My husband and I don't work real jobs anymore. We live on a ranch three hours from the nearest WalMart. (Unless you count that tiny token "big box" in Pecos, which, no one does—if you need to shop, you'd might as well drive the three hours north to Midland/Odessa or west to El Paso, because even Pecos is ninety minutes away, and when you get there, well, you're in Pecos.)

Out here, there's no fast food in sight (unless you're talking about crossing paths with a swift mule deer).  A DSL line isn't even an option where we live— Alltel assures us we're lucky to have phone service. So Jim and I pass a plodding data card back and forth between our laptops and dream of the day it will give us high speed Internet access right here in the comfort of our remote home.

We define a "neighbor" as any friendly soul we can reach by truck in less than the twenty-five minutes it takes us to get to town. (Actually, we can make it to town quicker than we can drive the unpaved ranch roads to some of our close "neighbors".) Neither of us operate on a fixed schedule. Our time is our own. Sort of.

So one of the first things gainfully employed city friends and relations ask us these days is What (on earth!) do you do with your time?  Or, more diplomatically phrased, What (the hell!) is there to do way out there? 

I accept these as valid questions, as they keep coming from intelligent beings, some of whom care deeply about Jim and me. I suspect the non-locals still regular in our acquaintance secretly anticipate the pain of watching us either lapsing into hermithood, declining into alcoholism, or becoming obese and addicted to TV reality shows. (We do have two TV's, a satellite dish, DVR and a subscription to Netflix. Neither of us watch much television. The parrot, however, is a sucker for PBS preschool programming; Jim knows the words to all the Sesame Street songs and can quote Mr. Rogers as accurately as he quotes the daily stock market averages.)

Several years ago, in preparation for our then-imminent retirement, I bought one of those mystery book/jigsaw puzzles by Nelson DeMille, a favorite author. (My husband and I are avid readers.) I think I'd enjoy keeping a puzzle on the table; Jim has never worked a jigsaw puzzle in his life, and has no plans to start that activity, but Jim has a long history of doing things I think he should enjoy. We also purchased a telescope, because forty years ago, when Jim was in the Air Force, he learned to use a sextant, and when I was a child in Houston, I liked to lie in our driveway and watch satellites arc overhead.

Several years into "retirement" the puzzle is still in the box and the telescope is in storage. The interest is there: We simply don't have time.

So what do we do?

A bunch of us (all five people—including instructor Maggie McCollum—who fit comfortably inside our local yoga studio) had this very conversation before class one morning. It's a question almost impossible to answer. Describing daily life in small town, rural Far West Texas to someone from Lubbock or Dallas or Houston is like trying to translate the nuances of being a fish into the foriegn language of a country without water — the words don't exist. As a fish, the best thing you can do is to take the land-locked swimming. Which frightens them.

Even Mother, who really tries to understand and hopefully isn't concerned that I'll become an alcoholic, asks me what my normal daily routine is. The short answer: It isn't routine. But, it's mine.

Every morning, Jim and I wake to a new world. Living on land without man-made distractions, we're much more finely attuned to the weather, to the phases of the moon, to the exact moment of sunset than when we flew a jet all over the continent. Sometimes, the morning calls us to hike while the air is still crisp and the mountains swimming in fog. Sometimes we wake to deer camped in our yard; one of us will pour coffee while the other hurries outside to scatter a cupful of corn to keep them around a few minutes longer, and we'll drink the whole pot as we identify our favorites— Notch Ear, Limpy, Rocky-Neck, Old George. We point to birds. We vow to look each of them up to identify. (One day.) I paint. I think about painting, then paint some more. Some days, Jim saws wood, or notches ears, or pumps water. Often, I go along for the ride, or just to be with him. We kick up interesting rocks.



Like city-dwellers, we check email, watch GMA, put away the last nights' dishes. We meet friends for lunch, go to dinner at houses an hour away from here. Once a week, I'll put in a load of laundry then head to the studio; I'll paint while it washes, change out a load, paint while the dryer runs, paint until I forget I'm also doing laundry, which means I must continue this routine the next day, too. Or I may bake bread, a luxury I couldn't enjoy when we were flying and always "on call". Some mornings, I hurry into town for yoga while Jim hits Baeza's with a grocery list. Monthly, there's the Wednesday Matinee Good Times Reader's book club; my cherished women's evening circle, session meetings at the church. Commitments I never would've found time for in the city. Every few days, we drive to Alpine to run errands or to deliver a painting to the gallery. We always go to the Drug Store for gossip and breakfast before the Presbyterians gather for Sunday School.
 
Regardless of where we're going, whenever the truck is in motion, we're tourists admiring the view of our own world. We take hundreds of photos, mentally mark locations to return to with my easel and paints. We exclaim over light hitting the mountains in unfamiliar ways, at clouds patterning the ground with shadow. We stop to smell wet pinon, fuschia cholla blossoms, musky javelina. (If we weren't so tired by bedtime each night, we'd learn to use that telescope.)

We live as many moments in awe as we do in activity. And that makes unopened puzzles last a lot longer.