February 19, 2015:
We live in horse-drawn carts, not so much Wild West as European, like Romani wagons, the RVs of earlier centuries. Stopping for nights in camps on Pacific Coast Highway, all sides of Big Sur, the wild California craggy coast. It's beautiful, but, we're unhappy. A corrupt Russian sheriff has taken to harassing us, stopping and fining us without justice, leaving us unsettled and confused. We'd move on but in the morning we find that one of our horses has been stolen. By the sheriff, we surmise. I will find it. I will identify the thief and bring him to bay. The emigre community will know who's responsible. Yet one by one they shy away: from fear, of the sheriff, one and all. There he is, across the highway, watching, as the emigres slip back into shadows, silent as death.