Reflections

Reflections on daily life, faith, friendship, and the slow work of becoming. Written from where I am, not where I wish I were.

Not Everyone Who Leaves Stops Loving It

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

A friend recently sent me a letter about camp leadership and the expectations that come with it, and I think part of me has been grieving it ever since.

Not because it was new information. Not because it shocked me. But because it finally gave words to something I have carried quietly for years.

There is this unspoken thing at camp where people leave pieces of themselves behind long after they are gone. A certain laugh in the dining hall. A tradition they started. A way they made children feel safe. Some people become so deeply woven into camp that their absence never really feels like absence at all. They become stories people tell around campfires years later. Memories repeated so often they almost stop sounding human and start sounding holy.

And then someone new arrives.

Young. Nervous. Trying so hard.

And everyone expects them to somehow step perfectly into the shape of the person before them.

There’s something quietly cruel about being expected to carry a torch you were never taught how to hold.

At camp, leadership gets passed down like tradition. One person leaves, another steps in, and somehow everyone expects the next person to already know how to do it all. How to lead. How to comfort homesick kids. How to carry conflict gently. How to keep camp feeling magical while they themselves are exhausted. How to be dependable and cheerful and emotionally available every second of the day.

But confidence is not instinct. Leadership is not magic. And experience cannot be inherited through expectation alone.

Still, camp has this way of acting like it can.

And maybe the hardest part is that the comparisons rarely come from cruelty. Most of the time they come from love. Someone missing the people who raised them there. Someone remembering summers that meant everything to them. So they say things casually, never realizing how deeply those words land inside someone already struggling to feel enough.

“Well, so-and-so used to do it this way.”

“They were always really good at this.”

“Last year just felt different.”

And maybe they forget those people were once uncertain too.

Maybe they forget there was a time before they became “camp legends.” Before they knew how to lead chapel or calm a crying camper or hold everything together so naturally people thought they were born knowing how.

Because nobody remembers the becoming. Only the version that survived it.

And I think what broke a lot of us was trying to become whole beneath the weight of everyone else’s memories.

It was the feeling that no matter how much of ourselves we poured into camp, we were still standing in the shadow of people who had already become untouchable there. We gave everything we had to children and cabins and traditions while quietly wondering if anyone could tell we had no idea what we were doing.

I think about the versions of us sitting awake after lights out, emotionally hollowed out from giving all day long. Smiling until our cheeks hurt. Holding crying children while privately feeling like we were falling apart too. Listening to worship songs in chapels while wondering why we suddenly felt so unbearably alone in a place full of people.

Because camp asks people to give in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has never lived it.

It asks for your patience. Your energy. Your softness. Your joy. Your ability to stay calm when children are crying and schedules are collapsing and your body is begging you to rest.

And the terrifying thing is that so many of us were willing to give it everything.

We loved camp enough to ignore our own exhaustion. Enough to keep showing up while our mental health got worse. Enough to convince ourselves that struggling meant we were weak instead of overwhelmed. Enough to believe that if we just gave more of ourselves away, maybe eventually we would finally feel worthy of being there.

I think there are people who have not returned to camp in years who still carry guilt every single summer when the season comes around. People who see photos online and feel their chest ache with homesickness for a version of themselves that no longer exists. People who miss camp so deeply it feels like grief, but also know going back would reopen wounds they barely survived the first time.

And that is such a confusing kind of heartbreak. To love something so much and still need distance from it. To miss a place while also recognizing it slowly consumed you. To realize the place that once made you feel most alive also taught you, quietly and over time, that your worth depended on how much of yourself you were willing to sacrifice for everyone else.

I do not think camp means to hurt people.

I think camp is made of beautiful, exhausted humans trying to recreate the magic they once survived themselves.

But sometimes that means the cycle repeats.

Young leaders arrive wanting desperately to belong, and before they have even figured out who they are, they are handed emotional responsibilities too heavy for their shoulders and expectations too large for their still-forming hearts. They learn quickly that the people who are loved most at camp are the ones who give the most. The ones who stay latest. Work hardest. Need least. Smile anyway.

And some of us did that until there was almost nothing left of ourselves outside of camp at all.

