When you live in the country, driving home on a lonely road after dark is scary. Sometimes it makes us wonder why we didn’t pick a place in-town to live, easily accessible by an Uber or kind friends who would take us home. No, we’re not afraid of roving narcotraffickers, highway robbers, bandidos or other bogeys that make elderly expats here lose sleep. It’s just that darkness, particularly the inky darkness of a moonless night makes it difficult so see. We nervously slow down and click on the bright headlights but that turns obstacles into even scarier ghostly outlines, be they of a lone person ambling home from work, a wayward horse or cow, or one of the myriad stray dogs that wander about for food or are just lost. A full moon helps for sure, but it also makes the landscape look eerie, submerged in a cold fluorescent light-like glow. And so we’re still on the lookout for the unexpected and continue to drive cautiously.

Mornings at the ranch, however, sweep away any gloom from the night before. It’s a show we planned for when we positioned the house in relation to the surroundings. Our bedroom has two panoramic windows, seven and nine feet wide, one facing east, the other south, both framed by heavy curtains that make sunrises seem like a technicolor movie show. There could be long bands of crimson or purple peeking from behind the mountains, or other colorful variations, that suddenly give way to a sun impatient to begin its own daily routine. During most of the year, the sunrises are followed by usually cloudless skies and temperatures around seventy degrees by noon.

Some days, though, the morning show turns into a bit of a film noir. Dense, lollygagging fog reaches almost to the windowsills. And even when the grayness starts to recede, maybe an hour or ninety minutes after the sun already has technically risen, it grudgingly reveals leafless vegetation nearby, sometimes covered with cobwebs. Cue in a scary narration by Bela Lugosi or Alfred Hitchcock to accompany this foreboding scene.

Another show unfolds outside the south-facing window after the sun rises, as hummingbirds hover frantically around two feeders filled with red nectar but are promptly bullied away a bit later, by two pairs of orioles visiting for the summer. The larger males sport what looks like black tuxedo jackets over a brilliant-orange vest, while the smaller females are decked out in more modest beige plumage.

The orioles don’t waste energy flitting around like the humming birds but instead perch on the ledge of the feeders and greedily slurp the stuff for a minute or two at a time. From there they might go to a nearby suet feeder or half-oranges we hang from a wire. I consulted with my friend Luke, the Birdman of San Miguel who leads birdwatching tours around the botanical garden, and I’ve tentatively settled on the Black Vented Oriole as the species that visit us each morning. Our eagle-eye gardener Félix is also on the lookout for their distinctive nests in hopes of finding one somewhere around the ranch, before they return to wherever they came from.

A couple of weeks ago we saw a segment in the “CBS Sunday Morning” show about this very enterprising guy, I believe somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, who has photographed every single sunrise on a lake near his home for the past couple of years. I envy—but ignore—his steadfastness, which has produced some stunning photographs. Instead I remain in bed zombie-like for an hour after sunrise, and don’t go outside until after breakfast.

The stunning sunrises and a twenty minute or so amble to the chicken coop or somewhere in the ranch may not seem like life-altering experiences, but they have convinced us to abandon plans to return to the U.S.

The walk is brief, and often in the company of our four dogs, and takes me down a narrow trail through the brambles that ends at the west end of the ranch. It’s a sort of Memory Lane past some of the trees we have planted, our pet cemetery where we have buried a dozen or so dogs and cats that have spent time at the ranch, either as house pets or daily panhandlers looking for food. The walk ends at the a chicken coop, a recent addition, with a rooster and two hens that faithfully provide us with two smallish eggs for breakfast. We haven’t named any of the chickens for fear they might eventually end up as soup or arroz con pollo. At this time of the morning, the ranch can be dead-quiet, except for the nervous cluck-cluck of the chickens demanding to be fed, or at least acknowledged, or the distant honking of a donkey.

The cats and dogs cemetery began when Chiquilín, a mutt belonging to Félix’s dad that showed up every day looking for food, and died when we were just starting to build the house, and Chucha, a lovable neighborhood bitch that toward the end became so feeble we finally wrapped her in a blanket and let her sleep on our back terrace. One morning she didn’t wake up. At the other end of the age bracket is the burial space of the otherwise nameless Seven Brothers, a group of just-born puppies Félix found in a grocery plastic bag someone had dumped by the side of the road. The most recent burial, two weeks ago, was the equally memorable, 16-year-old mutt Palomita, who was Félix’s inseparable companion until she couldn’t manage the walk over here.

But the queen among this group of dearly departed is Gladys, our favorite dog alongside Lucy. Gladys loved to ride with us on our yearly trip to the beach, and starred in a series of exploits and mishaps at the ranch, including to bring us a baby rabbit in her mouth as if asking us what to do next. Palomita was the most recent and last burial; subsequent pets have been cremated and memorialized in urns in various corners of the house.

There were other factors that influenced our decision to stay in San Miguel, if nothing else to avoid the toxic political debacle unfolding back home. But if I can share a secret, Stew and I have just become too attached to the spectacular sunrises, trees that we’ve planted and the menagerie of animals we ‘ve cared for during the past fifteen years.