It's cooler here, crisp at night and in the morning. There are more yards left wild, choked with cosmos and paintbrush. There are more solar panels, there is more intentional smallness. Small, I understand, is the new big.
It's a little bit stressful to navigate the old, though, to keep it at bay. It's hard not to remember something - a sad day, a lonely week, hurt feelings, an unintentional and unmended mistake - that happened while I lived here. So I can only be here for so long - long enough to see the friends I love - before I start looking over my shoulder to make sure the past isn't behind me; before I start re-thinking where to go to lunch or dinner based on who may be there, who may remind me of something that hurts to remember.
Still, though, driving East from Rifle, through the town of New Castle, I looked at the fields and fences and sheep and horses and wanted to live in that idyllic and pastoral scene more than I've wanted anything in ages. I wanted to, as they say, live deliberately. I wanted to grab my husband and our dogs and the things that matter to us - our books, old letters, swatches of fabrics, old gear that's been with us for the important times - and settle into that picture.
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