If I stand between the two barns, just east of the house, I can see the wheat stalks that are planted into the prairie land. I began coming to this farm when I was six and now, twelve years later, my routine is inked into my life and standing between the barns every workday is one of my oldest habits. By 6:30 a.m., after I have tended to the yard animals, my uncle has gassed his machines and given instructions to the four field hands that he has hired for the summer. Then we converge on the house where there are plates of meat, eggs, pancakes, toast, homemade jams and jellies that cover the table. Talk is mostly about the day ahead unless there has been some event of interest like last year when Watson's farm burned nearly to the ground after he got drunk and left a lamp cooking in his barn. Most folks believed it was because his wife was keeping company with the used car lot manager in town but my uncle said that what she did was nobody's business. With breakfast over, all hands went out the door and I followed as far as the spot between the two barns where I stood and watched them enter the wheat fields. I would be expected out in the field around 10 a.m. to drive tractor or bundle bales while my uncle changed jobs to relieve his sciatica. Until then, my time was my own and I often spent it reading behind the north barn, at least, until this particular day.

Now, I am no longer a young woman but the events of that summer, especially on that morning, live with me as if they happened just last week. I can close my eyes and feel of the warm morning sun with the smell of the fields to flood my senses. Those luscious and distinct sensations of the farm are not, however, my most vivid memory--she is.

It was close to hot by the time the hands walked into the neat field rows that morning. As I watched them disappear through the head-high grasses, I knew that the drone of the combine would start soon. From the last row of wheat, an unfamiliar silhouette walked toward instead of away from me and, since it was such an unusual occurrence, I squinted hard to see the stranger. I did not know it then but the nineteen-year-old woman moving toward me so confidently was more than a vision; she was a curious map of sorts that would lead me into my adult life.

With raven hair flowing carelessly down her back, the woman sauntered across the yard and headed directly toward me. Her sleeveless shirt was tied at the waist and blue-jean shorts revealed beautifully tanned arms and legs but it was not her physical appearance I found so mesmerizing. It was the way she moved into the earth as if she owned it somehow or was an integral part of its creation. I stood transfixed, anticipating the moment she would reach me and the sound of her voice when she spoke. When close enough to communicate, her soft, gray-blue eyes dug into mine and searched for recognition. She smiled when she found it but, at that time, I could not say what it was that she saw in me. Only steps away, she slowed to a stop and casually dropped her hands into her back pockets causing her breasts to stretch the buttons of the thin cotton shirt.

"Hi."

When I didn't speak but simply stared, she laughed ever so slightly and made a second attempt.

"Hi? I'm Veronika but most everyone calls me Nika. I am Dalton's daughter from across your east side over there. Our pasture is up against you."

"Up against . . . ? Oh! Sorry, I . . . uh, my name is . . . I'm . . . Morgan, Hank Emerson's niece from Illinois, Morgan Hunter. You can call me either. I answer to both."

"Well . . . Hunter," she smiled, "how long have you been here?"

"I, uh . . . what? Oh, I come here every summer from Boston to help out. My uncle is my mother's brother."

Nika Dalton seemed amused at my words or perhaps it was my mouth that she found humorous. Either way, she was concentrating on watching me speak and I felt strangely exposed. I glanced toward my shoes to be certain I was still wearing clothes while the slightest hint of anticipation gathered at the base of my throat and traveled down in to my stomach. I wanted her to speak again, to look at me longer, or anything to keep her within breathing distance. I was in unknown territory but it felt strangely familiar. I took a deep breath and, leveling my gaze at her, began to speak again.

"Did you just move here or have we just missed each other all of these years?"

Nika returned my steady gaze for a long moment before she spoke. "Oh, I would've found you years ago, had I been here. You can count on that."

A spark of electricity danced in the pause between us.

"As it is, my father bought the place last year and moved the family from Wisconsin. I am home from college for the summer and came over to meet you."

"Me? How do you know me?"

"I don't. But I saw you yesterday afternoon in the east field on the tractor. You look," she paused to search my face, hoping to find the right word, "really . . . good . . . on a tractor."

