It’s not so much the cold. Although we are fleeing with nowhere exactly to go, before the temperatures hit the singles. Five? Three? We’re hitting the road for Not-home. We have no home there anymore, we’re couch surfing/motelling, yurting, apartmenting for a couple or three weeks. We have to leave the snow.

I’m not tired. I’m working. I’m drawing, some teaching. We got the bad news about the barn, Bonny Doon was always the end of my road and I guess I just predicted it a few months early, rather than the couple years I thought. Where we peacefully rode around the property. Walked into the cemex and the burn scar trails. Where Bader did all his foundation in the old roundpen and had his dogwalk set up in the junk pile glen. We are looking for a home for the horses, it is a burden. They are not moving to the snow, that is certain. I think they would die.

We train. That’s the bright spot. Bader will get those full speed hard threadles in extension. I teach, that’s a bright spot. I helped a nice lady with her dog’s jumping yesterday. I draw, those are bright spots. People give me money to draw their dogs. It’s not all dark here. There was sun yesterday and the snow was gloriously soggy and vanishing, but I’ve just now woken up to more snow. More snow, more snow. When dawn breaks I go out with my shovel. Sometimes I listen to buddhist podcasts, a Nepalese monk from the Himalyas tried to explain to me gratitude for snow storms the other day, while I shoveled and tried to find room to push the snow. It’s not so much the removing it from the drive as where to put it? It just adds up. He said without snow there is no sky, we’re so lucky to have a sky.

We’re lucky to have palm trees and butterflies too. They’re not here, in the snow. I am wondering where else there is, where the fires aren’t coming, where there is no snow, where this is a patch of land and a place where I could work, and where we can afford this place, this mythical perfect spot. Bonny Doon’s land price, if we wanted to buy that? Five point five million dollars. A piece of cake for the Malibu tribes, the Beverly Hillers, but for the rest of us? Right now, we are tired, we lie down in the snow, and hope that it melts soon.