There was no denying the ranch was picture perfect. If I had been alone on a road trip, driving through the Wet Mountains, my heart would have skipped a beat at how scenic this rustic hideaway was. I would have slowed the car down for a moment to watch the horses grazing in the valley and marvel at the soft yellow of the quaint ranch house. The meandering stream glistening in the sun would have tugged at my heart. I wonder who is fortunate enough to live in such a perfect place, I would have mused as I sped up to take the curve up the hill, carrying a hint of longing for the imagined life now receding in the rearview mirror.

I had traveled through many places in my life and watched lives unfold from trains in India, from cars crossing the Navajo Nation, from buses in Catalonia. The familiar pain of beauty seen in passing, the longing stirred by fantasies of living another life, had always been part of me, a parallel storyline of lives not lived.

I got out of the car and followed John and Joe down the long driveway. As we approached the corral, an older couple, the man lean and wizened in full cowboy gear, and the woman with the reassuring look of a retired elementary school teacher, came forward to greet us. “This is Art and Paula,” John said, introducing us. “They own these fine horses in the pasture.”

“Beautiful,” I murmured. I stayed by the corral while the men headed for the house.

“That chestnut there’s mine,” said Art. “Name’s Red. He’s a good horse.” He was a good-looking horse, but it was the large bay that attracted me.

“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at him.

Paula answered this time. “That’s Rain; he has been my horse. Handsome big boy, isn’t he?”

“Handsome for sure,” I agreed, and we stood together admiring him. Rain was keeping his distance, but I could tell he knew we were talking about him. There was something about him. He was the bad boy in high school I would never have approached.

“Too much horse for her,” Art piped up.

There was one more, a small, older palomino. “That’s Peanuts. More appropriate for this old broad.” Paula laughed.

Joe and John had gone through the house already and were back out on the front porch, talking conservation easements and water rights. Joe had already broken the first rule of home buying; even the dumbest realtor in the world could tell he would pay anything for the place. I joined them on the porch. “Wait ’til you see the cookstove; it’s original,” Joe started in. “The place needs some work, but with a little care, maybe another bathroom and fireplace, it wouldn’t take much to bring it back to life.” He was away and running.

“Let me take a look.” I stopped him and slipped in on my own.

The deep turquoise stove sitting majestic against the wall was the first thing I saw. It faced a picture window framing a view of the grassy hillside that flanked the valley rising up to a deep evergreen forest. Willows bordered the creek in the foreground. Standing in the room, empty of furniture except for a burnt orange recliner, I could feel the space breathe, calm and quiet. Dust motes danced in the light flickering on the scuffed wood floor. A small window over the kitchen counter revealed a mountain at the end of the valley. I opened the stove, the enamel cool to the touch, and could almost smell the bread rising.

I could tell that the house had once been loved deeply and was just waiting to be loved again.

“The owners haven’t been living here,” John volunteered when I found them out by the big barn. “They never did settle in. Art and Paula keep an eye on the place, and they graze their horses here.”

“Can we walk around?” I asked. “Of course,” John replied, leading the way.

Joe was talking as we walked. “It’s wet enough up here, we could have a garden, grow apple trees or herbs.” He could barely contain himself.

We walked away from the house up a long dirt road toward the mountain. The road had its own gate off the highway.

“Is there another house up here?” I asked John.

“Yes, yes, I was going to tell you about that. There is a house up there; the road here is grandfathered in. A doctor who lives in Pueblo owns it. I heard he’s from Bulgaria. He isn’t here much. Just hunting season mostly.”

“When is hunting season?” I asked.

“Starts soon, but it wouldn’t be any bother down here. It’s elk farther up they’re interested in.”

I took a deep breath and tried not to think about hunting season as we kept trudging up the grandfathered road.

We were walking alongside a ridge that looked like the spine of a dragon. “I kinda wanted some rocky outcroppings,” I said. “I only see one little one on that ridge.”

“What do you need rocky outcroppings for?” Joe asked distractedly. He was kicking at a six-foot-high Russian thistle. The valley was dotted with them standing tall like sentinels.

