Left Behind

For most of the past six years, my cousin Sarah, a geology professor at the University of South Florida, has brought a group of students to Utah for field research. We've become a bit of a base camp for them. Last night we had Sarah, two of her colleagues, and five of her students stay over. One of them left a pillow, which is going to make sleeping on the ground the next couple of weeks a little rough.

I lost a favorite pillow once. Left it in a motel room in Cortez, Colorado. I actually still miss the pillow case, which was a fun Marimekko one, part of a set of sheets my aunt and uncle gave me when I graduated from high school.

It was during the first few years we were married. Roger called from his job at WordPerfect on a Thursday morning and said, "Let's get out of town."

"Sure!"

We had no idea where we were going to end up, but we decided to head south to see Mesa Verde. Then we figured we might as well go to Durango, Colorado, because we were so close. Then Los Alamos seemed close. Then why not Santa Fe? And Albuquerque?

On Sunday, we had a long, long, long drive back home. And I missed my pillow. But it was totally worth it.