Not everyone who leaves camp stops loving it.

Some of us just finally realized we were disappearing there, and stepping away was the first time we chose to save ourselves instead of sacrificing ourselves for a place that taught us exhaustion was the same thing as devotion.

The Sky Is Still Worth It

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I was setting bowls down for the cats, just moving through one of those slow, slightly off days that come after being sick. Not bad enough to stop everything, just enough to make it all feel a little distant, like I was a step behind my own life.

They circled my legs, impatient and steady, completely present in a way I wasn’t.

I glanced out the garage door and there it was.

A rainbow stretched wide across the sky like it had been waiting for someone to notice.

And I did what I always do. I stopped.

Because I am the kind of person who chases these things. The sky, the storms, the quiet moments most people pass by. I have stood in fields for stars, driven back roads for light, waited at the edge of days just to catch something fleeting before it disappears.

That part of me hasn’t gone anywhere.

Even sick, even tired, even a little disconnected, I still feel it. That pull. That instinct to look, to notice, to hold onto something beautiful for just a second longer.

I finished setting the bowls down faster than I meant to and went inside.

“Hey, come look.”

She’s four, so she ran like it mattered. Like wonder is something you have to meet halfway or you’ll miss it.

Her hands pressed against the window, her whole face lighting up in a way that felt familiar.

“A rainbow! Aunt Kelly, it’s a rainbow!”

And then, like it was the most obvious truth in the world,
“There’s a pot of gold at the end.”

And I smiled, because I understood her more than she realized.

Not the gold.
But the chase.

Because that’s what it is.

Not just seeing something beautiful, but believing there is something worth moving toward because of it.

I don’t believe there is a literal pot of gold waiting at the end of a rainbow.

But I do believe in standing in the cold for stars.
In chasing storms across open land.
In pulling over on gravel roads because the sky decided to become something more for a few minutes.

I believe in going after wonder like it might slip through your fingers if you don’t.

Standing there, still not fully myself, still carrying that quiet weight of the last few days, I realized something.

Wonder didn’t feel smaller.

It just felt a little further away in that moment.

But it was still mine.

Still there in the way I stopped.
Still there in the way I looked.
Still there in the part of me that will always turn toward the sky.

She saw a pot of gold waiting.

I saw something just as real.

A reason to keep chasing.

So remember to follow it.
Not just to notice the beauty, but to move toward it.
To step outside, to look longer, to go a little further than you need to.

Because wonder isn’t something you either have or lose.

It is something you choose, again and again, every time you decide the sky is worth looking at.

The Sky Wouldn’t Wait

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I almost stayed inside.

That’s what sits with me now, more than anything else. How easy it would have been to just watch it through the window. To notice the color, call it beautiful, and let it pass without asking anything of me.

But the sky didn’t look like something you could witness halfway.

It looked like it was breaking open.

A thin line of fire at the horizon, orange deepening into red, red slipping into purple, like something alive and leaving at the same time. And there was this pull, quiet but certain, the kind that doesn’t wait for you to feel ready.

So I went.

Not prepared, not thought out. Just… as I was. The kind of leaving where you don’t stop to fix anything. Crocs shoved on without thinking, basketball shorts that made no sense for the cold, a thin hoodie that felt like a half-promise against 22 degrees.

I felt it the second I stepped outside.

The cold didn’t ease in. It took hold. Straight to my lungs, sharp enough to steal a breath and make me question it for a second. Just a second.

Because the sky was still burning.

So I ran.

Out into the back field, where the ground never quite holds you steady. Tall grass hiding every uneven step, fallen limbs waiting where you don’t see them. My shoes slipping just enough to remind me they weren’t meant for this, my legs stinging with cold that had nowhere to hide against bare skin.

I ducked under fencing that caught at my sleeves, pushed through lilac branches that scratched like they were trying to slow me down, like everything around me was asking if I was sure.

The wind met me head-on.

Thirty miles an hour of resistance, pressing into me, turning every step into effort. It felt almost intentional, like something trying to turn me back toward warmth, toward sense, toward staying.

And I didn’t have a good reason not to.

Just a knowing.

That if I stopped, if I hesitated, I would miss it.

