There she sat, at the end of the day, at the end of her driveway, if you could even call it that, watching me leave and the sheep return.

I was with my interpreter Marija, in a small village – really just a collection of houses and barns belonging to a single extended family, near the town of Nevesinje (in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Hercegovina.) The family has lived on this land for 600 years or more.  Marija brought me here to meet an elderly relative still making the sir iz mijeha (cheese aged in a sheepskin sack) called Torotan. I’d spent the afternoon with her family. Eating and listening. Asking questions. Sampling the home made juice and wine and rakjia. The cheese, the cured meat. The bread. Playing with the children. Making photographs. A lovely day all around, but not long enough. They are hardly ever long enough. Usually just as the day fades, the colors simmer into their richest hues, and for my purposes the light is perfect, it’s time to leave. So we do.

We were heading up the track to where I’d left the car but were forced to wait as the flock streamed down into the village. And there she sat, like a sentinel, like a gift, late afternoon rays painting her face soft and warm against the verdant green underbrush. I held up my camera, the “May I?” clear in my gesture. A barely perceptible nod seemed to shimmer from her direction. I clicked off 1, 2, 3, maybe 6 frames, hoping my settings were right. Praying the moment would hold. Not wanting to intrude more than I already had, I nodded back and walked on.

I never did get her name.