I watched her carefully to see whether or not she was going to laugh but her eyes only pulled me into her and held me close. At that moment, I had been unexpectedly transported further away than I had ever gone from everything I had ever known and I realized that I was anxious to go. Standing just a foot away, I was surprised to suddenly imagine how her body might fit into my mine and I breathed her in until the heat of my skin began to overtake the warmth of the day. How long we stood there was impossible to determine and I remember nothing of what was said until she casually put her hand on my hat and, as she slid it back, said,

"I know you, Hunter. Really I do. And you are going to know me; you understand that, yes?"

"I don't know if I do . . . understand you, I mean."

"Have . . . you . . . ever . . . ?" she whispered.

"Nika, I . . . no, I . . ." I interrupted.

"You don't even know what I was going to say, do you?"

I put on my best smile and slowly shook my head.

"Well, I want to say something and I want you to listen, ok? Carefully. Watch my lips."

I fixed my gaze onto her mouth and held my breath.

"Are you watching?" she asked quietly.

I nodded, captivated by the plumpness of her bottom lip and how her wet tongue teased at the back of her teeth when she whispered again.

"Come with me," she murmured.

My hands instinctively reached for her and stopped just short of the tight shirt. We both looked down toward my trembling fingers, realizing that a step closer would send us far away from the space between those two barns. Nika trembled slightly, then abruptly recovered and slid her hand off of my hat, onto my shoulder, and down my side until it fell naturally back into her own jurisdiction.

"What do you mean, 'come with you?'" I cautiously asked.

Again, her mouth trembled slightly and, just before speaking, she thoughtfully outlined the curve of her top lip with her right forefinger.

"Tomorrow afternoon. Come with me out to our back pond. No one ever goes out there and it is a great place to . . . swim. You do swim, don't you?"

"I . . . I . . . ssw . . . sswww . . . swim," I stammered. "Great," I inwardly scolded, "I'm an idiot."

I was grateful that she did not comment on my stuttering tongue, simply choosing to smile instead. Nika was the wiser of us during this ancient mating ritual and I, her novice, became her cloak and dagger--her sheltering cover and the razor sharp edge of her desire. She tossed and turned me, carving her sensuality into my muscles and bones until I was reduced to a sexual mass of stuttering being.

We stood aching, embraced by the sun, and she eyed me steadily, spoke so quietly, until I could hardly stand the empty space between us. Then she backed away slowly, finally turned, and entered the last row of wheat. As I watched her float into the farmland, I wondered for an instant if the whirlwind that had just happened was real and whether I would actually see her again.

My attraction for her was immediate and quite natural, therefore, completely without judgment. Like most of life when it twists and changes so abruptly, I had no time to figure the rules or consequences. I began my journey with Nika the same way an avid reader might sit down with a fresh, new novel; I was open to any and all of the possibilities that lay just beneath her cover.

Now, this might be the natural place to discuss my fear and trepidation about loving a woman but truthfully, I had little thought about anyone who was not her. I knew that no one could understand how she fitted into me and I was not wired to explain it to them. I quickly decided to leave shame and guilt for my mother's other children who had lives that could accommodate such nonsense. While my life has taken on plenty of changes over these thirty years, I am still not inclined to seek forgiveness for the most solid side of me. Besides, loving a woman has been the deepest, most satisfying, part of my living. The right woman will set a fire under my skin until it burns slow with haunting memories of how she moves to take me into her. The sound of her breathlessness will keep me awake and yearning for hours. These are the lessons that Nika Dalton bundled up and brought to me and I am--have always been--eternally grateful to her for it.

When my mother asked me to go out into the west field to bring my father in for supper, I was glad for the distraction. I had been stuck for hours in the kitchen on the south side of the house soaking cucumbers for canning. While I didn't mind the work, I smelled of vinegar and my back ached. I was ready to walk those hundred acres and stretch my legs a bit. I grabbed a straw hat and a cold drink, stepped onto the back porch, and breathed deeply. The brutal heat of the day was fading as the sun slipped itself toward the earth's pocket and the smell of dusty wheat emptied into the air.

