Making my peace with the desert – and a mule

Unloading the groceries last night beneath the luminescent spiral of the Milky Way, its horizon-wide arc fading into sky glow – suburbs, casinos, 3,000-room hotels – I heard Red kicking his trough, begging.

I’ve come to know that sound, that rhythm, a slow, steady cadence in the high-desert darkness, every time my headlights I’ve come to know it, to cherish it. I know now that a retired Grand Canyon mule, though lanky and rickety and three decades old, thinks he’s in charge of this place.