Due to the design, placement, and location of this pueblo-looking ranch house the sky is a close neighbor. The heavens and all events contained are close by. No special effort is required  to see what is out there. The sunrise is now far enough south to light up the inside of the house as it rises over the hills out to the southeast: a pleasant way to be greeted by a new day. The lowering sun in the southwest throws a warm-red glow into the door and window on the west. During daylight hours the ranch house appears as if it were open to the world, feels very big.

      Since Halloween, the straight sunlight coming through the door found a space between a wooden beam and the adobe block of the interior wall. At sunset the ‘kiva’ room is crossed by a beam of light hitting the top of the wall and continuing on across the kitchen to the east wall, all the way through the house. I am not sure how long this will continue, but I am assured it will return in a few months.

     At night the stars and planets are a million nightlights until the moon rises and floods the earth and sky with silver light, bright enough to cast shadows on the prairie. The night draws close around the ranch house, feeling sort of like a protecting blanket. I have heard the ‘things that go bump in the night’ but so far they haven’t bothered me. Sometimes I will read a few pages from “Night Country’ by Loren Eisely before I venture into the dark, sometimes after I return.

     A few days ago, Louie and I drove over to the market in the Pueblo of Zuni for necessary supplies: water, Pay-wa bread and fried chicken/red chili. On the way home we turned off to the side of a side road and walked up to the pueblo of the Corn-growers. Skirting a particularly rough patch of thistles, we made our way across the slopes where I hadn’t been before. The true size of the village was just becoming apparent, as were the amazing artifacts washed out of the dirt. Near the cap rock of the small mesa, Louie found a newly-dug badger burrow. His digging had exposed the stone wall of the structure, the only place in the entire ancient pueblo where the actual, original wall is visible. Louie was happy, doing one of his favorite things.