“To hide behind when I need to shoot the bad guys. Or jump off if I can’t take it anymore.”

“There was a Western shot here in the early fifties,” John chimed in. “Vengeance Valley, it was called.”

“Wow, that sounds promising,” I said. Even Joe laughed.

By then we had turned around and were heading back toward the cluster of buildings at the center of the valley, walking through the meadow along the creek, which we later learned was called Hardscrabble. Near the house, there was a small pond, clogged with green slime, and just inside the wood fence that created a yard, a root cellar with rock walls and a sod roof built into a small rise. The creek was wider as it passed near the house, and there was an island in the middle covered in peppermint, its sharp smell faint in the warm air. By the road to the south of the house was an old cabin made of rough hand-hewn logs. “Look at that,” Joe said in the kind of awestruck voice tourists use in cathedrals as he ran his hand along the perfectly hewn corner. A corral that had seen better days joined the cabin with a newer, large barn. In between was a small ramshackle building—a blacksmith shop. An old but functional outhouse stood in the middle of the yard, its open door facing the woods.

There was a small hill at the farthest corner, where the valley made an L-shaped turn to the right. Even from a distance, you could tell it was the perfect lookout with views north, east, and west. We huffed and puffed our way to the top. “Hey,” I cried out, “a rocky outcropping!” It was a large boulder surrounded by smaller ones framed by a grove of aspens, their gold leaves fluttering in a light breeze.

In the middle of a clearing in the trees was a campfire site that looked like it had been there for hundreds of years. Joe reached down and picked up a rock streaked with green. “I bet you could find some arrowheads up here,” he said.

“I think there is some Indian story about this spot—a sad one, as I remember,” John said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious it was a camping spot, probably traveling bands, maybe Ute,” Joe went on.

I was barely listening to their conversation, all my attention held by the view down the valley. From where I stood, I could see clearly why it was called Lookout Valley Ranch. The ranch house and barns and corral, small from where we stood, were nestled in the heart of the valley. The stream zigzagged from one end to the other, etched into the green and gold of the late summer grasses. The horses, their heads down, were barely moving as they grazed alongside it. Then, suddenly a wind stirred and something spooked Rain, and he took off galloping toward us, the others following. My breath caught in my throat at the sight, my heart racing.

“Imagine,” Joe said, coming over to stand beside me, “everything you can see from here would be ours, this whole valley and mountain, even across the road.”

I wasn’t listening. It would be a few years before that idea would mean anything to me. At that moment, something else was speaking to me. Something more intangible, deeper, a faint memory, a longing, for what I wasn’t sure.

I shook it off. “Okay, we should think about getting back to Denver before dark,” I said, heading down the hill.

Back at the ranch house, I turned to John. “How are the winters here?”

He laughed. “They don’t call them the Wet Mountains for nothing.” I looked over, but Joe wasn’t listening. He was fingering a handful of dirt from the weedy flowerbed next to the porch. As we walked to the car, Rain sauntered over to the corral fence. I stopped and stroked the white blaze on his forehead, his deep, earthy smell enveloping me. I felt like wrapping my arms around his neck but held myself back. “What are you going to do with Rain, if Paula isn’t riding him anymore?” I asked Art.

“Guess I’ll just have to sell him.” He chuckled. “Look at that, I think he likes you.”

I moved away from the fence. “Good meeting you both,” I said and headed up to the car.

The afternoon light lay soft on the valley as we drove away. We traveled in silence for a while, lost in our own thoughts. I could have objected. I could have rained on Joe’s parade. I could have harped on the winters and the snow and the isolation, but something kept me quiet.

Not long before I had read a teaching by Pema Chödrön, a well-known American Buddhist nun. A simple instruction in the middle of a page jumped out at me: “Do something different.” When you are faced with something that pisses you off, that scares you, something that pushes some old button, there is always a split second before you launch into your habitual response—blowing up, grabbing a cigarette, running a mile in the other direction. In that moment, you can do something different. Anything. Even something as simple as saying “yes” when your knee-jerk reaction would be to say “no.”

