With a flick of my left wrist, I allow the mountains to continue in being, under the cloud-mottled sky, above the extended heave of land across the water. I move my fingers to conjure up a few sailboats, some fishing boats, and a container ship. With my right hand, I keep the trees and the hillsides going in an intricate dance of leaves and branches, trunks and earth. A glance above me creates a descending jet, and a smaller plane glides by at a perpendicular angle to the first aircraft and at a lower altitude. Yes, this is what I’m talking about. This is all good, even when it’s not.

The light in the space was diffuse across her vision. She sat cross-legged on the floor, reminding herself as always of when she’d been a child at play with her toys. A chunk of sandstone was cool and rough in her hands. She was surrounded by objects she’d collected during her forty years in the desert: a variety of rocks chosen not for rarity but for colors and shapes appealing to her, along with sticks of piñon, cholla, and juniper, metal from abandoned equipment and vehicles, wood from structures that had long ago fallen down and been blown by the winds across the sand.