This farm would not have been my first choice but my middle-aged parents had taken to it almost instantly. "Nika, your parents, Ruby and Silas, are tired of the city," they exclaimed as if they were gossiping about another couple, "and they want you to know that they are buying the farm." My father thought that this tasteless play on words was hilarious but I refrained from encouraging his juvenile humor. If they wanted to reenact "Green Acres," I had little to say about it, that is, until I went to the farm to spend the summer after my sophomore year in college. I had escaped to Europe during my freshman summer but could find no excuse not to join them the following year in, of all God forsaken places, Oklahoma. It was hardly what I expected although, looking back, I am not sure what it was I had anticipated.

The most overwhelming part of the farm was the work it took to keep it moving. There was always something that had to be done and mostly we were on the verge of being late in doing it. Daily harvesting, weekly canning, monthly planting, not to mention washing, painting, feeding, baling, mending, shucking, cleaning, storing; it was endless. After a while, I suppose I got used to it. I was not opposed to hard work; it was the eternal prospect of it that plagued me. There was that during the day, but it did little to occupy my nineteen-year-old lesbian body during the night.

Oh, the nights! Once the sun started to set in the western fields, the moon took its rightful place in the crystal sky and it was then that my memory began to throb and toss images of big, muscular girls and their strong hands everywhere, anywhere on my body. I had ripened under the touch of lesbians who knew how to hold me, reach for me, and I longed to feel their solid presence again. Forget love. I was much more interested in the restless and tender pains of desire that brushed up against my skin until the early hours of morning, leaving me raw and somehow alert even as I dreamt. My "day-long work" and "night-long craving" personas coexisted rather fitfully until the late afternoon when Ruby Dalton sent me, her only child, to fetch Silas for supper.

Coming upon the clearing of the west field, I casually glanced toward the Emerson's east field and saw what I thought might be a mirage. Several field hands were on the ground, turning the wheat as the tractor came through and combing the stalks. But it was the tractor, actually, the young woman--girl, perhaps--on the tractor that caused me to study the earthy lines of her horizon for any recognition of who she might be. I moved closer toward the field and stood behind the last oak tree on our property until I could see the sweat fall onto her collar from her short-cropped hair; arms and legs--trees of her own--commanding the will of the tractor; squeezing, pushing, kneading, stroking the machine with firm and comfortable grips. Her dark skin rippled in the blaze of sunset and I knew that not another day would pass before I knew who she was and how I would know her.

That is how it began for me in the summer of my truest desire. I did not know it then but, years later, Morgan Hunter would become the fullness that would replace most of my hollow and empty shadows. On this day, however, my goal was to meet the girl next door and, tomorrow, if I finished all I had to do early enough, I could accomplish that feat.

As I walked through the last row of wheat that morning, I almost laughed out loud at how nervous I felt. "She may not even be a lesbian," I warned myself. "No, that would be impossible. I wonder if she knows yet. How old is she? What am I doing to myself with all of these questions?" I thought. "Good question," I answered.

Trying to decide what to wear on this morning was just as confusing as all of the questions. Shirt? Sleeveless? Sundress? No. Shorts . . . short shorts. Too obvious? Yes. In that case, by all means, I'll wear them.

I tied my shirt up and onto my stomach as I walked along the last few yards of the wheat row and wondered where I might find her. Moments later, my answer was standing between the barns and directly in front of me just about fifty feet away. I moved toward her and questioned whether she knew I was coming somehow and was waiting for me but then realized just how crazy that was. I have since learned, of course, that desire has its own radar, far more sophisticated than we can ever know.

I slipped my hands into my back pockets so that she wouldn't see me trembling and introduced myself. She hesitated and I had the opportunity to see up close what I had only imagined the day before. Her blue black hair was thick and tousled, arms and hands brown and bulked from working in the sun, and powerful legs that stretched the cotton of her khaki shorts. I caught the scent of her morning shower mingled with clean sweat and laughed slightly to cover my shallow breathing. When she did not speak, I again introduced myself and she suddenly spilled over, telling me her name and who her uncle was and how long she had been coming to the farm. I tried to pay attention to her words but her mouth had my attention and I could think of nothing other than tracing her lips with my fingers. I would've said anything to keep her talking, to watch the words tumble out from between her teeth, surrounded by that beautiful, beautiful mouth. She was a lesbian all right and, as I pushed her hat back and flirted with her to come to the pond with me the next day, it suddenly and instinctively occurred to me that I was about to become Morgan Hunter's first experience. That revelation startled me and I felt myself shiver from something that I could not yet identify. As I turned to leave, a part of me stayed there next to her and, for the first time in my own young lesbian life, I felt incomplete.