I had tried to follow these instructions and failed too many times to count. But at that moment, I thought, What the hell. Why not go for it? What do we have to lose? Maybe Joe and I could find a way to get real with each other alone in this remote place. Maybe my head and my heart could somehow find a way to meet.

My whole life I had seesawed back and forth between longing for the perfect home and flinging myself into the unknown. This time, as we drove up I-25 back to Denver, I had the strange sensation of both impulses operating at the same time.

“I think we found it,” I said, looking at Joe.

It took him by surprise for a moment, then he nodded. “I don’t think we’ll find anything better. I know I can make it perfect.”

“I want Rain too,” I added.

“I don’t think you need to worry about rain,” Joe answered. I felt a familiar wave of irritation wash over me. Joe felt it too, finely tuned as he was to my disapproval. “What?” he said, confused, as I glared at him. I was about to keep going with, “What the fuck is the matter with you, I am talking about the horse,” when suddenly the words do something different appeared in my mind.

“Yeah, what else would you expect in the Wet Mountains,” I said. “Rain, and lots of it.” I laughed. It was so easy. I could feel Joe relax, and he smiled. Not for the first time, I thought, Why is it so hard for me to be kind to him?

I reached over and lightly rubbed the back of his neck, letting my hand rest there as we cruised down the canyon to Florence. We had just stepped out of our comfort zones into the unknown. It was scary as hell and completely exhilarating.

The days of late summer were breathtaking. Joe’s vegetable garden was overflowing with squash and carrots and peas. The sun was warm during the day, with just a touch of cool in the air. Nights were cold, clear, and star studded. The space and the silence were all-pervasive. I could feel myself settling into a slower rhythm, finding it impossible to keep my usual frantic pace.

My whole life, ever since I could remember, I had been impatient. I got antsy slathering my body with lotion after a shower. Impatience was in my blood, a legacy from my mother and my grandmother. I decided this new, slowed-down world was a perfect place for me to practice patience. It was one of the six virtues Joe and I had recited as our wedding vow. With our new commitment to doing things differently it seemed like a good time to dust it off and give patience a try.

One afternoon on my way home from Florence, I pulled over by a stand selling Palisade peaches and, on a whim, bought a full box. That’s a lot of peaches. I decided as my first exercise in patience to peel them and can them. As a hippie, I had canned things; that’s what you did in the sixties. It couldn’t be that hard.

I set the box down on the porch and, surrounded by buckets, I picked up my paring knife and started peeling. The peaches were a deep gold with splatters of rose in their hearts. For two hours, I peeled, peach juice dripping through my fingers, peach juice everywhere, my fingers aching. For two hours, I found myself on a battleground. On one side, my mind harped on about what a useless waste of time this all was; I could go to Safeway and get peaches for $1.25 a can. Then, the mind chatter would lift, and I would encounter a moment of pure joy—warm sun, blue sky, soft breeze, hummingbirds hovering. In the end, I abandoned the canning, made a peach pie, and froze the rest, but a start had been made and at least I had something to show for it.

My next project was staining the two pine rocking chairs we had found in the dim recesses of the unfinished furniture store in Canon City. Driving home with them, I had had a vision of sitting with Joe, rocking together side by side into our dotage. The next day, I set the chairs up on the porch and began staining and sealing them. It took a while for me to settle down, to not jump up and get a glass of water or smoke a cigarette, but gradually, as I moved the paintbrush back and forth slowly darkening the unfinished wood into a deep copper, I began to feel an unfamiliar sense of ease settle into my body. The sun was just dropping behind the mountain by the time I finished. “Look at what I just did,” I called out to Joe as he made his way out to the hot tub in his dressing gown, carrying a bottle of beer.

He glanced over. “Nice,” he said, which was not as much appreciation as I was looking for, but I let it go.

It was my first hint that there might be an element of one-upping Joe or at least showing off in my patience project. That became clearer when I decided to tackle a project he had been putting off for days: stacking rocks in the creek to divert water into the pond.

