SOMEWHERE IN KANSAS, ALONG I-70, AUGUST 20, 2008

From Missouri we blasted through Kansas.

Never before had I seen a place so flat. A sea of corn and grain of all kinds blanketed the earth for as far as I could see. Every few miles or so towering silver silos would rise from the green sea into the blue sky. Frequently, but not always, houses and small buildings would be clustered around these silos which, when looked at from a distance, resemble something like archipelagos.

And the people who live on these inland islands and work the fields surrounding them look every bit like the stranded survivors they are. They are tall and thin and strong. Their forearms ripple when their bony, calloused fingers grasp something. Many of the older ones are hard of hearing, from years of exposure to noisy farm machinery. The faces of the youth betray the cold hatred that freezes their hearts of their rural confinement.

Yet they stay. The last names of the people who occupy these inland islands have been on local civic records since those records were first transcribed. Before that, their ancestors’ names can be found in dusty, rotting Church ledgers that first made the trip west in wagons. You name it, these people have lived through it: hostile natives, war, depressions, the Dust Bowl years, cultural upheaval, tornados, ad infinitum.

It all blurs past, at an easy eighty miles an hour, through the VOTE truck’s glass. Through the windshield, the gray asphalt of the highway shoots straight out until it disappears over the horizon. To the point it vanishes, the highway undulates across the bumps and dips that amount to hills and valleys across the great plain. Billboards remind drivers of God’s coming wrath and the need to repent; of places to see six-legged steer and the world’s largest prairie dog; and the newly-expanded roadside porn-palace.

“For truckers,” Clark says.

We drive on. The sky goes from blue to gray to orange then black; the golden sun transforms itself into a burning red ball. As the sun sinks low in the sky, it disappears behind a farm, bathing it in a burning, blinding red light, making it appear as if it’s on fire. An hour later we cross the state line into Colorado. The plain continues all the way to Denver. Clark says that, in daylight, the foothills of the Rockies can be seen in the distance, behind the city. But all I see is black.

We drive through the City into its northern suburbs. As we drive the road steadily climbs. At a light we make a left. Turning into a small canyon that cuts through the hills, the road climbs ever-steeper into the hills. The canyon walls close in around us. A small green sign tells us where we are, “Wondervu” it says. Dallas announces we are close to our destination – a cabin owned by a friend of his on the western side of the Front Range, as these hills are called.

Making a right onto a dirt road, we follow it to its end. “We’re here,” Dallas says.