Approaching

Now we have come to the stars.

Beside me, Jenarden speaks of a solar electric system in Hooper that runs on 800 million watts.

Huh?

But I make no effort to ask him.

Instead, my mind is drifting out. Past the solar electricity, past the solar system. I am hushed and dazzled by dark, where stars surface around us the way divers rise. I'm in a jar of night stirred through with diamonds. I am plugged in to eternity.

Scorpio climbs on the right.

Everyone says this when they come to Crestone: "I never knew there were so many stars." I would add, "or so much beauty in this world."

Riding

Curves of empty highway wend through the silk of dusk. We pass an antelope grazing on the right, and I think of the elk we saw earlier. With the next curve, the silver of water lays across the basin below us the way ribbons blow across a woman's hair. The Rockies, the San Juans, the Sangre de Cristos--peak follows peak on every side. We are wrapped in mountains.

In the front seat, Shivdhun is eating popcorn. He bought a 24" bag where a tall, skinny cowboy blasts his pistol at the zigzag opening of the paper. Just inside the cowboy's lasso, the words: "Texas-sized popcorn." Barbara asks Shivdhun, "Is your arm long enough to make it to the bottom of that bag?"

We passed the Dinky Dairy just a few miles back.

In a few hours, we'll be in Crestone.