There, in her hospice room, I wrapped Willa in the quilt Mom used to haul me up the tree, all those years ago, nursed her in the rocker as Mom napped in the sunlight warmth. There was no deathbed apology, no dramatic airing of grievances, the same way we never saw the mama moose that day on the trail. There was no confrontation to settle whether I would have used my body to shield her from danger, whether she would have done the same for me. Mom had her flood story, and I had mine, and when I realized that I didn't have to reconcile them I could feel the air move again, let them both go with something close to grace. When I think of Mom now, when the heavy ache of missing her is hard to carry, I choose my images carefully. I picture Mom asleep in her hospice bed, holding Willa like a treasure, the light that was, on that one day, everywhere around her.

Natural Resource Management

LEAH HAD BEEN PROMOTED out of any requirement to drive through the Riverside Open Space construction site every morning—her job now more planning than boots-on-the-ground crew supervision. But her boy, Tyler, three years old, loved coming to Riverside, and she loved sharing it with him—the transition from neglected industrial landscape to half-wild, half-cultivated multi-use public land. It had been Leah's idea, years before, to convert the old quarry to open space, her map of the trail system and the accessible fishing piers, her list of native aquatic plants grown specially for habitat, her deal with the Colorado Division of Wildlife to stock the ponds with perch, with bluegill, with bass, to build launch pads for float tubes. In a few days, Leah would sign off on project completion, and the open space would fill with fishermen, joggers, dog walkers, amateur painters, birders and naturalists checking species off their life lists. Until then, she could arrive before the work crews and present the urban wilderness to her son like it belonged to them, like they alone owned this beauty. She could drink her coffee while the clouds morphed and shifted above her, while the moon faded and her own pride in this work glowed like the sunrise.

This morning, she could see that the unusually steady rains of the past few days had been transformational—the cottonwoods and peachleaf willows bogged down as they took on fall color, sagged toward the river that ran high for September, brown and churning like the June rise, still well within its banks despite the flash flood warnings coming over the radio. The world outside was oddly hushed, rain muting the usual honking of Canadian geese, the rustle of rabbits scurrying into the brush.