Some nights when I walk out along the road from my house, the stars above seem one constellation with the lights of the highway and the towns of the North Valley. They shine together in peace. They answer each other across the distance, and make the darkness whole. The great river of this desert valley carries our life in its flow; it guides and sustains our lives – rose striped trout, grey winged cranes, night-lit homes and night travelers all. We see little in the darkness and yet are held, as if by the Valles Caldera itself. Through the rose tides of dawn and dusk, the night shadows, down the water corridors on great wings, the cranes fly. Their memory of water leads them surely as the shells now cast in stone remember their oceans. One rose alone perfumes the night, in her many-petaled, inevitable blooming – and reminds me of the Earth afloat in the night sky, so fragile, so solitary, ablaze with hope. Such mystical naturalism is my aim, to see beyond seeing, true to the rose and the stars together.