Flat Lands
In muted predawn light we drive west, through rolling hills of Tennessee. The world is quickly illuminated as the sun, a pink orb rising in the east, casts long, crisp shadows over the countryside. We wind through Kentucky and drive on through Illinois and Missouri. Missouri's midday heat turns our minds to mush. We stretch and do yoga at a rest stop, splay out in the dehydrated grass and pant. Even the birds are overheated, clinging to their perch, beaks wide open. Then to Kansas, to an endless and amazingly flat land decorated with hay, cows and fields of grain. A storm is brewing on the horizon. Clouds swell and lighting ripples in the distance. I lean over the wheel. "We're driving right into it." There is a blanket of darkness ahead of us. All of sudden it sounds as if my car is being assaulted by stones. Hail and rain beats down on us and I can't see a thing. We are surrounded. The sky is electric, intense, glowing and lightning falls from the sky in every direction. We inch along, swallowed by lightning, wind, by a dark veil that stretches into the distance.
In Boulder, the landscape in more dramatic. Mountains and snow-covered peaks gleam in the distance. It is hot, dry, and amazingly beautiful.
Colorado
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