A bird I do not know reminds me that I need to get a bird book – Audobon or something. Another cackles like a monkey or like I imagine a monkey cackles; I’m not sure monkeys in zoos cackle. 
A swath of trees across the valley is lit up, old-school Lite Brite colors – vibrant yellow, deep orange, beams of red.
Meander sniffs low, forgetting that she hates wet grass. She stops, 20 feet ahead, and looks back. “I’m coming.” She turns, sniffs on.
***
It’s not a long walk, this one up the mountain to the lodge site. Ten minutes at most and all up hill. (I’m slow uphill.) But it’s a world away from the pixels and lists, from the dryer smoking the air by the climbing hydrangea on the north side of the farm house.
***
The dogwoods have shed their leaves, a quiet burlesque dancer in burgandy, the gorgeous skin roughed by years.
I stand at the top of the hill and gaze into the stream bed, our own private valley. Golden leaves twirl to the ground, and I treasure them, even as I also ache for the bare spins of their branches.
Quiet. Cackle. Crunch. Snuffle snuffle of puppy nose.
I sigh.