I feel like I was walking across Nevada, like the pioneers, carrying a lot of stuff I need, but as I go along I have to keep dropping off things. I had a piano once but it got swamped at a crossing of the Platte. I had a good frypan but it got too heavy and I left it in the Rockies. I had a couple ovaries but they wore out around the time we were in the Carson Sink. I had a good memory but pieces of it keep dropping off, have to leave them scattered around in the sage brush, on the sand hills.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Story (1995-11), “Ether, OR,” Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 19
    (Source)

Collected in Hogeland and Brawn (eds.), The Aunt Lute Anthology of US Women Writers, Vol. 2 (2008).