The creak of gates, a day playing itself out
in brilliant billows of bright orange on blue

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

It's the end of the day at the end of the week in winter, a quiet day on the soft, dun-colored earth of this place.
I've paced myself today and balanced the expenditure of energy for chores with leaving enough daylight for a walk along a slope that has always looked promising for an arrowhead hunt. I've only ever been there on the business of moving cattle through a gate and hadn't taken the time to enjoy that part of the pasture.
In the random thoughts I had as I began the walk, I heard the inner dialogue say, "And I found it in the hoof print of a cow." Less that 15 minutes later I lifted a beautiful gray point out of the dry relief of a hoof print that framed it, a heavy print made when it was last muddy.
Chico the heeler and I are accompanied, surrounded, by the herd that lives for the moment in that pasture. The smell of their luxuriant hides and their chlorophyll-tinged breath permeate the thick, cool air of the afternoon. I notice, despite the ever-pressing subtext of my thoughts filled with ideas for how to keep my newspaper business afloat, a break in that contemplation. On this afternoon my thoughts are clear and present, and have nothing to do with that grinding perplexity or any of the other mouse mazes I've a penchant for choosing as the substance of my life.
I feel the arrowhead in my pocket, my fingertips registering the intricacy of its sharp, fluted edge. I can't see the truck anymore, but Chico knows where it is, and when I tell him to get in the back, I simply follow him out of the brush.
I love this old dog, witness to every folly and every foible for the last seven years of my life. The things Chico knows. I once thought I heard him say to me, "Get a grip, whiner!"
The afternoon has left us and the day begins to set in earnest as we make the rounds through a couple of pastures, raising a little red dust in the low, sandy places. What is it about the creak of a gate on the utter quiet of the ranchlands at sunset? How can something that simple register with such resonance?
In a pasture in which I think we are not running any cattle, I come across the errant bovine named North by Northwest, so named for the curious design of the curvature of her horns. Up to her hips in grass, she shows little interest in our movement along the senderos.
I check the tanks and the float valves in water troughs on the way to the next gate.
In the near-darkness I notice that my radio has been on, and I raise the volume to the folk music channel on satellite radio and hear Tom Paxton talking about Pete Seeger.
Paxton sings:

And now I know
You can't wade in the same river twice.
The current flows around you,
Then it's gone.
Leaves you no choice
But moving on.
That river's gone.

And so I do move on, and in more ways than one. I check the fences, especially the boundary fences, and then take a turn west into the end of the day playing itself out in brilliant tinged billows of clouds and streaks of bright orange on blue. And as if it wasn't enough to behold that dappled sunset spectacle of fire and light, I see it mirrored on the smooth surface of the pond near my house, and standing near it, I am myself filled with light and color.