Nika and I were joined by forces, ethereal and earthy--forces that blew a dense sensuousness into our every breath. I had no explanation for it and did not need one. However, there is little doubt that when such intervention occurs, there is no space for the daily ticking of clocks. She was my first and last thought and her physical presence became my only requirement. But I am ahead of myself.

When the next afternoon came, I bolted from the farm and toward the pond like my hair was on fire. Down the last row of wheat and through the east field, I hurdled Dalton's fence and skirted the edge of the property, avoiding the house, the barn, and the people who were possibly in either. I slowed to a trot when I entered the wooded path, careful not to get caught in the brambles and thought, "Another sixty seconds and I will see her again." Just as quickly, a second thought not nearly so pleasant followed. "I forgot my bathing suit. Damn, damn, damn it."

I sat, feet and ankles dangling into the pond, and looked at my watch again. I wondered if Hunter would come or if I had scared her half to death. I had hurried through chores, breaking a couple of eggs along the way, and almost spilled half of a five gallon bucket of milk. Smiling at the memory, I looked around for signs of her and inhaled the brilliant display of scenery around me. The hot and wet summer had filled and saturated this plump trace of land nestled in the forest. Thickets were heavy with berries and the trees' canopy hung bowed and bent with thick, luscious leaves. The carpet of the clearing was a padded mixture of pungent moss and slick, sweet grasses pressed into the swollen and muddied earth. The pond water was still and warm, patiently waiting for Hunter and me to slowly sink into her saturated belly.

"I forgot my suit."

The brush parted at the trail and I must've looked startled because Hunter fought off a smile and continued walking toward me.

"Should I go back? It would only take about half an hour or so. I'll hurry."

She turned to go and I heard the urgency in my own voice. "No, please, wait." I slowed and took a breath. "You won't need a suit. It is just the two of us out here. Even the cows don't come out this far from home."

To explain how a woman might touch another woman may be treading on sacred ground for some but something must be said in order to understand the impact, the whole affect, of the two together. It is not discussed in ways that would describe a physical sound or movement; it is more about the position of the heart when her fullness comes into you that will capture you and take you in. This reckless and inevitable dance is love, truly, and it is what we made, indeed.

When Nika rushed to stop me from leaving the pond, I felt her in my very core, her hands and mouth soothing me long before she ever touched me. It was then that I knew I would love her and, at that moment, I understood more about physical loving than I ever thought I would. The mystery was soon to be over and I had made a place in my heart for the knowledge of it.

She stepped into me as she spoke something about cows and I felt her breath on my cheek. I watched her lips move as her arms nestled around my neck and landed comfortably into position on my shoulders. She smelled of wheat and dust; her hair was feather-soft and fell onto the curve of my breasts. I hooked my fingers into her back belt loops and rested my hands softly on the lower part of her bare back. My heart moved from one place to the next; first, to the soft and low sound of her, then to the firm and willing feel of her.

"Wait," she whispered. "I want you to remember this, always."

Nika turned her head so slightly and allowed her eyes to return my gaze. "I promise. I will," I told her, and a slow burn began moving in my belly and through my legs and arms as I lowered my head to bring her mouth onto mine for the first time.

I instinctively moved toward Hunter as she came through the clearing and threw my arms around her neck. My desperation to have this woman's hands on me felt almost dangerous and I clung to her, working to catch my breath, while she let her fingers dangle gently on the skin of my back. I stepped away enough to see the haunted hunger in her eyes and watched her handsome face move toward my mouth. I wanted her to remember that kiss always and told her so; she promised that she would.

Slipping out of my own clothes and watching her undress her muscular, brown body was a powerful exercise in patience for both of us. Although it was painful to stay at such a slow and steady pace, I was determined to keep her moving with me, time and again, until she understood how to please me, herself, and us. Each kiss, every glance--the sweat and tears--her hands, her body inside of me, solid, and strong; I was cocooned in her arms and legs for the hours to pass without noticing, without needing any more than we had already found.