And that felt heavier than the cold.

So I kept going, breath uneven, hands starting to go numb, hoodie doing nothing but reminding me how unready I was for this. Everything about me mismatched to the moment, like I had stepped out of one world and into another without warning.

But maybe that’s what it is.

The best moments don’t wait for you to match them.

They just happen.

By the time I reached the fence line, I wasn’t really running anymore. Just moving forward because I had already come this far, because turning back then would have meant carrying something I didn’t want to carry.

And then I saw it.

The horizon wide and open, nothing in the way. The sun slipping under like it was being pulled down, leaving everything behind in color. Orange into red into purple, folding into each other like they knew they didn’t have long.

The fence stood in front of me, steady, unmoving. The trees reached in from the sides, bare and quiet, like they were holding the moment in place.

And the sky just gave everything.

Not carefully. Not slowly.

It burned.

And I stood there in Crocs half-soaked from the grass, legs bare to the cold, a hoodie that never stood a chance, shaking from the wind and the weight of having made it there in time.

Not comfortable. Not steady.

But there.

And something in me settled in a way I don’t know how to explain cleanly.

That some things will never meet you where you are. They won’t wait for you to be ready, or warm, or dressed for it. They will exist fully without you.

And you either go to them, or you don’t.

I stayed until it faded. Until the colors softened, until the fire cooled, until the sky folded back into something quieter, like nothing had happened at all.

And the whole walk back, colder than before, slower now, I kept thinking about how close I came to missing it.

How easily this could have been a moment I only half-saw.

I think that’s what I’m trying to fight, in my own quiet way.

The version of me that stays inside.
That chooses comfort without question.
That lets things pass because they are inconvenient.

Because tonight, it was inconvenient.

And still, it mattered.

Not because it changed anything. Not because it fixed anything.

But because I was there.

Because I chose to step out into something I wasn’t ready for
to meet something that wouldn’t wait.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s the whole point.

To keep going when something calls,
even if you’re underdressed,
even if you’re shaking,
even if it doesn’t make sense.

To meet the moment where it is,
not where it’s easy.

Because some things only exist out there,
past the fence line,
in the cold,
in the wind,
in the seconds before they disappear.

And I don’t want to keep missing them.

She Stands Between Prairie and Hills

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

There’s a moment, right before the land changes, where I always pull over.

East of the river, everything stretches—flat, open, familiar. Prairie that feels like it goes on forever, like a breath you don’t have to think about taking. But once you cross the Missouri, the earth begins to rise. It gathers itself into hills, into movement, into something a little more wild.

And right there, in that in-between, she stands.

Lady Dignity.

She doesn’t just stand—she holds space. Arms outstretched, star quilt open like a sky you can almost step into. She stands with her back to the Missouri River, facing east—toward the prairie, toward the long stretch of land I come from.

There’s something about that I can’t shake.

It feels intentional. Like she isn’t watching what has passed, but what is still becoming. Like she’s holding space for what lies ahead instead of what’s already behind.

And every time I stop there, coming from the east, it feels like she’s meeting me. Not turning away—but standing firm, steady, facing the same horizon I’ve known my whole life.

Prairie to prairie. Quiet to quiet.

Like she understands where I’ve been before I even arrive.

I always stop here. I don’t rush it. I don’t treat it like just another roadside landmark. It feels wrong to do that.
There’s something about her that asks for stillness.

Maybe it’s the way the wind moves through this place—real South Dakota wind, the kind that doesn’t ask permission. It catches the edges of her quilt, the blues shifting like pieces of sky caught in motion. In the daylight, those diamond shapes flicker and glow, like quiet reminders that even something solid can carry light.

And at night, she changes.

She doesn’t disappear into the dark—she rises in it. Lit up, steady, unwavering. Not softer, not smaller. Just… present in a different way. Like strength doesn’t always have to be loud to be seen.

Dale Lamphere said she represents the courage, perseverance, and wisdom of the Lakota and Dakota people—and you can feel that when you stand there. Not in a loud, overwhelming way. But in something deeper. Something rooted. Something that doesn’t need to prove itself to be known.

It makes you straighten a little. Look a little longer. Think a little quieter.