The week before, our neighbor from up the valley, Eustace, had arrived unannounced with fifty trout to dump into our pond. I guess it was a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. He parked his big truck on the lawn, lumbered up the porch steps, and banged on the door. He was a large man; the buttons of his black shirt were popping open, his face beet red from the exertion of climbing the four steps to the porch. His accent was heavy Eastern European. He introduced himself, then pointed at the truck and said, “That’s my wife.” The woman in the truck didn’t look over. All I could see of her was a bouffant, peroxide-blonde head of hair. After his opening pleasantries, he said, “These are for your pond. They’ll need fresh water,” and nodded toward a large tank in the back of the truck. I could see fish tails flapping. “I need your husband,” he added, and then he got in the truck, revved his motor, and drove across the lawn to the pond with Joe hurrying behind him on foot.

For days, Joe had put off dealing with getting fresh water into the pond for the fish and I was beginning to get worried we were soon going to find them belly up on its surface.

It didn’t take long for me to regret my impulse to show Joe how diligent I could be. I bitched and moaned under my breath as I stacked rocks and dug into the black sludge and watched impatiently as the water pushed against the new wall, searching for a way through. Grumpily heaving rocks into the water, I told myself, Just think of it as weight training.

Gradually the rock wall in the creek grew. After a while, the chatter in my head began to fade, and I became transfixed by one large rock lodged under the flowing water. “This is just the one I am looking for,” I said to the dogs who were hovering nearby, waiting for a stick to be thrown. Reaching into the icy water, I picked up the rock and placed it on top of the wall. Sweating and dirty, my sneakers soaked, I fell into a rhythm of picking up rocks and stacking them one by one. The wall grew larger and larger. The trickle of water kept searching for a way through until all of a sudden a full flow of burbling creek branched off and poured into the pond. I whooped and hollered and threw myself down on the bank, exhausted and laughing. The dogs joined the party and brought me sticks to throw into the pond over and over.

I lay there for a long while warmed by the sun, intoxicated by the pungent smell of peppermint growing along the creek. I had definitely done something different, I had slowed way down and it felt ridiculously good.

The next morning, I shared my struggles developing patience with Joe at what I had started calling our daily briefing. I began with the peaches and then the rocking chairs and then the grand finale at the pond. I could tell he was trying to be interested, but it wasn’t convincing. Maybe the minutiae of someone else’s torturous path of mind training was more than anyone should be asked to endure, but if I couldn’t share those moments with Joe, what could I share? That morning, Joe had nothing he wanted to talk about. The past few days, he had mostly complained—about the slowness of the internet, about his endless battle with the thistles in the meadow, about Rain having stuck his head in the window of his office and pushed a large box of nails off the ledge, scattering them all over the floor. It was hard for me not to laugh at that story, but I could tell Joe was struggling to find humor in anything. Something was eating at him, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was. I was trying not to get impatient with him, but it wasn’t easy.

I also needed to be patient with myself as I struggled to overcome my fear of riding alone at the ranch. Just thinking about riding Rain out into the wide-open space of the valley would set off an intense fear that grabbed me in the chest and migrated down to my belly, my teeth clamping shut. I found that chewing gum helped some, but soon I discovered the magic formula for calming my nerves was singing—one song in particular.

Each day, I would bring Rain out of the corral, saddle and bridle him, get up on him, take a deep breath, and pop a piece of gum in my mouth. Then, as we took off, I would launch into “All of me, why not take all of me, can’t you see that I’m no good without you,” and gradually, I would start to settle into the saddle. It worked every time. Each day, we ventured a little farther on our expeditions. Then, late one morning, I decided to tackle riding across the creek. I was feeling confident. It was only a foot deep. I had watched Rain amble across it every day. What could go wrong? We headed toward the creek at a fast walk, got to the edge, and Rain stopped. He wouldn’t budge. I backed him up and started again. Same thing. “Never give up,” I heard Janice’s voice in my head. “If you ask something of a horse, you can’t do anything else until they do it.” Again, I circled Rain around, we headed toward the creek again just fine, and then, at the edge of the water, he came to a halt. We sat for a while contemplating the valley on the other side. I tried again and then again. An hour went by. I started to panic. Were we going to be there until night?

