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“What is it?”
“Can’t say yet.” My cheeks get red as everyone looks at me. “I’m not ready to say it aloud. It’s too…”
“Important,” New Hampshire offers.
“I like you.”
She smiles, “Awww! I like you, too.”
And just like that, I made a friend.
SIX
Willow
The shuttle bus pulls onto a gravel driveway and Jaxson says, “This is our home to the right," pointing out what looks to be a renovated barn, red and glorious. It wasn't in the pictures for the retreat, as their personal home wouldn't be, I guess. My heart melts as I spot a pasture filled with cows grazing. There's plenty of room for them, grass long and lit by sunlight. The fence is like I've seen in pictures of other ranches, wood forked by more wood. It's low and I wonder instantly if there are wild animals here, but he assuages my city-girl fears by announcing, “Our cows go into their barn at night. It’s there on the left.”
I just crumble as two horses come into view from around the back of that same structure. "Oh look!" I exclaim, admiring them and their graceful gates, one slightly larger than the other, brown where the taller is raven black.
"That's Aragorn and Arwen. He’s the larger of the two. You'll be meeting them soon."
Dax asks our host, “Do the cows have names?"
With a smile in his voice as he steers us along the bumpy gravel, Jaxson answers, “Every one of them. They’re my girls. That’s Sunflower up ahead.”
All nine of us are staring at where we will call home for the next 10 days. It's an antique-yellow, two-story home that I read on the website is a Victorian farmhouse. The backside is facing their home so I cannot see the entrance from where we are. My gaze returns to the horses elegantly strolling among their cow friends. Funny how animals have a way of relaxing me. Watching them simply exist is enough. They remind me that's all I have to do. Simply exist.
I so want to pull my camera out of my bag! But it's packed, and with the other suitcases in metal storage racks above our heads. Finding it too tempting, I stand up, pull mine out and flop it onto the floor, unzip it quickly. I can feel the others watching me but so what? Pulling out my Canon 7D camera body, I fasten the 70-300mm lens onto it, remove its cap and hurry to the back of the shuttle bus where there’s space to squeeze in and take pictures through the large window. “Look at you beauties,” I whisper, pressing the shutter for a few clicks.
“Can I see?” Laura asks, and I take my camera to where she sits. “How’d you get so close to them?”
“I had the lens extended to 300 millimeter.”
Steven argues, “I can do that with my phone. You just zoom in.”
“My phone doesn't have the same feeling. And I'm all about feelings for this trip. Plus, look.” I walk over to show him my favorite of the three images, where Aragorn shook his head, raven-mane caught mid-flight like a bent feather reaching for the Sun. “See?”
“Wow!” Steven’s brown eyes go huge. “That’s a great shot!”
“Thank you!”
“Lucky.”
His comment irks me a little, but I shove pride under insecurity’s blanket. Just a lucky shot, I tell myself, and sit back down, eyes on the screen until Jaxson draws everyone’s attention toward our destination.
“Here we are, folks. Sunflower!”
Honoring its name, sway countless sunflowers in front of the porch, without rhyme or reason to the way they were planted — some tall, others new to the world, zero rows. Just hundreds of flower upon flower of green and yellow, some orange, all spindly and bright.
I love them.
The website didn’t do them justice!
On the porch is a beautiful woman with sandy-brown hair, waving at us, in a yellow blouse over blue jeans and cowboy boots.
“That’s Rachel,” Jaxson tells us, “The love of my life,” standing up and starting for Maggie’s suitcase.
Pete says, “I’ll get that.”
