Yellow roadsign and a pale blue sky.

Where the pavement ends.

The road was rutted and washed out from the quick melt from the sudden heat.  The snowpack was high and reflected white against a blue sky the color blue you'd find in a siamese cat's iris.  This was the first time in the backcontry, and the low slung sedan wouldn't handle the road much longer.  The road washboarded in the dusted flats.  There was no one else but simple reminders of people's passing alongside the road.  Names from rocks, glass and aluminum were underneath the sage.  Damp dirt held small pools of water.

 

Five dollars and forty two cents.  Carmex.  Zig-zag rolling papers.  Bali Shag.  Keys.  An iPod playing old blues music and a passenger.  A pair of thermal underwear and socks.  Ants.

 

"What'd you expect out here anyway, there's nothing on the map sayin' even where this road is."

"We're out nearly to some working ranch.  What's it say there on the map, Huffman's?"

"Rodger's Cattle Ranch is what you're pointin' at, but I'll be damned if were anywhere close to there."

 

Night fell flat across your back while the wind moved the sage savagely to imprint an untold madness in the dust.  A fire started with flint and grass roared in a rusted gravity fed water tank exposed at the base of an eroded hillside.  An RV, old, second-hand, painted in tope with accents of chocolate brown sat alongside the sedan.  Shadows lit and flashed with the fire and two people discussed business.

 

Yesterday, I left from there with a camera and a pair of sunglasses and a car and a can of extra gasoline.