Southwestern Montana is an area of extremes, winters so cold you stop noting the negative on temperatures and high desert summers that scald and desiccate. It is humbling to witness wildlife and plant life that can survive both -40 and high 90s. But if you are willing to embrace these extremes it is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

A year ago today I brought home the little feral cat who had been rescued, in hopes that we might rescue each other. I met Theo, the tippy polydactyl, while I was hiding from Christmas by volunteering at a horse rescue, Little Brook Farm. in upstate New York. Volunteering on the farm among good people and horses in who needed us took my mind off of my first Christmas without Mia or my Mom.

Late August Indian summer teased, the ocean was especially warm, crystal clear and the tide particularly low. I don’t think it was a moon tide, but the water was out far, exposing the flats of the sands rarely shown, the ripples and the ridges alive in the light like a creature. Life by the ocean is defined by moon and her tides. All things are interconnected living on the edge, and we accept that we too are a part of this ebb and flow, as humans have been since the beginning of time.

I have spent the last weeks in shock, dumbfounded by intensity of the sadness and pain of loss I feel with Mia’s passing.  I thought I had prepared for this, having spent so many years with her in ER’s and hospitals, she had been to more types of specialists and doctors in her short 6 years and 5 months with me than I have seen in 37 years.  I used to expect her to pass on the regular, placing my hand on her curly blond torso for the rise and fall. This was so familiar, from nights with pneumonia and chronic bronchitis, surgeries and unnamed scares, that when the breath went out of her the final time in the hospital I found myself utterly unable to fathom that her tiny body was truly still. 

When a road appears passable on google maps only half of the day, and is "subject to extreme tidal conditions," meaning underwater, you have to drop everything and head to this road! 

So Mia and I headed straight for the road to Minister’s Island, in Saint Andrews by the Sea, New Brunswick. 

When we crossed from Lubec, Maine onto Campobello Island, New Brunswick we discovered that it was Canadian Thanksgiving Day, although I had not realized when I decided to head to the island and Canada for the day.  There was something so apt about this, and it is beautiful the way life speaks up when you let go and listen.

On a Sunday afternoon last October, I packed up my rescue pup and about month of camping gear in the trusty Volvo and headed to Northeastern Maine, or in local terms, as far Downeast as one can go. So far in fact that we lost all phone signal and this was the goal. The road, my pup, nature, time, and freedom to just be.