There was no steadiness to my breath when I reached into her; my own unbridled body aching, arching with obsession, moment by moment, again and still again. But Nika held me infinitely still until I understood where and how to bring her, myself, and us to an unquestionable fulfillment that I came to understand and appreciate that afternoon. She eased her sweet, wet tongue between my teeth and stroked the inside of my mouth, urging me to come closer, wait longer, thrust harder. I followed her lead toward the future and I vowed to stay as long as she, who was teasing and taking me toward my own destiny, would allow it.

Hunter and I spent night after night, day after day, embraced in perfection until I realized I loved her; loved her deeply. It was then that I wondered, "How in the world can I stay?"

Nika and I spent day after day, night after night, surrounded by love, so deeply abiding that it caused her to leave. It was then that I wondered, "How in the world can you go?"

Dreams have no shape or fashion; no time to become outdated or well worn. We mostly just tuck them into the tattered seams of our lives to repair the rips that living tears in to us. My summer with Hunter was a glorious dream; one that later soothed the cracks of my heart and filled my lonely nights as I compared my last real date to my only true love. After that awakening with her, I became terrified of the true feelings that I felt and convinced myself that we were entirely wrong for each other. I crushed her with words like "too young" and "too different" and "puppy love." To convince myself that I had done the right thing, I even settled for less than I deserved, at least, for a while. When my father died, I came back to this Oklahoma farm and ran it with my mother until she too was gone. I always thought I would sell the place but could never bring myself to do it. At least a few times a month I would walk down the last row of wheat and stare between the two barns until I could conjure up the image of a young Hunter, waiting for me in the hot morning sun. These are the notions that occupied my mind as I marked the time passing; the Emersons had died long ago and Hunter, last I heard, was in Seattle with a lover or partner, I assumed. A Christmas card or a note from a vacation was all I had to remind me of the only person I had ever loved so incredibly, the person that I had left so completely.

When Nika told me that we were not going to be together, my heart shattered, leaving thousands of tiny bits for several women to try and patch up over the years. I healed as best I could and my dream of being with her slipped into a quiet pocket of my past. When I was tired or lonely or simply could not stand it any more, I would allow her to surface and possess my memory for a while but never for long. The pain was rugged whenever I allowed my thoughts of that season to linger. During my first few summers of college, I would rush to the farm, hoping to find her but I stopped going when my heart could no longer take the disappointment. Uncle Hank moved to Ohio after his wife died and, when he passed, he left the farm to my mother. She rented out the fields to strangers and closed up the huge, white house. After her death, I became the sole beneficiary of my uncle's farm, although I had not been there in twenty years. I didn't hear from Nika again, save a letter from time to time to update me about the property. I sent a few cards until her parents died and then I assumed she had moved into a city somewhere, probably living with a lover or partner. She never cared much for farming.

At 6 a.m., the summer sun was not yet beating down on the wheat fields. I watched a steady stream of cars moving toward the auction over at the Emersons and guessed that Hunter was finally having the bank dismantle and sell the place. Just about every family farm for miles had been either subsidized or rolled over into a junkyard or used car lot. Soon enough, the vultures would come knocking on my own door and I would have decisions to make. I had hung on to the memories of my parents and my youth long enough, I supposed. It was time to move into a city--maybe Chicago or Boston--and attempt to jump-start my life yet again. By seven, the postman had rung the bell and, when I answered, I don't recall just what he said that caused me to realize Hunter was next door at the auction. In fact, I don't remember combing my hair or changing clothes or flying out the back door to desperately reclaim my heart. I only remember running to her . . .

. . . standing between the barns, I gazed out toward the east field and thought of the hundreds of times I had stood in this very spot. I felt eighteen-years-old coming back here again and just as raw, looking toward the Dalton place. "Thousands of tiny bits, Nika, and I have yet to put any of me back together," I muttered to myself. The distant sound of the auctioneer faded and the summer breeze caused me to close my eyes and inhale the fullness of my painful memories. As the sun broke over the east field, I turned to move toward the house when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the silhouette of a woman. She had stepped out of the last row of wheat and, with her raven hair flowing, her sleeveless shirt tied at the waist, Nika came running out of my past and headed straight toward my future.

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