About Me in July

I live on an island surrounded by mountains. The open is huge, the edges are sharp. In July the wind blows at night over the mown fields and talks to me with no words. An old lady in town talks to the mountain lion on her front porch. She says he’s there to keep the deer away from her petunias. The people here are fearless, independent, quick to the touch, no likes or shares. The women carry a knife. The island is 70 miles long and 15 miles wide. In the middle are three dry lake playas where we ice skate in the winter and race our horses in the summer. On summer nights we lay on the playa and tell stories to the stars. Someone told me my island is in the 1800s. I think that means either it has not kept up or it has been passed by. We have our own laws. If something happens that people don’t like, say a man is accused of a crime, people run him out of town. I do everything I can to stop that kind of behavior. Some of us have Internet service, which makes it possible to live here. Some of us don’t own a computer or want a connection of any kind. A leather-bound red journal will suffice. There are things we don't have here, lots of them. Sometimes I get island fever. It takes three hours to travel to a town where there are misters in ceilings and empty swimming pools. Where waiters sell drink mistakes for half price and no one touches the door handle because they’re afraid of germs. I go there to remember what the other world is like. Then after I’ve seen the complications and eaten some good chocolate I like the inward, windward, journey home.