We drove up our mountain road, headed home, through the desert sand and cottonwoods that line the lower river, up through the two villages that lead to a large granite canyon, past the tierra blanca patch and where we know you can dig for garnets, up through the shiny gravel patch and deeper canyon cut by the river - past our swimming hole to almost the top of the valley that crescents out with verdant pastures and more mountains to the north, east & west - we pass the pink mercantile and that’s usually when our daughter yells “home!”.

Our dogs bound towards us with faces like maybe we were never coming back. Johnny clocks the cows in our pasture quicker than a man checking the corner of his card in a poker game.

I don’t know whose cows they are but they’re not ours. 

We run into the field to move them out, a horse we don’t know is also with them, brown and shiny, a handso...