By Jacqueline Kolosov

Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer—

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

End of Week Twenty-Four by Pregnancy’s Calendar

In these final, amber-lit days of October, the New Mexico aspen and cottonwood trees still hold their yellow-gold leaves. Climbing higher into Santa Fe’s foothills, I roll down the windows to breathe in the gin smell of juniper and scents far less easy to identify in this dry, high altitude air. The last time I was here, five months ago, feathery yellow poppies and purple lupine flanked the steep gravel road leading up to the tiny house at the top. Now it’s all fiddle-shaped scorpion weed and brown-edged yucca and cacti, though I notice some wild gourds growing along the roadside, and red-cheeked flickers with speckled breasts, a male and a female, flitting in and out of the scrub pine.