Marco’s cabin has a different kind of silence during the day.
It isn’t empty or lonely. It’s a living silence, filled with sounds only those who slow down learn to hear: the soft creak of wood when the wind passes through, the distant song of a bird that insists on landing in the same place, and, farther away, the rhythmic sound of hooves as the horses are guided in the corral.
Marco has been out there since early morning.
I know that because I saw him through the window, wearing his boots and hat, speaking softly to Tornado while brushing the horse’s dark coat, as if he were sharing secrets. There’s something profoundly beautiful about watching him like that—whole in the place that shaped him, belonging to every inch of that land. Maybe that’s why, even with everything we’re facing, my
