Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I am fully in my new home. And every time I walk through the door, I smile and say hello to my new surroundings. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to make this move, and I know without a doubt that I made the right decision in leaving a place that was exactly what I needed when I was facing a bad time in my life. I truly believe each step that I've made over the last three years has been guided by a force way bigger than I am or ever will be. It's a bit uncanny how quickly all of this happened. I started looking for a place in December, thinking my lease would be up at the end of May and it might take three or four months to actually find the house I wanted, get the loan in place, and move. I had already spent some time looking at houses online, knowing approximately what my top end needed to be for me to feel comfortable with a mortgage. I knew the small towns I wanted to check out, too, so I spent a couple of days making a list of houses I wanted to look at. I...

When the shelter-in-place order came, I wondered how long it was going to take for nature to respond to the lessened human activity outdoors. It definitely didn't take long. Earlier today, a friend texted about having deer in her backyard, something she's never seen in the five years of living in her house. Then, when Ado and I were crossing the hill on our afternoon walk, I saw what I thought was a coyote at the bottom of the hill. I hurried home with Ado, grabbed my camera, and went back out to see if I could get some photos. As I edged around the patch of taller prairie grass, I saw the coyote. This poor thing looked absolutely awful. So skinny. Much of its hair gone. It favored one of its back legs, too, keeping the paw from touching the ground. Somehow it had managed to find something to eat, most likely a rabbit it had come across in the prairie grasses. Those eyes! Though I didn't get to use my new lens to capture photos of the Sandhill Cranes, I had the oppo...