"Are there only two of you dining tonight?" YES!!!

Bozeman has been a dating desert for Chris and I, but tonight there was a little oasis: the girls stayed home with our neighbor, Hannah, while Chris & I headed down to Main street. The oddly-balmy wind, (I thought it would be snowing by now, not 78 degrees,) and the golden early evening light made our patio dinner a super treat, and the uninterrupted conversation felt sublime. I barely remember what we talked about, but I know that we followed a train of thought for as long as we liked, and that the serene stream of uninterrupted conversation was far more delicious than the meal.


Friday's equinox marked the end of summer, and of our first season here. Since we arrived on the Summer solstice, our adventure is timestamped by the seasons, which makes tracking it very easy. What makes keeping track of our time here hard is that I can't believe it's only been three months. Feels so much longer. Over the past week, I've been tormented by a street name in San Francisco that I've been trying to recall but can't, which is totally freaking me out. It's crazy how quickly the brain acclimates to focusing on the task at hand. I'm looking forward to my upcoming trip to SF to reacquaint myself with, well, my entire life.

Meanwhile, we're relishing a true change of seasons out here. Thanks to the two email listservs that I just joined - 'Bozeman eco-orgs' and 'Women of the dirt,' we're tapping into all sorts of interesting events: cold-weather composting classes, hikes to track pronhorn antelope, and a rock-climbing movie festival. I even found the holy grail of California fermenting aficionados: a kombucha mother!
Amazing.

To celebrate the equinox itself, I drank a lot of coffee, got my exhausted 'I just pulled my daughter out of another elementary school' self together, and joined Susan for a hike up Big Timber creek. My misreading of the hiking guidebook led me to believe that it was a 4.5 mile hike, which seemed doable, rather than 4.5 miles each way, which I would have never signed up for. 


I'm so grateful that I read the entry wrong - the hike was amazing, and gentle. It soothed and restored, rather than demanded and exhausted. I hope some of its beauty comes through in these photos.

 

 

 The drive home was a bonus: