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).