We secured a nice place up north, the top floor of a house with a bright, huge kitchen, painted in perfect pale under-side-of-frond Swordfern green. Huge back deck/patio. Bedroom window facing East.

Still three weeks left. Taking a break from the mountains, got a little buggy on our last trip. Smokey too. Lightening cracking around us, bugs humming, the meadows waist high in purples, reds, white. Fires lit, smoke blowing, us hiking back towards the highway. My skin smoothed to its usual summer brown.

The city, here we are staying, with Grannies and parents, friends. The city smothers me - I won't live here ever again, in my hometown.