He came home Tuesday in the rain and so much to my delight, we tumbled and fell against eachother while he still held bags and dropped them one by one except for the small to-go box he held in his hand. For you, he said when we had come up for air, a sweet roll. Direct from Tootsie's.

We mashed together again once he set the box on the table, and I had forgotten how strong and wide and handsome he is with his wild hair and bright eyes and that smile just for me.

We mugged and entangled and tumbled and giggled and sighed amidst the I love yous and the Oh I missed yous. Six days? Is that all? It felt much longer, and I only noticed once he came home again that I was missing all the little sweetnesses we bestow on eachother, all the gestures and winks and brushing touches as we pass eachother, doing dishes or cooking dinner or folding laundry.

He was away in the wild north, high in the mountains, working on survey. This summer he'll be there again, as camp cook for the field school. He showed me photographs he had taken, and it's incredibly wild and remote, amazing forests and snow-capped mountain peaks.

He said they hiked in the snow two miles up the mountains to a cabin that had previously lost its roof during an avalanche, and as they were hiking they heard three different avalanches. He said it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever heard.

From the photos I can see how big and wide open, how steep, how uninhabitable, but the sense of scale is absent. Without people it's not possible to estimate how enormous and vast the sweep of the valley and the plunge of the mountain's flanks.

I'm glad he's home safe. He's the one with whom I can have conversations about things I'd only think to myself.

We stayed up last night much too late, looking at cookbooks.