For me, she’s become a marker. Not just of geography—east and west, prairie and hills—but of something internal too. A pause between where I’ve been and where I’m going. A reminder that there’s strength in standing still for a moment. In acknowledging the ground beneath you and the history it holds.

Every time I stop, it feels the same and different all at once.

Familiar, like coming back to something that knows you.
And humbling, like you’re being gently reminded how small you are in the presence of something that carries so much more.

I don’t stay forever.

Just long enough to look up at her, to let the wind move around me, to feel that quiet settle in my chest.

And then I keep driving—west into the hills, or back east into the open.

But I carry her with me every time.

Because some places don’t just exist on a map.
Some places meet you where you are—and leave something behind when you go.

And she does.

She always does.

The Things That Followed Me Home

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I’ve been building something quietly.

Not because I didn’t want to share it—but because I didn’t know how to talk about it without unraveling it too soon. Some things feel fragile when they’re still becoming. Like if you name them too quickly, they might lose the shape they were trying to take.

But I don’t want to keep it hidden anymore.

I’m creating something out of my photography and my writing. Not just a collection, not just something to look at—but something that holds what those moments felt like when I was inside them. Something that doesn’t let them disappear as easily as everything else seems to.

One of these pieces is rooted in 11 summers at a camp that shaped me in ways I’m still trying to understand. It wasn’t just the place—it was the people, the conversations, the nights that stretched longer than they should have, the quiet moments in between everything loud. It was being known, and sometimes being unknown in ways that still mattered. It was learning how deeply something temporary can change you.

I didn’t realize, while I was there, that I was becoming someone different each summer. I didn’t realize I was collecting pieces of myself that I would spend years trying to sort through later.

The other piece is everything else.

Everywhere I’ve been.
Every road, every shoreline, every stretch of sky that made me stop for a second longer than I meant to.

From the East Coast to Alaska.
From mountains that made me feel small in a way that steadied me, to quiet edges of water where everything felt like it could finally exhale.

It’s the fox that appeared for a moment and then was gone.
The birds that stayed just long enough for me to notice them.
The kind of light that feels like it’s trying to say something, even if I don’t fully understand it yet.

I think I’ve been trying to hold onto things because I’m afraid of how easily they pass.

People.
Places.
Versions of myself.

There are photos I took because something felt beautiful.
There are others I took because I didn’t want to forget.
And there are some I didn’t understand at all until much later—until I looked back and realized they were carrying more than I knew at the time.

This is a slow process.

Some days I open it and everything feels clear, like I know exactly what I’m trying to say.
Other days I close it because it feels too heavy, or too unfinished, or too honest in a way I’m not ready to sit with yet.

But I don’t want to wait until it’s perfect to let it be seen.

I want to share it while it’s still becoming.
While it’s still messy.
While I’m still figuring it out.

Because that feels more true to what this actually is.

This isn’t just something I’m making.
It’s something I’m moving through.

It’s me trying to understand what stayed with me—and why.
Why certain places still feel like they’re calling me back.
Why certain people still exist in the quiet parts of my thoughts.
Why some moments refuse to fade, no matter how much time passes.

I don’t have a clean explanation for any of it.

But I do have these images.
These words.
These pieces of something I lived.

And for now, that feels like enough to begin.

As Long as There’s Still a Mailbox

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

There was a rumor going around recently that the mail might stop someday.
Not tomorrow, not next week, but the kind of quiet talk people say like it’s inevitable — everything going digital, everything getting faster, everything needing less paper, less waiting, less space to hold things. Most people hear that and think about bills, junk mail, catalogs they never asked for.

I heard it, and all I could think was,
one day there might be a last letter.

Not the kind where you know it’s the last.
Not something marked with an ending.
Just the kind you send without realizing that someday there won’t be another envelope after it.

Letters have never been just letters to me.
They’re pieces of time you can hold in your hands.
Proof that someone stopped long enough to feel something, long enough to write it down, long enough to believe it was worth the effort to send. Ink takes longer than typing. Stamps take longer than hitting send. Waiting takes longer than refreshing a screen. And maybe that’s why it matters so much — because nothing about it is instant, so nothing about it feels careless.

For the last few years, sending mail has been one of the steadiest things in my life.
Not because life was steady, but because the letters were.
No matter how much changed, I could still sit down, pick a card, find a pen that worked, and write to someone who mattered.

And it was never just a letter.

It was photos from a random day that felt too important to keep to myself.
Polaroids with the colors a little off but the memory still right.
Receipts, pressed flowers, scraps of paper with things I meant to say but didn’t know how to fit into a sentence.
Little notes written at midnight.
Stickers I found and immediately knew who they belonged to.
Tiny pieces of my life folded in half, then folded again, then tucked carefully into an envelope like I was trying to make the distance smaller by filling the space with proof that I was thinking of them.

There’s something about sealing an envelope that feels different than ending a conversation.
Once it’s closed, you can’t change the words.
You can’t unsend it.
You just have to trust that what you wrote was honest enough, real enough, that when it gets opened on the other end it will still mean what you meant when you wrote it.

So when people talk about the mail changing, slowing down, disappearing someday…
it doesn’t sound like a small thing to me.

It sounds like someone telling me there might be a day where I can’t do this anymore.
A day where there isn’t a stamp to press into the corner.
A day where there isn’t a mailbox waiting at the end of the driveway.
A day where I can’t slide a photograph into a card or tuck a little keepsake between the pages and send it across the miles like a quiet reminder that someone, somewhere, is still thinking about you.

And the truth is, the sadness isn’t really about the postal service.

It’s about what the letters mean.

They mean there was someone worth writing to.
They mean there was distance, but not so much distance that it couldn’t be crossed.
They mean there was a season of my life where love — or friendship, or whatever name you give to the people who feel like home — looked like ink stains on my fingers and envelopes stacked on my desk waiting for stamps.

They mean there was a time where I could hold something in my hands and know it was on its way to someone who mattered.

Maybe the mail isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Realistically, it probably isn’t.
But the thought that it could someday makes me realize how much of my life is tied up in something as simple as paper and ink and the belief that if you send something out into the world with enough care, it will find where it’s supposed to go.

One day there will be a last letter.
Not because the world ends.
Not because the feeling ends.
Just because life moves the way it always does, and seasons close without asking if you’re ready.

One day there will be an envelope I don’t send.
A photo I keep instead of folding in half.
A note I write and never seal.
A memory that stays in my hands instead of traveling across the miles.

And maybe that’s why I keep sending them now.
Why I keep adding one more stamp, one more picture, one more little piece of a life I don’t want to forget.
Why I keep tucking pieces of my days into envelopes like I’m afraid that if I don’t send them somewhere, they won’t feel real.

Because as long as there’s still a mailbox,
as long as there are still stamps,
as long as there’s still an address I know by heart,

I want there to be proof
that distance didn’t stop me,
that time didn’t stop me,
that life didn’t make me too busy to care.

I want there to be proof that I tried to reach them.

Color in the Middle of Winter

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Winter has a way of quieting everything.

The fields fall asleep beneath frost. The trees stand bare against pale skies. Even the light seems to leave earlier each evening, slipping below the horizon before you are ready for the day to end. There are months where the world feels muted, like the color has drained from it.

And then flowers arrive.

Suddenly there is color sitting in the middle of the room. Petals the color of warm sunsets and summer evenings. Edges painted in coral and gold, like small fires burning gently against winter’s gray. They feel almost defiant there on the shelf, bright and alive in a season that often forgets what color looks like. They do not belong to the cold outside the window, and maybe that is exactly why they matter so much.

I have always loved getting flowers. Not for the gesture alone, but for what they carry with them. Flowers are small reminders that beauty still exists somewhere beyond the cold months. That life is still unfolding quietly, even when the earth around us seems still.

But if I’m being honest, most of the time I’m the one who buys them.

There is something quietly comforting about choosing them for yourself. Walking past a small display of blooms and deciding that today could use a little color. That the room could use something alive in it. That maybe you deserve something soft and beautiful sitting nearby.

It is a small act, but it feels like care.

Not the loud kind people celebrate, but the quiet kind that says, I am still here. I am still choosing small joy where I can find it.

They change a space in a way that is hard to explain. A shelf becomes brighter. A room feels softer. Something inside you lifts just a little without asking permission.

And still, I love that flowers can travel between people. How easy it is to send them. A bouquet arriving at someone’s door can interrupt a difficult week, soften loneliness, or simply remind them that they crossed someone’s mind that day.

Small gestures have a way of lingering.

I think my love for simple things like this traces back to childhood.

I was raised on Winnie the Pooh. Stories where nothing dramatic had to happen for a moment to matter. A walk through the Hundred Acre Wood. Sitting beneath a tree with a friend. Honey shared between quiet conversations.

Those stories taught something simple but lasting: the smallest things are often the most important.

There is a line from Winnie the Pooh that has always stayed with me:

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
– Winnie the Pooh –

Flowers feel like that.

They are simple. Temporary. Quiet.

But they carry warmth with them. A reminder of kindness. Of friendship. Of choosing beauty even on ordinary days.

And sometimes, in the middle of winter, the small fires of color sitting on a shelf are not from someone else at all.

Sometimes they are simply you, reminding yourself that the world has not forgotten how to bloom.

A Wrist Full of Memories

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Friendship bracelets are small. Tiny threads knotted together. Yet they hold something enormous. Each one is a quiet act of devotion, hours spent twisting color into pattern, time given freely, care folded into every loop. They are gifts, yes—but also promises: that someone is thinking of you, that someone is holding you in their mind and heart while the world keeps moving.

At camp, bracelets crowd wrists like little galaxies. Staff and counselors wear them stacked, layered, every knot a story, every color a memory, every frayed end a summer lived fully. I have always loved that—seeing wrists full of stories, realizing how every friendship leaves a mark, small but permanent. And I have always felt naked without them. Bare wrists feel empty, like space without stars, like a body missing its constellation.

Every New Year, I cut mine off. They fray, fade, and become ragged—like old memories that ache to be remembered but can’t be worn any longer. I save them, of course, tucked into boxes, jars, envelopes, working slowly on a way to frame them so they are not lost. And then I start again: fresh threads, fresh intentions, new stories woven into the colors of my life. It is a ritual, a rhythm. A way of telling myself that no matter what has passed, there is always a way to begin again.

This year, everything feels different. I won’t be at camp. I won’t see the wrists stacked high with tiny galaxies. I worried I would have to get used to bare arms, to empty mornings and quiet wrists, to the loss of the small, steady comfort of bracelets wrapping around me like old friends. I feared the hollow space where devotion used to live.

And then my best friend sent me two.

Two bracelets, carrying her across the miles. Two tiny, twisted threads that are more than thread—they are proof that love travels. That care is patient and persistent. That even when seasons end, even when places close, even when the rituals of your life change, some bonds do not fade. I put them on my wrist, and suddenly my world feels stitched together again. The threads hum with memory, with laughter, with late-night confessions, with sunburned afternoons, with quiet mornings, with all the moments that have ever mattered.

Friendship bracelets are small. But small things can hold infinite weight. They carry our devotion, our longing, our constellations of memory and care. They remind us that even when life moves on, even when summers end, even when we are no longer who we were, love can still wrap itself around us, knot by knot, thread by thread.

And somehow, in that simple act of giving and receiving, I am whole again.

What We Carry

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Some people see five gallon buckets and think of chores they’d rather avoid.

They’re paint-splattered in the corner of a garage. Caked with drywall mud. Left behind after a job is finished and everyone’s already moved on. Cheap plastic. Replaceable. Something you grab when you need it and forget when you don’t.

On a farm, they become something else.

Five gallon buckets are essential to farming in a way that’s hard to explain until you live inside the rhythm of it. They’re there before the sun fully clears the horizon and still there when the light finally gives up. We use them to haul water to livestock tanks when hoses freeze solid or won’t reach far enough. We use the gator to carry feed from the barn to a small standalone trailer, buckets lifted and set down again, lined up inside where they’ll sit overnight, safe and dry, waiting. The next day, those same buckets are picked up again and carried into animal pens, one slow trip at a time, until everyone is fed.

Sometimes they hold tools. Sometimes they hold salt or minerals or whatever you needed to grab without thinking. Sometimes they’re empty, which somehow still feels like a promise, like they’re waiting for the next thing that needs doing.

