on a startlingly familiar timeline / unplanned but predicted / delayed and inevitable / unsurprising until its unbidden early arrival: another departure approaches. reluctance abounds and I want to say it’s the hero’s journey but to save myself now feels out of step: a better plan had been. precise, promising, beautiful. amidst the seep and stretch of an alone that isn’t lonely so much as marooned. a culture strange (/estranged?), not new. purpose shared and celebrated. the earth welcoming and kind. a pair of mini donkeys, pen full of piglets, playgrounds for goats, Great Pyrenees at work, freshly shorn scrawny lambs. the deer who routinely now fold us into their herd, unannounced, calmly curious. daily healing of high school hearts. inadvertent monk-hood, unsolicited calm. years of contemplation, years of alone. years of growing a best friendship worth its name suffering brutally beautifully now. and how. another departure approaches: an unbidden early arrival / inevitable and immediate / predicted but unplanned / on a startlingly familiar timeline.