At the End of the Road

Abandonned bikes at Burning Man. Must be thousands. I saw another pile as big as this. All dusty and sad looking. Some kids would probably love to have one of these poor cycles. The playa is vast and bare and dusty again, but that's how the playa is. These landscapes speak to me--landscapes of the heart. I was born in Montana and must have been imprinted with big sky like a duck to water.

When the plane was taking off from Reno, at the very moment of liftoff, I had an idea for the first paragraph of Festival Madness, and I reached under the seat, pulled out my handbag, found pen and paper and started to scribble. Inspiration strikes at the damdest times, n'est pas?

We flew over the search area where Fossett's plane went down, an inhospitable area of lonesome peaks and valleys. Look like they could swallow a city.

Boston is green and cool and utterly unlike the great deserts of Northern Nevada. Where am I? What country is this? The mind wants to know.

Onward,

Grapeshot