Oranges always remind me of you, oranges and furry California wild sage.

and free range venison, the kind that tastes like it lived on a steady diet of furry, California wild sage, and oranges.

and yellow anything, but particularly yellow circles like the ones you studied for work, like the enormous suns clearing our Autumn skies when Mom would keep is all busy back at camp (year after year after year of my life) while you booted through unpathed patches of oaks, your field gear speaking its secrets in soft muffled rustle, your footsteps completely silent, your rifles strapped to your back, oranges and nuts and 2 sandwiches made by your lover pushed into pockets, and the faint swish of water in your canteens- 1 tin, 1 plastic, and the back of your camo’d head never looking back at us, but only forward through the brush to find a deer that had lived on a steady diet of furry California wild sage, bring it back to camp, and fill our freezer for the year, year after year after year.

Your last Autumn here with us, you brought no deer. You filled no freezer. You said that the sun was so bright, and the buck so magnificent, you could not bring yourself to shoot him. You took a photo of him instead, sat back, pulled a sprig of pungent sage from your hair, peeled an orange from the pocket of the field jacket in your lap, and let the bold yellow sun have its sky.