That View

When I look at this picture, I see the pinks and purples of the summer evening sky, the wildflowers, and the verdant green hills, filled with life.

But the story I will tell about it involves my husband and I, on a seven mile training hike in advance of our big trek in Peru next month. As we walked, I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was looking at me, staring at me. So I turned toward him and smiled, until I realized he wasn't looking at me so much as at the space just above my head.  Not with love in his eyes, but with deep concern. 

"Can I hit your head?" my husband asked. His eyes narrowing in on one of the many deer flies that had been dive bombing us for the entire hike, this one just above me. His arm was already outstretched and hovering above my white cap with the blue rim and 'Trade Winds' written on it. The cap I had grabbed from the hotel gift shop in Vieques when I realized I'd left my sunhat back at the Airbnb which was a good hour walk from where we were. That was just weeks before the world shut down from a pandemic that would go on to ravage our lives, and days before the wild horse would step on my husband and leave him with a battered, bruised, and temporarily unusable ankle leaving me to sort out crutches and transport, and airport wheel chairs.

The buzzing was growing louder and I cupped my hands over my ears. I have a real fear of bugs getting in my ears and staying there. I saw it once in a Twilight Zone or a Wild Kingdom and there were very long tweezers involved which I didn't like one bit. "Not my head," I said, imaging an accidentally too hard smack on the top of my head rendering me unconscious. He looked disappointed as he retracted his arm. "But you can hit my back," I added as a consolation prize. "Just the ones on my back." 

We spent the rest of the walk with him periodically smacking me on the back out of nowhere and proudly declaring "I got one!" with great joy. And then as we were nearly home, we turned the corner and there was this view, just up the hill from our house.

Our freedoms and bodily autonomy are being ripped from us daily, and the world is literally on fire. The deer flies are vicious, and those pretty yellow wild flowers in the foreground of the picture are invasive giant hog weed that will burn your skin if you break it, leaving scars that last a lifetime.

But then, there's this view.