When you see the house, you can’t help but giggle.

Actually, “house” doesn’t quite fit the minuscule dwelling. “Shack” is the term to which it is most commonly referred. But “house” gives it a sense of peace and comfort. Nobody likes the rough feel of “shack” on their tongue. And so she calls it a house.

You can’t help but giggle because it’s tiny and a drab, dull shade of gray, in such naked contrast to the surrounding beauty: Magestic mountains in vivid hues of emerald, and just beyond them, a painstakingly blue sky that makes you wish you could sprout wings and fly forever into its depths. The house is old and uninhabited, the crawl of a spider against its magnificently spun web.

Every time she comes here, she giggles, and then remembers to feel appropriately sorrowful. The house can’t help being so dull and so old and so tiny.

And she loves the house. It is here that she finds her soul.

It is here that she writes.