After one more attempt, I began to sing, my voice a whisper, “All of me, why not take all of me . . . ,” I felt myself start to relax. As I sang, I could feel Rain’s neck begin to soften. “Can’t  you see that I’m no good without you.” I kept on singing, and then I nudged him with my legs and he took a step forward, and then, smooth as silk, he stepped into the creek.

The sun sparkled on the water as we splashed across and climbed up the other bank. I gave Rain another nudge and he took off at a trot, gathering speed as we neared the hill. My mind was no longer in charge, criticizing me or trying to get me to do something different. I was just there, riding my horse across a wide mountain valley on a cool afternoon in autumn. Tired and happy, my body knew exactly what to do.

I was plumping up the pillows in the guest room when I heard a car pulling up. Berna was arriving. I went out to the porch to greet her. It had been a year since we first met. She was a stranger then, and now she felt like a sister.

As she climbed out of the car, I was struck by how small she was, even smaller than I remembered. There was a gaunt quality I didn’t remember either. “You look great,” were the first words out of her mouth, preempting any comment I might make. I had become leaner, and my hair was longer and grayer. I wore it in a ponytail with thick bangs, and more wrinkles had appeared around my mouth.

“It’s so great to see you here,” I said as I picked up her small bag and led us into the kitchen.

“I always feel a little teary when I see the old cookstove,” she said as I settled her down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. “Have you read the story in my mother’s book of how I lost my eye?” she asked. I shook my head. “A live round somehow ended up in the ash bucket, and it went off as I was picking it up to empty it,” she said matter-of-factly. “It was after my father died. I must have been eight or so.”

“So, that’s a real glass eye?” I asked, and she nodded, coughing slightly and taking a sip of tea.

I loved Berna’s ability to face whatever she encountered without feeling sorry for herself. I was learning a lot from her. There was so much I could ask her, but I could tell she was tired, so I ushered her into the guest room to rest.

I had made dinner, a simple stew, while Berna rested. “Oh my, this looks delicious,” she said as she laid her napkin on her lap and surveyed the meal. I opened a bottle of red wine and poured us each a glass.

“Next summer, we’ll wash it down with dandelion wine,” I joked. We talked late into the evening, sitting at the table, flickering candlelight reflected in the dark window. As time went on, our conversation got deeper and darker. “You know, there is a phrase in a chant I do every morning that sums up impermanence in a pretty stark, powerful way,” I said.

“Can you recite it?” Berna asked.

“It goes: Death is real/ it comes without warning/ this body will be a corpse.” I took a sip of wine. I felt a little shaky, holding off an unknown sorrow. Berna was nodding, her mind far away.

“My sister Laverna was so young, she didn’t understand why Father wasn’t at the table with us that first night we got back from the funeral,” she said. “For Mother, her husband’s death was all too real. She worked herself to the bone, determined to stay here.”

I could feel there was something she was holding inside. There was more to the story than the courageous woman alone with her two daughters battling the elements to make a life on the frontier. I had read in Angelica’s book about times when she would get stuck in blizzards in her Model T, and the girls would have to be taken care of by neighbors.

“I remember one story in Angelica’s book about you and Laverna being stuck for days at a neighbor’s—the Braggs, I think—and you got scared when Charlie had to pull out his rotting tooth with a pair of pliers.”

I felt something shift and her face take on a haunted quality. “It was a long time at the Braggs. The tooth pulling wasn’t the scariest thing that happened in that time.”

I wanted to hear more, but I could tell that she didn’t want to travel any further down that road. It was time to lighten things up. “Did I write you about the family of skunks that moved in under the hot tub?” I began.

“No. Tell me,” Berna said, happy to change the subject.

“I had no idea what to do, so my neighbor, Otis, came over, and he said just to let Bronco move in with them.”

“Really? Did it work?” Berna asked.

I nodded. “Yep. I let Bronco loose and the skunks were gone the next day. Of course, it took three baths in industrial-size cans of tomatoes to get the stink off Bronco.” We were both laughing by then.

A moment later, Berna’s laughter turned into a coughing fit. I got her a glass of water. I could tell she was tired.

“Time for bed,” I said and started to clear the table.

