“Ah. Shit.” I laughed too, our eyes met, and right away I felt like I was doing something wrong. To change the subject, I asked her how long she’d been living in Mill Valley.

“About three years. I lived in the city first, but I didn’t like it. Sensory overload. I moved over here as soon as I could afford it.”

We continued hiking uphill, and October spoke mostly to the dog, telling him what a good boy he was, pointing out birds and squirrels for him to see, stopping to give him water every so often. She talked to him like he was a child, and he looked at her with rapt attention anytime she said his name or raised the pitch of her voice.

I remember thinking that perhaps she was testing me, to see if I could be unobtrusive, and I’d been trying not to speak too much unless she spoke to me. But I also didn’t want her to think I wasn’t interested in her work; eventually I got up the nerve to ask her what kind of artist she was.

She bent down to tie her shoelace, looked up at me and, with a chuckle, said, “You took this job without knowing that?”

I shrugged, gestured toward the mountain. “I like redwoods.”

She smiled. “It’s funny; when people ask me what I do for a living and I say, ‘I’m an artist,’ their next question is almost always ‘What kind?’ I suppose they imagine I’m a painter, sculptor, photographer, you know, one specific thing. And I work in all of those media. But if it were up to me, it would be enough to say, ‘I’m an Artist of Life.’” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, as if anticipating a scoff. “I know that might seem vague or, worse, pretentious, but it’s honestly the closest I can get to explaining my career.”

She turned toward me and met my eyes, focused and serious, her hands moving enthusiastically as she spoke, as if my question had opened something up in her. She’d gone from awkwardly quiet to aflame in an instant. “At the core of my work is the belief that everything we do and every moment we live can be a work of art. Every experience can be a thing of beauty or love, sorrow or pain. We choose. We impart the moments with meaning. That’s what art is to me. Imparting objects, sounds, creations and experiences with meaning. Making even the most mundane into something significant and extraordinary.”

“I like that.” Her words rang true inside of me. I didn’t know how to articulate the idea like she did, or how to live it, for that matter, but I understood it, and I believed in it.

“Good. Because it’s crucial to your role here that you do.” She paused to gather the rest of her thoughts. It seemed important to her that I grasp what she was saying. “That’s how I approach my work, and it’s how I approach my existence. I feel things, and then I try to inspire other people to feel things. I want to connect my humanity to the humanity of others, and somehow I’ve been lucky enough to make this desire my life’s work.” We resumed walking, and October continued glancing at me as she spoke. “As if you can’t tell, I like talking about art.” Someone had discarded a plastic bottle on the trail; October picked it up and put it in the little backpack she wore to hold Diego’s water. “But, to answer your question, society likes labels and our culture likes to put people in boxes, and because I’m mostly known for my performance pieces, Ribble and Google and Wikipedia and all the other cyber boxes tend to label me a performance artist. But, like I said, if it were up to me, it would be enough to simply say, ‘I am an Artist of Life.’”