Pieces of Light: A Year on Colorado's Front Range
Susan J. Tweit
Illustrations: Ann Douden
Roberts Rinehart, 1990
Clothbound, OP
Best Trade Book, Rocky Mountain Book Publisher's Association
Pieces of Light is a book to be taken up on a rainy afternoon or a snowy night, a book to be immediately absorbed by, to delight in for years. -- Bloomsbury Review
A lovely piece of work whose author shows great serenity of spirit and the ability to be captivated by small things. -- Ann Zwinger
I am sure that other readers... will be astonished and intrigued as Susan calls attention to the myriads of earth's wonders they have missed or not appreciated. -- J. David Love
(From "Thursday, 19 May") Late this afternoon, while wading across town in the pouring rain to pick up our car, I crossed an irrigation ditch and stopped to watch the water. The muddy brown torrent looked to have risen at least a foot from its level this morning. As I watched, turning my umbrella to shelter my face from blowing rain and splashing stream of traffic, I spotted a mottled brown form preening itself on the bank at the edge of the flow. It was raining hard, and the sodden animal was all curled up, so I couldn't tell what it was. I wiped my rain-soaked glasses and peered harder, trying to discern details through the streaming downpour. The whatever-it-was solved the mystery by uncurling itself in one lithe movement and pushing off from the bank, swimming upstream against the muddy torrent. It was brown all right, and about the size of a cat, but with a long scaly tail. A muskrat. It half-swam, half-crawled against the flood, staying close to the edge and pulling itself along by grasping the sparse vegetation protruding from the bank. ...
The muskrat continued to crawl/swim upstream. Suddenly it vanished, disappearing under the brown water. I wiped my glasses again and peered intently at the rushing water in the early dusk, concerned, until I realized that it must have found an underwater entrance to its burrow--unless it drowned. A passing truck splattered me with cold water, bringing me back to the driving rain and splashing roar of the traffic. I hunched my shoulders, attempting to shrink under the shelter of my umbrella, and waded away, hoping that the muskrat had found its burrow and was curled up inside, dray and warm.
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