I sat on a basalt stone in the warm sun and light breeze under a cerulean-blue sky in the New Mexico high desert and talked to Shelly and Ranger; Ranger the dog. Shelly’s from Minnesota, Spring Valley, and now she lives in New Mexico where she’s a campground host at a private campground some miles up the road. Short, dark hair, fifty or so and trim, she’d walked up the same two-mile rocky path as Remi and me to get to the top of a small hill overlooking the snowcapped mountains, a life-fit path if not a CrossFit path.

The years hadn’t been easy, I could see it in the grey wear on her face and the tired in her eyes. She’d lived in Oregon, Alaska, Louisiana and other places she told me and I don’t remember. She asked me, “How familiar are you with the bible?” In both hands she held the book, grocery bag cover held together with yellowed scotch tape, the title neatly lettered on the front in faded-black Sharpie, dozens of tattered scraps of paper sticking out as bookmarks.

I shuffled my feet in the red volcanic dust and thought about the question, about the beauty, history and geology that surrounded us, about the billions of years it took for our planet and our species to be not ready for that question. “Let’s talk about dogs,” I said.

And so we talked about dogs; until we didn’t. Ranger was a rescue dog, he was a year-and-a-half old. He appeared to be some mix of German Shepherd, lab and basset hound (the floppy ears). He wore a tattered grey bandana for a collar. He and Remi were instant playmates.

Shelly’s husband committed suicide thirty years ago that day. He was from New Mexico.