By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

On the last muggy night before the last cold snap makes its way south, I unload feed sacks from the back of the truck into the bodega where we store los alimientos.

With the chicken houses shut for the night, I've let Chico out of his run and at first he spins about and checks things out, but then returns to the truck to watch me unload. I find immense comfort in his company this evening, for he and I have a six-year history on this ranch. Chico's heard it all, witness to my every foible, to my every rise to glory (like there ever was one), to my every fall from grace.

En una descuidada, my glasses fall from my face and end up under the truck. Tough luck, no? I need my glasses to find my glasses. I keep moving feed sacks in the vague world that is my vision without glasses. When I am finished I do find them in the sand behind the right rear wheel of the truck.

I prepare the horses' feed buckets for tomorrow and re-fill the chicken feeders, all my thoughts lost in the comforting sound of the simple exercise of pouring grain in and out of containers.

Chico waits in the pickup bed while I return to the chicken houses to pick up the day's eggs. The light from the bodega isn't much help, so I rely on the lambent light of the full moon to maneuver through low doorways, high thresholds, and a low beam that is permanently recorded on the bone of my skull. I know the nests the hens most favor, and in near darkness, and with faith that I will find what I seek and not a chicken snake, I reach into the nests and begin to fill my hands and my pockets with eggs. Soap is our friend on this ranch.

The geese, the gatekeepers of this barnyard populace, make an aggressive swipe at me from the spot at which I have cornered them so that I can gather eggs without being pinched. They've worked up the ducks, too, and so with a great amount of quacking and hissing I leave the big girls' house to gather eggs from the young chickens. I'm terribly conscious of how many eggs fill my pockets and so I am careful to move through the abbreviated doorways without an unexpected scramble.

The eggs fill a two-pound coffee can, and once more I face the dilemma of not having enough egg cartons.

Chico and I walk about a bit more. I contemplate the oddity of the weather and the spring. Many of the mesquite trees have not finished losing last year's yellowed foliage. Others have budded with bits of new leaves. The wind has picked up as predicted by forecasters, its first gusts carrying in from the ranchlands the magical, nearly intoxicating fragrances of blooming huisache and chaparro prieto.

Even in that grand redolence that marks the change of seasons, I am very aware of how dry soil conditions are out here, how very much we need rainfall. And that is the prayerful petition I send on the nightwind to Holy Mother Earth and Holy Father Sky.

These are my thoughts as Chico lets himself back into his run, and I call it a day and scuff through the soft sand to my house. At the little gate to my yard I take in the landscape bathed in moonlight so bright and illuminating that only the brightest stars are visible.