Carl Arrington: “What were the skies like when you were young?”

Rickie Lee Jones: “They went on forever — We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in them … there were lots of stars at night. And when it would rain, it would all turn — it — They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies …”

—

The antelope family watches me from afar as I pull on my shoes for a 2 miler on the soaked path after last night’s deluge.

Mama bird gives me the stink eye as she waits for me to move away from their nest so the babies can have breakfast.

The sky, last night’s thunderstorm a memory, sparkles with a palette of blue shaded with a Rickie Lee Jones memory.

The thermometer reads 65 degrees, a glorious respite from the triple-digit torture of July in Phoenix. A view that looks like it needs to be framed.

The silence.

That perfect, prolonged silence where nothing in the world exists except us.

Mo sits atop the picnic table, drinking her second cup of coffee and gazing into the distance.

“I don’t think I could be any happier,” she says.

Never doubt Mo.