear one or both clattering on  the tin roof, or spot one that’s landed on a nearby elm peering at me through an open window. Their irises are ringed with yellow, making them appear unusually alert and wide-eyed; I find their stare disconcerting.They also have extraordinarily loud and varied singing voices. The male brown thrasher may have the largest song repertoire of any North American bird. Some sources state that each individual has upwards of 3,000 song phrases. Like the endlessly imitative catbird, they often sound like many different birds, and their music floods the tree belt and rivals the wind with its veracity.This weekend marked the one year anniversary of the sudden passing of my friend and collaborator Kevin Locke, the night before we were to perform together in the Black Hills. When he came to the ranch for a rehearsal in early summer, we sat on this same porch listening to virtuosic performance of a brown thrasher, and Kevin commented, laughing, “I’ve stolen some of my best songs from birds.” Kevin was an accomplished player of the North American Indigenous Flute. (In fact, he was–pun intended–instrumental in getting it declared South Dakota’s state instrument.) We joked that day as he played a love song written hundreds of years ago by folks who hunted and camped in the river breaks by our ranch, that the birds were probably happy to hear the old tune again. It was the first time it occurred to me that if humans were influenced by the music of the birds, why wouldn’t the birds be influenced by the music of the humans? I’m always listening to them, why would I assume they weren’t also listening to me?Kevin traveled relentlessly as a performer and educator. He’d played a show in our tiny town on the prairie the day before, and then our mutual friend and fellow musician Chuck Suchy came to chat and rehearse. I wasn’t sure when we’d all be able to get together again, so I set up my recording equipment on the porch, hoping that would give us something to listen back to and practice. As it happened, we booked the aforementioned show soon after, so I sent both men clips from the recording as we planned our setlist, of course not realizing that we would never get to play those songs together again.Sitting on the porch today, listening to the birds, I pulled out my computer and turned the volume up. The speakers are cheap and sound tinny, the recording very obviously rudimentary, but Kevin’s flute still sounded beautiful. The birds in the trees grew quiet–even the brown thrashers–as the stark melody swirled up and into the rustling leaves. Losing him still feels crushing at times, but Kevin’s music and spirit lives on in recordings, the students he taught, the audience members whose lives he enriched, and I would like to think the birds, who circle above the grassy plains he loved so well, letting the wind hold them as they sing. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

A missive from a drier year… Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I spent the week tending ewes and lambs and working on final mixes for the Grass Widow EP. If that sounds heavenly, it has been! This year, lambing is going well, BUT that’s certainly not always the case. For the May edition of the ‘Our Little Pasture’ podcast, I share a missive from 2020 when things did NOT got so well… Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I recorded this as part of my "Postcards from the Prairie" series. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe