My dad was determined to teach me Native American culture, a side he never explored growing up. When we lived in South Dakota, my dad took me to a native seamstress. She made me a pink jingle dress with a butterfly-printed cape. I paraded around the backyard in my new dress as he followed me with a camera, beaming. I pushed past the awkward clang of bells and heavy fabric to see his face light up.  

My dad worked after college for his uncle as a cowboy, facing off against rusted barbed wire and howling prairie winds. When he gave his work hat to me, it was covered in dried dirt splotches and crusted mystery stains. I wore it with pride, pretending to be him while riding on the back of a four-wheeler. At my first rodeo, I watched the boys competing, jealously hoping they got bucked off the ram. I passed the time picking at the broken plastic under the crown of his hat.

At home, his hat hung on my wall next to our ski photos and his hand-me-down baseball caps. In contrast, my grandmother's regalia, a delicate beaded headband and two feathered hair ties, laid untouched in the box they were given in, hidden in my closet. They seemed fragile– age softening the leather and drying out the grass lacing the jewelry. Thumbing at the bent rim of his hat, I pictured the endless pastures at my grandpa's house where I learned to ride a dirtbike. Tracing the beads of the headband, however, my memories drew a blank. My grandmother's life felt alien to me. 

Dad described his ranching career as an itch needing to be scratched. Heading out as the sun set, I ran laps around the lake nearby. My shoulders were stiff from hunching over my desk, tackling physics homework. Ironically, I’m scared of the dark, but I couldn’t resist the pull of my nightly jog. Mostly, my persisting fear of a predator chasing me spurred me to run faster and for longer intervals. But as I ran for my life, the equations spinning in my head dissipated. I slowed to a walk and finished my final lap, watching the moon reflect off the water. Going back home, I recomposed myself, refreshed and ready to finish off my last problem.

The night of the rodeo, we left the stands early to start the long trip home. After passing the surrounding dirt lots, I turned around to stare at the rodeo. The arena was the only thing for miles except for the telephone lines that stretched across the shrinking horizon. As my dad hauled my brother and me into the RV, the crystal clear constellations were just starting to dance in the sky. Inside, the auction roars shrunk as we drove away. I felt like a speck of dust, like a part of the landscape. Peering through the skylight, the night sky reflected in my eyes. The stars looked alive. I wondered if the cows we drove past thought of the nebulas above their heads.

When I sit in the stands, I’m thinking about how I would wrangle the sheep. I don’t want to let someone else do the work for me. The same way my dad found his way on the ranch, I’m finding my own path to my cultural roots. Being native, to me, is about how I connect to nature. From midnight runs to ski paths, nature taught me about myself as much as my dad did. It taught me that thought is equally important as action. My dad and my grandma consulted nature’s wisdom, too. My grandma felt connected to the world when beading the medicine wheel, a symbol of earth, on her headband. My dad found his own brief quietness on the prairie. I see the peace that I discovered on those nights as my own spiritual ventures.