She was forty years old

She'd been with a fellow for seven years

They had tickets to the Bob Dillon/Greatful Dead concert

In Eugene, a drive of five hundred miles

From Idaho in the old truck.

There'd be three in the front seat.

A young blond girl was coming along, a friend...

Not long before they were to depart

He told her it was over...

He confessed that he and the twenty year old blond girl

Had secretly been lovers

And now they planned to make their life together.

Her heart broke from the betrayal

Mostly she felt old -- and unpretty...

But the worst was that they still had the three tickets

And they thought they should all still go to the concert.

So there was the five hundred mile drive

In the front seat

With the young girl nestled in her lover's arms all the way

While she sat trying not to see them

Concentrating on the passing scenery, embroidering...

She was a wreck by the time they arrived.

So she danced.

That's how I first saw her.

In the parking lot at a drum circle dancing alone.

I had never in my life seen such a dancer.

Her passion was so extraordinary

I stood like a stone watching

She leaped.

She flew like a bird.

Her veils were wings.

She whirled.

Her slippered feet covered such wide spaces

I could hardly believe what I was seeing

And her face, her face, her face

Was so wrenching in it's poignancy, in it's incredible beauty

That my heart was in my throat.

I made my way over to the side

Where she often returned as she danced

And I managed to ask her if she would permit me

To photograph her as she danced.

She was surprised.

But she said I could.

Later we walked over to the little stream

And I shot a few more.

Then she went away.

She forgot about the photos

Until the copies I sent her arrived.

She wrote me a letter thanking me.

She said the photographs had so restored her faith in herself

That she had immediately gone out and

Taken her boyfriend back from that young girl.

Ten years have passed.

They are still together.