She had thought about dying. But when she looked at the mountain valley she had lived and labored in for more than twenty years, when she looked at the earth and plants that she had kept green with her own sweat, those thoughts dissipated instantly. She was reluctant to leave this world; she loved the sun, loved the earth, loved work, loved the clear and bright Great Horse River, loved the grasses and wildflowers that grew on the riverbank . . . She couldn’t die! She should live! She wanted to work the land. There was something in the earth that could be found nowhere else.
