Just before HWY 287 I got stuck in a line of cars waiting for a flagger to turn his flag around. Got stuck behind a cattle truck, empty, but the back end caked in dried bovine shit and bearing bumper stickers representing something of the driver. Things like:
"To all you virgins... Thanks for nothing."
And,
"Show me your hooters."
And,
"Bad boys drive bad toys."
And,
"Leg check 50 FT.: Raise skirt please."
When we started to move, the cattle truck, and one just like it in front, took off at 80 on this little two-lane highway. I couldn't catch them. They were passing cars on hills and curves and flying up the long steep grade toward a mountain pass.
No kidding.
At times I held back, fearing disaster as one or both of them slipped into the oncoming lane and I couldn't see up the road far enough to be sure of the outcome.
And we were climbing. Climbing so much that at one point I stopped trying to catch the trucks and turned to notice a ranch cordoned valley to the right, emerald and glowing, cowboys on the clock.
On the left, mountains I couldn't see the top of until we were, ourselves, at the top of the mountain pass. At 9600 feet. That's Muir on Rainier.
That's when I looked up to the left to higher mountains, these like mesas, like plains the earth fell out from under hanging from the sky in mustardy sheets that reflected the sun.
It was overwhelmingly beautiful.
So I started to scream. Just hollering like cowboys must, all the way down the mountain behind those trucks, those trucks fierce and anonymous just like in that movie Duel.
And following them now I watched the hills soften a little and to me it seemed like a woman slowly opening her legs it was getting so soft.
I love sitting motionless behind the wheel commanding the world animate. Love making it all go.
As we came down from that pass we entered the earth through pale pink gathers that gradually deepened to a hearthen color, sheltering and dark yet smoldering. I wanted to bore all the way in and demand she not move any longer, knowing she can't not move if I'm still driving.
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