They wear the work. Scratches from fences and trailer edges. Dents you don’t remember making. Plastic dulled by sun and weather. The handles squeak. One always seems to leak just enough to soak your boots, and you don’t remember which one it is until it’s already dripping. Dirt clings to the sides. Mud cakes the bottoms.

We have an array of them. Blues and whites and reds. Loud pinks that don’t belong anywhere else on the farm. Buckets with hardware store logos. Buckets from places we passed through once and didn’t think we’d remember. There’s a quiet joy in finding new colors and new designs, in something so practical still managing to feel personal. Like each one has a small story pressed into its sides.

They don’t get cleaned as often as they should. They don’t get put away neatly. They lean against barn doors, ride in the back of the gator, wait by gates and pens. And somehow, they’re always close when something breaks or spills or needs to be carried right now.

Farming is full of things like that. Tools that don’t look like much. Work that doesn’t photograph well. A life built from small, physical acts, repeated until your body remembers them even when your mind is tired.

Five gallon buckets aren’t romantic. They don’t make good stories on their own. But they live in the spaces between tasks. In the weight of water carried by hand. In the hollow sound of feed hitting the bottom. In the pause when you set one down, wipe your hands on your jeans, and look out across the pens before lifting it again.

Out here, they’re part of how the work moves forward. Part of how days are held together. Quiet witnesses to the fact that someone was here, doing what needed to be done, and will be back tomorrow to do it again.

The Brutal Beauty of Winter

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

We’ve reached that part of winter where South Dakota stops pretending.

The forecast has settled into a long stretch of below zero temperatures, the kind of cold that doesn’t care how tough you think you are or how many layers you pile on. This cold is brutal. It cuts straight through coats and sweaters like they’re suggestions, not protection. The wind doesn’t knock. It slams into you, steals your breath, and leaves you staggering for half a second while it whips loose snow into tiny glass missiles that sting your face and hands.

Any exposed skin burns instantly. Not metaphorically. Actually burns. Raw and angry and aching within seconds.

The cold doesn’t stay outside either. It seeps through the windows, through the walls, through the cracks you didn’t know existed. It settles into every room like an unwelcome guest, making the idea of leaving a warm bed feel almost offensive. Even inside, there’s always a chill riding the air, a reminder that winter is very much in control.

This is the kind of cold that makes your whole body ache. Your nose runs, and before you can even wipe it, it freezes, an uncomfortable, ridiculous reality of arctic temperatures. If your gloves get wet, they stiffen and harden, crusted with frost, no longer flexible or warm, just cold armor against colder air. Everything feels sharper. Heavier. More exhausting.

And yet, somehow, this depth of cold brings beauty with it.

Winter sunsets feel more vivid, like the sky is making up for everything it’s taken away. Colors burn brighter and linger longer, purples bleeding into pinks and oranges in ways that feel almost unreal against the frozen landscape. The air is clearer, crisper, and the light carries farther.

Frost clings to trees and fences, delicate and quiet, turning ordinary branches into something almost sacred. Every twig is outlined in white, every field dusted and still. The world feels paused, held in place by ice and breath and silence.

On days like these, the sky sometimes gifts us sun dogs. They’re bright spots of light that appear on either side of the sun, caused by sunlight refracting through ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Basically, the cold is so intense that the air itself sparkles. Halos form. Light bends. The sky shows off.

I saw them on Saturday, soft and glowing, but the sky was thick with clouds and I couldn’t get a good photo. Still, just seeing them felt like a quiet reward for enduring this kind of cold. Like winter saying, I know this hurts, but look what I can do.

I hate this level of cold. I really do. I hate how it makes everything harder and slower and more painful, how it drains energy before the day even starts. But I love what winter creates. I love that even in the most unforgiving conditions, there’s still beauty pressing through, still light bending and colors burning and frost turning the world gentle.

Maybe that’s why it sticks with me.

Because winter doesn’t soften. It doesn’t apologize. But every once in a while, it lifts the veil just enough to remind us that even here, especially here, there is something worth noticing.

And I hope I see it again soon.