“Let me help,” Berna said.

“No, no, no,” I stopped her. “You’ve had a long day.” She didn’t resist, which was not like her.

The next day we wandered slowly around the land, talking about our writing. “We could put our essays together in a book,” I said. “And you could design it, create the binding and everything.” I had seen some of the books Berna created, hand bound with exquisite covers of wildflowers and old photographs.

“I’d love that,” she said.

The last evening, we talked about our present-day lives. About our marriages and children. No matter what topic we landed on, there was a feeling of what Trungpa Rinpoche had called “a genuine heart of sadness” woven through them. Every story had a tinge of loss to it—the loss of my marriage, the loss of her father, the ranch. We were both touching places in our hearts that were raw and vulnerable.

“Now I feel like I am losing my children. They have their own lives I am not part of anymore,” I said.

Berna was silent for a moment, and when I looked over, she was crying. “I am losing my son too.” She looked up at me. “Not like that, but to drug addiction. I keep hoping he’ll come back. But I don’t think that’s likely.” Her hands were cradled in her lap. I wanted to reach out, but she was looking down, not yet ready for comfort. “I finally really understand how sadness can take over your life,” she said, looking up at me again. I held her gaze and she continued, “And it helps to reach out. It helps with the pain.” She unclasped her hands, and we reached out at the same time and sat together holding hands, not speaking.

The next afternoon, as she was getting ready to leave, I finally got up the guts to ask about the cough that had been plaguing her the whole time she was there. She had all the kindness and good cheer she had had the last time she visited, but her stamina was nowhere near what it had been. Berna was a marathon runner in her sixties with the stamina of a thirty-year-old. She seemed uncharacteristically tired. “I’ve had it for a while now,” she said when I asked. “I’ve never been a smoker, so it seems unlikely that it’s anything like that.” She was avoiding the C-word.

“Maybe just an old case of pneumonia or something you didn’t get over,” I said, and she nodded.

“They’ll do some tests when I get back. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my visit.” There was a lot that was unspoken in that last sentence. I stopped the questioning and gave her a big hug. She was quivering slightly, like a sparrow that had fallen out of its nest.

“I am so happy nothing got in the way. I have loved every minute of you being here,” I said. We stood back and looked in each other’s eyes.

“Until we meet again,” she said.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I said, and she smiled broadly.

“Unlikely,” she said, and climbed in the car before both of us started crying. At the last minute, she rolled down her window and said, “I’m writing about that time at the Braggs. I’ve been working on it for a while. I’ll send it to you.”

I had held off smoking for the three days of Berna’s visit. As I watched her drive away, all I could think of was how much I wanted a cigarette. I grabbed my wallet and took off for Westcliffe.

I bought a pack at the Conoco, filled up with gas, and turned back toward home. I lit up and cracked the window open. The sun was low in the sky, its rays stretching across the Wet Valley. Magic hour.

Swooping down the hill to the turnoff to Highway 165, I was listening to Martina McBride on the radio singing a song about broken wings when I came up behind a school bus downshifting on the steep grade. I slowed down. The back window of the bus was crammed with sports bags piled up around an orange water cooler; the seats were filled with boys with baseball hats turned backward. Out of the blue, the thought came to me that it was the Custer County Bobcats headed to Rye for a Friday evening game, and without warning, I burst into tears. It was fall, high school football season, and I knew I would never again see my son play in a high school football game. In the next moment, I had the thought that Berna’s son might die at any moment with a needle in his arm.

Life, as the Buddha discovered 2,500 years ago, is suffering, and the reason is simple: there is nothing in this life that we can hang on to forever. No security, no happy ending, no fantasy. I was beginning to see that the best way to navigate this life of constant change is not by trying to steer the ship where you want it to go, but by trusting your genuine heart of sadness to guide you through the stormy waves. It was a tall order, but I knew I had to try.

Martina was still singing, “And with a broken wing, she still sings. She keeps an eye on the sky.” I joined in, and together we sang our hearts out traveling slowly behind the school bus down the road. “With a broken wing, she carries her dreams and you ought to see her fly.”