Last week I was in ND visiting my client at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center – www.fortmandan.com. David kindly gave me their latest published book – A Free and Hardy Life: Theodore Roosevelt’s Sojourn in the American West. I have often quoted TR’s speech – The Man in the Arena. I admire TR’s philosophy and was happy to learn more about his time in North Dakota.

TR said the “romance of his life” began in North Dakota. He came to ND to kill buffalo and eventually played a big role in saving them from extinction. Later in life he said if he could only have one memory it would be “the memory of his life on the ranch, with its experiences close to nature and among the men who lived nearest her.” ND had an effect on his soul. It was in ND where he learned how to ride mean horses, faced grizzly, helped round up stampeding cattle, killed buffalo and spent many lonely hours in the saddle. I think this kind of life creates poets, lovers of nature and a strong back.

TR coined many phrases, one was of a strenuous life. “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and to who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” I espouse many of his philosophies. I grew up on a farm and did lots of manual labor. I still do by choice. Many have questioned my way of life. I believe life near nature and with physical toil is good for the soul. It is romantic. It helps balance the work a day life in the office. It is on the back of a horse, in my tree house, watching sunsets, seeing great blue herons fly off, building a fence that I craft my big dreams and sooth my stresses. It is because of this that I can be a doer and dreamer in other areas of life.

Leading an adventurous or strenuous life has its risk. I like to raise and train young horses. As TR said, “I don’t grudge the broken arm a bit…I’m always ready to pay the piper when I’ve had a good dance; and every now and then I like to drink the wine of life with brandy in it.” Just this weekend I put myself in a stupid spot and got knocked over and trampled by my horses. Luckily, nothing was broken, just a bruised ego and body. Sometimes you have to pay the piper, yet it is worth the ride, the good dance. It beats spending your life away in front of a TV.

When is the last time you got a blister via hard manual labor? When is the last time you faced your fear, your grizzly and over came it? What are your big dreams? When is the last time you read poetry, watched a sun rise, picked some wild flowers,….? Don’t have “the backbone of a chocolate éclair”, go grab life by the horns.

Jenkinson, Clay S., A Free and Hardy Life: Theodore Roosevelt’s Sojourn in the American West, The Dakota Institute Press of the Lewis & Clark Foundation, 2011.