I’m writing on an iPad. I’ve scrunched my long fingers together on this barely adequate keyboard because my laptop has been in AppleCare since last Thursday. Thursday morning started like any other day here in the mountains – cup of coffee made in a single serve French press, belly rub for Emma, survey of the […]

It snowed last night. Through the window, I see first the snow as it falls, tracing its diagonal path through the grey sky, then each long needle of the ponderosas encased with crystal where the snow lands, then each branch sagging under the weight of the snow, then the snow piled up on the deck […]

“Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! Woof!” Five barks and a declamatory statement penetrated the early morning. Emma was on the edge of the bed, ears perked, nose pointed at the ceiling, and working hard to be my savior like a normal dog, not like the speck of a Chihuahua she really was. “Shut up,” I mumbled at her from […]

Last week, before my telephone was hooked up at the house, I drove into Boulder to get internet and call my mom on my cellphone. She had asked me to call every evening, to make sure I was still alive. She was dubious about this plan to live alone in the foothills, but supportive; she’s […]

In 1976, Anne LaBastille, an ecologist and free-lance writer, published Woodswoman: Living alone in the Adirondack Wilderness. Sometime around 1984, I pulled it off the shelf at the Waldenbooks in Rosedale shopping mall and took it to my mom to buy for me. As a rule, she never censored anything I wanted to read, and […]

Last May 31, our second tenant moved out of our home in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. We’d been renting it for 6 years, and now we had a decision to make. Do we find a third tenant, or sell? Having tenants was stressful. In the mountains, home maintenance is different than in the […]