Tags : bull, car window, cow, riverton, wyoming | 3 comments
I left Denver last night at 11pm. An all-night drive to Wyoming. Or at least as much as I could do on truck stop coffee. Ended up making it to a rest area outside of Riverton just as the sun was starting to come up, something that I took to be a sign that I better stop for some sleep before the new day started. I rented a car for this trip since my proud, old truck is somehow hanging on to the same clutch after more than 185,000 miles. It’s going to go sometime soon and I’m not too keen on the idea of trying to swap out clutches in a Wyoming parking lot.
The back seats of the rental folded flat to make a nice little bed so I kicked out my sleeping bag in the back of the car and set about to getting some sleep. Through my closed eyelids I watched as the moonlight gave way to the deep blues of the pre-dawn. The madrugada. It’s not so much the golden hour that I’ve been drawn to lately, but that hour or two before the sun comes up when the sky glows like a dull electric-blue furnace. The tones are quiet and the landscape is quiet and everything seems like it is enjoying its short moment of peace before the tumult of the day is upon it. I sat up, exhausted but unable to sleep, peeking out the windows of the peculiar car, their inset into the body of the automobile making them appear as awkward maritime port-holes. Lost in a sleepless haze, the metaphor seemed appropriate. It is how we travel, always peeking through a window into another world that is not completely ours, those foreign places we pass by at 65 mph, rapid-fire zoo exhibits, places we imagine as much as we experience.