Vignettes

grasses

Cuarta

gabianddave

The other day I was driving along the main ranch road listening to a CD I'd burned, and that old song, "Cattle Call" by Eddy Arnold was playing just as I came upon a herd of cattle and a cowboy. I pulled over. Suddenly there were cattle all around me moo-ing and moving slowly along, a few almost brushing against my car, in their noisy way reminding me that life's best pace is something of a mosey and a dawdle, and the cowboy touched his hat and gave me a nod, and meanwhile Eddy Arnold was singing, "His heart is a feather/in all kinds of weather/he sings his cattle song..." and his yodels drifted out from my open windows, and I wondered as I so often do -- how did I end up here?!

It was a classic "I love my life" moment.

Sometimes these moments are small, but they are there if you pay attention, and always worth savoring. Like today...the smell of brush and tall grasses, recently cut or cleared, and the multiple shades of tawny and maze, and hills sparked with yellow mustard flowers. Or re-reading My Antonia after many years and discovering it as though for the first time.

Or sampling salty-sweet caramels that Jeanne made. The salt somehow plays upon the palate and makes the follow-up sweetness even more delectable. (Honestly, who whips up salty-sweet caramels on a whim and brings them to a neighbor for no reason? What can I say? Jeanne is amazing.)

And there was a letter in the mailbox from Mr. Harbor in England. A real, handwritten message in an envelope, with a postmark from the Royal Mail and a beautiful square stamp. Such a long journey it took, and there it sits...

I received poems this week as well. Delivered to me digitally, but poems nonetheless. And an email from a little girl named Rose I dearly love, telling me her favorite words. (Which at the moment are "explode" and "flamboyant" but of course this could change at any time.)

Yesterday I went for a walk with Kelley and a young woman named Gabi who was visiting. I suppose you could call Gabi an Israeli-American, although she would say she feels American while in Israel and Israeli while in the U.S., but lately has embraced the sense of outsider-ness and sees, I think, that the outside is very big...maybe a better place to be than in.

Anyway, we went for a walk to the sandstone pools which have become the destination to which I take special people to sit and talk and look out above the rounded hills that roll down to the coast, and beyond to the sea, but in this case there we stood being buffeted about by the infamous wind.

On the way up, admiring the wispy clouds in the sky and trailside flowers and the curve and rise of the road ahead, we nearly stepped on a rattlesnake warming himself in the afternoon sun. Every time I tell this story, that rattlesnake gets bigger, so I might as well describe him as enormous and leave it at that. His presence was a good reminder to look at the ground sometimes.

At some point I took Gabi down to Agua Caliente where our friend Dave would pick her up and transport her to the next stage of her adventures, and we sat on the beach by the railroad trestle, and she sang a Hebrew folk song for me. Can you imagine? I leaned back on the sand with my straw hat covering my eyes listening to her sing, and I thought, how many people get to do this?

As I was saying, I love my life.