They were deep in thistle. The child watched her mother. Mid-September, sun and clouds. If 

the mother raised a slender finger, the child felt the air stir. If she narrowed her eyes, or 

exhaled, if she glanced toward the ridge at the horizon to scan for deer, or the crease between 

mountains for elk, if the mother’s mind turned to the past or the future, the child understood. 

Such is the nature of love, or of survival. The thistle blossomed purple. Nearby, a red squirrel 

leaped. The child anticipated her mother as a mother divines an infant’s cry, completely. She 

knew when to soften or to relocate her body. They spent some beautiful time together. They 

painted, swam in creeks. The mother taught the child the names of flowers and how to 

decipher a field of grasshoppers from a rattlesnake. Once, they came upon a dismembered 

wing. Before she ran after her mother, the child sat for a bit, admiring; whatever had severed 

the bird had left the tendon quite clean.