There has been some snow, less aggressive drifts, they hit hard your face or windscreen if you’re out there, but if you take shelter in the know, they’re not as bad.

Where do you want to be, ten years from now? Twenty, if you dare imagine that far, because that far has a sense of terror now. With your wild and precious life. That mary oliver quote that got me into this pickle in the first place.

Is it out in the desert, ambling, thinking about coyote trappers and the guys with scopes on their guns and 4WD that makes mine look like barbie’s?

Or is it back in the mountains, a wild near beer we understand, and adjacent horses and a realistic drive to see the family. Where branches may come down and take out your car but a very high liklihood they’re not going to kill you. Even though the kids are now grown and god knows where? Even though the droughts are longer and taller and the rains are further between but taller and wider than god each time they come now. And those crowds and cars, the liklihood is, you’re not going to die. You try to escape behind your gate and know that 1.7 acre perimeter, maybe you can make it yours.

We are trying to go back to the mountains, because that’s where we belong. The desert is truthfully awe inspiring, the 40 square miles over 25,000 acres of a deserted back yard is a life goal that had a piece gone, it’s not our home. The panorama of white death from all sides, it belongs to somebody else. A comfortable house was so nice while it lasted, but we might have to hold on to our destiny instead, that living in a tiny ramshackle place as long as it has ok heat, and knowing better how to wield a chainsaw is just where we belong.