ben and i got to take some evening drives late this summer. i don't know if there is much that i love more than to hop into the truck with ben, roll the windows all the way down, and let the breeze blow through the cab as he points the truck away from town, out into the wide, wide open, out where the air smells of dry dirt and pungent sage and piney juniper, out where i can see and see and see.
he drives along. we sometimes talk. we sometimes listen. sometimes i leave the console flipped down and we use the cup holders for coffee cups or iced tea. sometimes i flip the console up and slide over, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, and lean into my man. if we are on a way back road and there is no other traffic, if we are moving along nice and slow, i might look up at him and catch his eye, he might lean over and steal (or is give the right word?) a kiss.
one night when we were out, there were flowers that caught my eye. ben pulled over and handed me his phone, with an app he had just downloaded called picture this, and told me to try it out. i did. the flowers that had caught my eye are adonis blazingstar - i love that i know their name.
another evening we saw antelope - bucks and does and young. we saw two mule deer does with spotted twins right up by the road who went bounding away as the truck came close - leaping clover and fences and then turning to look as we moved on by. we saw owls and owls and owls. swooping and diving and rising into the night sky.
then there was the evening he took me to what felt like the very top of eastern montana. we drove north in direction and up in elevation until i felt as though i should certainly be able to touch the sky. and the mule deer's antlers seemed to be tangled up in the colors of the sunset.
on those drives, we watched the moon coming up and the sun going down and the sky dancing with a riot of colors and clouds.
and we returned home, expanded and filled up and over-brimming with beauty.