Alone

We got along well, and could talk easy. She was pretty and slim, and wanted to go out dancing. I thought about asking her for a date, but it seems I moved to slow.

Did I lose, or did I gain? Hard to say. But as I sit here, with my back against a boulder, surrounded by bark and lichen-covered rock, logs and trunks of vanilla-smelling pine, I know I have no complaints.

How could a craving for freedom and beauty and the solitude of these hills be anything but a good thing?

That's what it is, with my dogs up here, only the call of the flicker and the music of the stream to be heard.

There will be other women, who also love to dance.