[typography font=”Shadows Into Light Two” size=”20″ size_format=”px” color=”#8db09e”]{First posted a number of Octobers ago, this piece expresses my wonder and gratitude for the simple things Garth does that make me feel safe and content. It feels appropriate this week, with a nip in the air and a cozy fire in the woodstove.}[/typography]

Eyes tight, I press the snooze button, then nestle my toes behind yours—where the warmth is.

I’m trying to reenter my dream, but the sprinkler keeps rapping out its morning pulse below the bedroom window.

Yesterday you were out there in your chunky plaid flannel, hunched over the tractor’s steering wheel, oh so focused, mowing a pattern like green crop circles around each Aspen. I imagine that same grass must be all silver-plated now, each blade frozen and glistening, and soon you’ll say it’s time to stop watering until spring comes around.

I relax, knowing you’ll make those decisions as winter sneaks closer while my toes follow yours like lost puppies.

Already, you’ve sealed the vents and stacked the wood and replaced the filters, and last night you lit our first October fire.

Now I coax my toes away from their nest and bury them instead in the fleece of too-big-for-me slippers—your slippers. You pretend to complain but I just laugh and schlep down the hall to the kitchen.

And while I grind the coffee and sing the wrong words to an old Elton John song and wake the child, you kneel on the hearthstone, wedge a chunk of juniper inside the woodstove, then wait for the fire to catch.