In the pasture yesterday, a strong wind blew up the hill, the donkeys linked up away from the wind as they do, and waited for Maria to come to them. In the pasture, these photos remind me of Willa Cather’s novels about the prairies, the farms of the Midwest. They evoke something timeless to me, the animal and the human, on a journey together.

In many ways, animals mark the passages of our lives, people can remember phases of their lives by the animals they lived with. Sometimes I think that is the mission of dogs and cats, to enter our lives when needed and leave when they are done.