Goat Girl

While my two city kids took some time to adjust to life in the country, this one here, the youngest, is a country kid through and through. She stalks toads and chickens, squealing with delight if she gets close enough to touch them. She sees a trail into the woods, and she follows it. No matter her sandal fell off and she has one bare foot. No matter no one is accompanying her. A glance over her shoulder and she's off. A steep hill? No problem, she walks up and down the grade with the ease of a mountain goat. Sometimes we just refer to her as goat girl, after all, she learned to walk on the side of a hill. She has surely eaten ten times as many raspberries as the rest of us this summer, disappearing into the thick of the tangled, prickly bushes and emerging with her mouth full of berries and juice trickling down her chin, oblivious to the scratches on her arms and legs. She digs in the mud with a solemn professionalism, serious business that it is, and gathers bits and pieces of flower and earth to mix into her muddy soup.  She settles into contentedness as soon as she steps outside.

Maybe she is so comfortable here because this is all she has known, or maybe it is simply who she is, and she is one of the lucky ones who gets to grow up in a place that speaks to her soul. 

Whatever it is, our goat girl is home.