Life of Wry

We visited Sally’s mom today. Mrs. Alden was a huge part of my village growing up, like all the moms of my best friends, especially those in the neighborhood.

At 95, Sue is such a champ! Were it not for an unfortunate case of macular degeneration, which affects her vision, Sue would be living the life of a 60-something, or at least some 60-somethings, including me on certain days. I mean, she’s 100% present, lives alone, manages her property and household chores, and would do all that and much much more if she could see better. As it is, she can’t drive and struggles to read (though she finds a way to keeps up with social media). But other than those kinds of site-dependent activities she handles most of life’s load of tasks and activities just fine. So, yeah.. a champ.

She turns 96 in April.

And so cool… she’s just down the road from Sally in Mountain Ranch where she and Holt built their home I don’t even know how many decades ago.. prob in the 80s sometime. It’s an absolutely gorgeous home on 10 acres.

As we drove through the Gold Country, between their two places, there was a lot of fire damage, reminding me that those beautiful hills, peppered with trees, is so very vulnerable to fires, especially in the golden rolling hills (as Kate Wolff used to sing) part of the year.

Here’s a photo of where the Butte fire destroyed so much of Calaveras County back in 2015.

Sheep Ranch is on about that southeastern-most point, halfway between Murphys and Mountain Ranch. It takes about 15 minutes to get from Sally’s to Sue’s place.