What More Could Anyone Ask?

Before sunrise

Warning: Today is a day of small thoughts. Proceed with low expectations. 

Morning came early. No earlier than usual, but warm enough that I was outdoors before sunrise, smiling at a mockingbird singing down in the wash. When the sun breaks over the horizon, deep shadows give sharp definition to the mountains behind the cabin, and my cup overflows. 

At last I have a teapot! We were getting along without one, pouring boiling water from a saucepan (not kettle) directly into cups or mugs, but there is something indescribably homelike about a teapot, something that says, “You’re not just camping — you live here.” It makes me happy to look at it, even when it isn’t in use. My new bookcase is working out great, too. With shelf space to spare now, our other horizontal surfaces (“We can’t be trusted with horizontal surfaces,” the Artist once observed) are much cleaner and available for other uses. 

Book Dog in Arizona

I look around at our limited living space and no longer see anything missing. As for outdoor space, it stretches out and up in ways that fill my heart with joy, fill my lungs with deep draughts of mountain air, and bring a smile to my face.

Monday evening view from friends' porch

We had dinner with friends the other evening, and I wore my “new” cowgirl boots for the first time. The little painting I bought at an estate sale is still without a frame and will be for the foreseeable future, because of its odd size, but I’m glad I have it. The subject matter is a little white calf, very appropriate for a high desert cabin in cattle country. We have friends and neighbors. Familiar faces greet us at the library or in the grocery store. I have a hiking partner. Even Sarah has friends in Dos Cabezas. Icing on the cake: it was a beautifully wet winter, bringing lots of rain and snow, enough so that many usually dry creeks are now running cool and sweet.

Sarah, Mollie, Buddy

A teapot, of course, is not one of life’s necessities. I didn’t need it, only wanted it. And so it has always been with me and horses; however, “If I were to get a weanling now,” I told the Artist, “I could have it for the rest of my life.” Trouble-shooting, he immediately speculated that the horse might outlive me, and then what would become of it? But I can’t worry that far ahead, even in my fantasies. 

Little Dream Boy!