mile 340

After the first three hours on the road, the land softens. Losing the tension lines of the rough crags and heavy brush of los angeles, it slopes into rolling greens, hills shaped like a woman lying on her side with white turbines in her hair. Everything green and grey and white and soft. Gliding through a rain storm then out again into the sun, we watch the greens give way to the pales: Pale sand, pale sky, pale green cacti, darker joshua trees, the land flat and severe. We round a corner and the sand becomes piles of boulders, a giant's rock collection arranged by shape and size. The pales turn to dark, rich tans, and there are joshua trees and joshua trees and joshua trees assembled like an army, like lichen in the valley below the boulders. And beautiful seems like such a simple, stupid word, but for a while, it is the only word I can say.

Then the sun is gone and the colors are gone, but the shapes remain and we're speeding alone on a one lane highway under a full moon while the dark triangles of some nameless mountains glide by almost too slowly to notice. And still we haven't yet reached the California border.