The mountains look new this morning in the brand new light. So new I barely recognize them. Brand spanking new even though I've seen them every day for years on my commute.

I peer through the tinted windows of my Tahoe, and I swear I simply don't remember a couple of them from the day before. Or is it just a matter of my point of view? I'm asking myself as I steer the SUV around a curve on what used to be the old Santa Fe Trail where the settlers made their way further into the west. Into the wild with horses or oxen. They came in droves. Sometimes they say, you can still find an occasional rut from a wooden wheel of a covered wagon.

Maybe I should stop and get out, I think. But I don't. Because I'm late already, and the undulating blue ridges, even the ones I don't know, are not exactly monoliths, anyway. I've got places to go. Stuff to solve. And I'm thinking thinking thinking it all through very hard, certain I'll figure it out.

Over the steering wheel, the farthest peaks seem to have sprung from the dark earth overnight. Just beyond what's still vaguely familiar territory--where I've probably even explored on horseback in the deep green summer months with my family--the unknown range is cloaked in diaphanous blue.

Like the fine fabric of a lady's gown, it suddenly strikes me. A lady who is reclining. On an elaborate chaise, maybe with a pillow. Of goosedown, my imagination works overtime. Like the one I got myself for that bright corner of my master bedroom years ago, but rarely take the time to use. The antiquated term for the piece of furniture is "fainting sofa", I believe. And delicate ladies used to faint on them when the daily trials of their Victorian lives overcame them. (Or maybe the whalebone was cinched too tight. Or the room had become suddenly hot. Or they'd just seen the stifling walls of their box.) The one on which many books, several containing the wisdom of the ages, are strewn.

And then I know who's smack dab in the middle of all of this.

She is etched from the clouds. Fashioned from ozone.

My nostrils fill with the utter sweetness of the lady's perfume.