Back To Superstition

The sweltering summer sun scorched Florence's dry, already-cracked skin as the mercury in the thermometer outside the old bunkhouse rose steadily toward the 110-degree mark. A breeze kicked up dust devils in the wasteland between the outbuildings and the house but it did nothing to cool her brow as it brushed the bangs gently from her forehead, like a lover longing for a better look into his beloved's eyes. She absently wiped the back of her hand over her right eye and squinted against the unbridled sunlight, straining to see into the shadows playing on the bunkhouse porch. "Ghosts live here," she mused to herself, momentarily hypnotized. With alarming speed and clarity, memories flooded back to her in sights and smells of her childhood. The scent of hay and horse manure, the dry dust of the Arizona desert, the dehydrated feel of the sun on her young skin, and wood, the smell of wood was everywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment and could almost smell bacon cooking, wafting up from the big stone fire-pit up by the house. It was here, in Florence, Arizona, that she began to find herself - where she discovered she felt a certain strange peace in places that others might find spooky. Where the Superstition Mountains to the north had become so much more than simple superstition to her. It was here she learned that the smell of raw wood was quite possibly the most intoxicating scent she would ever know. It was here her obsession for horses had been born. This place had conceived her, formed her. This place was her.

"Can I help you?" The voice came from her left, startling her back to the present with an almost painful abruptness that elicited a small cry and a feeling of overwhelming longing, both of which came as an unexpected surprise to her.