As It Sets

The clouds are pink and shedding their filtered light down to the Basin floor tonight, casting everything in a rose-ish hue. Dusk here is beautiful - something I had never forgotten but am enjoying more and more.

The fat mares are galloping across the pasture and with each hoof beat stirring up the earthy smells of dirt and grass. On the breeze blowing into my office, I can smell the dryness of the heat of the day mingling with the sagebrush and juniper and horse and grass and earth along with threat of tomorrow's rain. It feels timeless and I almost believe that if I were to die right now in this moment my spirit would be okay. I'd be okay. But I don't have to worry about that right now. It's just comforting to find the occasional moment where every once in a while I feel I can be at peace with the big slumber. The rest of the time I fear and loathe it.

As the sun falls behind the mountains and hills, the blueness of the sky competes with pinks and oranges and subtle purples of the clouds. It's almost as if Maxfield Parrish himself came and painted these romantic skies. It seems as if he paints almost every sunset of the summer.

I know I need to turn on the lights. My eye sight is poor enough as it is. But the feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me not to. I need to relish these skies and this moment of tired peace. I know I will soon enough be moving around again. I almost welcome the solitude. Almost. While sometimes it feels like this life is just a personal narrative no one reads or hears, and the people around us are fixtures on some sort of stage we know nothing about, to be connected and understood is better than the inherent loneliness. I miss my family and my people and this place while I'm gone. Travel makes me appreciate all of these. Appreciate the gray of the brush and the lushness of the pastures and the drama of land not hidden by trees. It makes me appreciate the smells that cannot be replicated. It reminds me to love my girls.

The sun is down. The clouds look tired and a bit sullen. I turn on my lamp.