The sun is setting in the canyon now.  Basalt rubble is licked gold in the late light and the green fuzz of spring turns electric in the sweet, dark face of dusk.  We sit on the hood of our truck at the edge of a gravel road and watch as the ewes mutter at the lambs and shuffle hungrily from noxious weed patch to noxious weed patch under the omniscient gazes of five Great Pyrenees.

It is a wonderful, warm night with him by my side.  I feel the desert wind in my hair, gentle for the first time in weeks.  I squint at the sun.

I feel an itchy tickle on my neck and reach up with a suntanned hand to check if it’s a tick.  It’s not.  I lean back again on both of my palms, elbows locked against the small weight of my upper body, and I watch the shepherd on his horse in the distance, working in slow sweeps with the help of his herding dogs, leaving no lamb to fend for itself in this wild, inhospitable country.

All too soon, four hundred sheep have moved across the road and up the face of the mesa towards the sheep wagon for night, to sleep beneath a quilt of stars, lulled into dreams by a jittering mobile of ancient light.  I am not ready for sleep.  I am restless.  I feel the press of time rushing the infinite nature of my soul.  I feel the swing of the planet pulling on my skin and bones.

I need my own shepherd to tell me, “That’s enough for today.  Rest now.  Tomorrow will come and then we shall see what we shall see.“