Maria and I and Red went back to Bedlam Farm today to pick up some things left behind. I took Red up in the Pole Barn and a whole movie of evocative images went swirling through my head. I saw Rose and I at the top of the hill when I read St. Augustine to here. Orson’s grave. The fox den. Donkeys and dogs, coyotes and storms, lambing and herding. Awful blizzards, lonely winters, love lost and found.

I love my barns, all empty now, waiting for someone else to come and love them, for other animals to graze. The fences are closed, the waterers turned off and the farm looked to me like a great and graceful ship, waiting to sail again. It will, it will.

It is hard for me to go back. Nostalgia is a trap for me, a path to nowhere useful. It was good to remember, but not dawdle there. Red looked everywhere for sheep, scouring both pastures, on alert, and I kept telling him that they were not there, that he would not find anything, but he could no stop looking.