A fast rain toasts in the New Year and the stars twinkle as a small group of us listen to stories and stand around a Bonfire. Deer track tattoos on one woman's wrist, a former Maine boat builder, a teacher, a therapist and healer, a woodworker, a builder living in Gila finding common ground in our discussion by the fire. There is a story tonight about old Harry and Lottie in their eighties living up on the mesa. They are friends. Harry's wife died years ago and Lottie never married. When her sister died she had to handle the cows up on the mesa herself. She and Harry took turns with each other's herd, watching out.

Harry calls up Lottie one night and says he is going to shoot himself. She drives in her old pickup as fast as she can across the top of the mesa to his house. She arrives to find Harry has shot himself in his head and he is dying. She calls for help but he dies in her arms. She is out there on the mesa with him for an hour and half before anyone arrives. Everyone in town is mad at Harry because he deserts his old friend Lottie. They are sad that she will be up there on the mesa alone.

Light plays itself out on the mesas and plains; there is little to interfere with it, like a free spirit. Sometimes it is easier to grasp the community best within its stories, but the place itself is about space, and the distance you need to be known, and to know yourself. Here in this land there are fewer obstacles to stand in the way of you and life. What difficulties that arise are not hidden from view. The bare filigree trees, the simple way the land holds itself, already beaten down by the roads and cattle, the lack of rain, the thrown away vehicles, rusted tin and mesquite, old bones dying. But tonight the rain washes it all afresh on a New Year. Even the birds are happy with new unfrozen seed in the Frisbee feeder.