The squid boats stayed out in Monterey Bay for months that summer, their lights bobbing in the dark water as we drove home from work at the late-night farmer’s markets in the next city over. My days in those months smelled of strawberries, and gas stations, and the stale-cigarette-hot-engine scent of the old Ford work trucks I drove around town; at night the highway hum of my childhood punctuated my dreams. When the world ground to a halt it felt like everybody came home to Santa Cruz, and for a while in the beginning the quiet uncertain days had the golden haze of summer in high school: lazy, warm, filled with the proximity of lifelong friends and the familiar comfort of sunset walks up the street to stare at the ocean. For a short while I fell for a boy who’d grown up there too; I borrowed a wetsuit and a board and learned to surf; I napped on the back porch and usually had sand on my toes. Despite everything it felt good to be home.
For three weeks in July we had nothing but fog, unsurprising for summer on the Central Coast; when it lifted, the light had turned to autumn. That week at the farmer’s market the wind kicked up, chilly and strong, carrying leaves and the smell of barbecue and coffee and the baritone voice of the vendor across the way hawking fresh peaches.
In August, California choked on wildfire smoke. The ash fell on our back porch and gathered in drifting piles against the curbs; some days that month the skies were so dark that we had to turn on lamps in the middle of the day so that we could see the strawberries as we sorted them beneath the market tents.
In early October, I packed my car and set out to drive from California to South Dakota. I slept under the stars in national parks and national forests and makeshift roadside campsites, watching the sun rise and set over the seemingly endless expanse of open space that constitutes the interior of the American West. My first night in Nevada I soaked off the grime of the day’s drive in a carefully tended hot spring off a tiny dirt road in the middle of the desert. In the deepening twilight a motorcycle roared up, headlights blinding in the dark. With a voice loud enough to wake the whole valley a man about my age announced that he hadn’t stopped driving since he’d blasted out of the Idaho backwoods following an attack launched by a crazed local resident toting a handy length of pipe, and boy was he sure glad to see those springs. He took off his gun belt, and then the rest of his clothes, and jumped right into the hot spring beside me; I took that as my cue to go heat up a can of soup on my campstove and tuck myself into my sleeping bag. The next morning, soaking at sunrise, a man who introduced himself as Ben told me about his hitchhiking journey across the country that had somehow led him down the dirt road to these springs; as he talked he unpacked an incredible array of teas and marijuana onto the wooden bench beside the spring. I watched him in disbelief as he leaned down with a tin mug, scooped up a cupful of water from the steaming water where I sat, and dropped a tea bag in it to steep.
A few days later, I packed up camp early and drove east down Highway 50 towards Great Basin, sipping mint hot chocolate out of a mug and listening to tripped-out instrumental guitar with half a sleepy eye on the dead empty highway. A few miles ahead I saw a plume of dust and watched it as I drove closer; when I finally came near enough I could see that it was two men on horseback driving a herd of cattle before them. Backlit by the rising sun it was the iconic, cinematic image of the American West, a sight that almost made me laugh out loud at its perfection. In Idaho, I was greeted in the chilly morning by the gruff sound of men’s voices and loud whistles, and then by the sound of bells clanking from sheep’s necks and the clack of their hooves on the hard ground; I could see their shapes obscured by the trees as they passed by my camp. (Later I wondered, briefly, if the man on the motorcycle at the hot springs had come through this way).
Finally, on a moonless night in late October, deep in the heart of Standing Rock, a howling snowstorm deposited me on the doorstep of the Wilder Ranch, home to many horses, even more numerous bison, and a small cluster of humans which now included me. Hardly a week later on the night before Halloween, feverish with the sickness everyone had been trying to avoid all year, I floated outside to get some fresh air. The sun had set and the western horizon glowed orange; to the east the nearly full moon rose over the prairie. I leaned my chin against the cold metal of the fence and stared out. The coyotes starting singing, one voice first and then a symphony from all directions that sent chills down my spine. Something about being alone beneath a full moon on the prairie, listening to coyotes, made me feel more than ever the deep spookiness of rural America — how open, how empty, how full of ghosts and spilled blood.
Often in the evenings that autumn we’d sit atop the bison chute after working colts all day, watching the sunset. This particular night was the night before Thanksgiving and the sky was cotton candy — soft pinks and oranges that faded to blue, with clouds that looked, as Max said, as if someone had taken a whisk to a sky made of egg whites and sugar. The mares browsed on the horizon line of the pasture to the left; to the right, the foals munched on hay and made tiny slurping noises with their tongues on the salt lick in the paddock near the barn. Prairie dogs chirped all around, and the chickens scratched and clucked in the dust. Otherwise, it was quiet and still. I stared at the cotton candy sky, and felt the contented tiredness in my body from many early mornings and long days outside. I searched in my chest for any trace of the anxiety that usually filled it, and found none.
SGBRSH 