Upon Watching Nevada Unfurl from Seat 30F

you really can't see the place until you've left.

in amongst the sagebrush clenched in the

sandy soil, clatters of scree that may descend at a touch

or may hold firm until earthquakes or doomsday,

long speckled mountain ranges that cannot quite

delineate a satisfactory horizon

because just behind and beyond is another,

slightly taller range,

similar but not the same -

in amongst the broad flat husks of

lakes that were, lakes that may yet be again,

beds bounded by those same sloping speckled fences,

transient launch pads becoming galleries becoming speedways

fracturing back always again to

what they ever were, what they ever will be:

crack tracks remaindered from retreating water -

in amongst the low hills defining defunct watercourses, the

morning-glory promise of life in a

prickly-pear reality of desiccation,

where to crest the hill's brow is

only to reveal more marching hillocks,

another herd of sagebrush-speckled, pinyon-spattered dun -

in amongst the tangles of the state's

single endless interconnected dust track that

suggests a myriad of destinations

but never gets around to arriving, that begins so broad

and devolves so subtly into a holloway

walled with the overhang of grease- and rabbit-brush,

bisected by the zipperish lines of the center rut

(which swells itself and swells until it grows its own brush,

the final warning to turn back) -

I say, this land remains unseen until you leave it.

unseen until you wing out over those

ranges, playas, streamlets, dirt-track-tangles, and see

each beyond each

to the next that gives each context,

see ravines cross-hatch a massif -

see wheelruts girdle mountaintops

then slither down canyonwalls to lap at a dusty trickle -

see a patient siege of lakebeds encircle a range or two -

see the perfect imperfection in nature's abhorrence of the straight line -

and then, yes, until your eye does catch the interstate,

the powerline, the traintrack, the

incorrigible insistence of directitude,

and is drawn up and out of the fantastic swirl

of unpredicted, unseen happenstance, back

to the rhythmic incandescent blink of the wingtip, the stream

of cool recirculated wind from the overhead nozzle, the dazzle

from a neighbor's seat-back screen, the swoop

of the attendant's proffered hand, as they murmur,

"any trash?"

you won't see this place until you've left, and left again.

the mind lingers on the harsh line between sunward slopes

(long since melted)

and the dark northward

(storing for some future).

to ponder the elastic shadow

slung from weird outcrops by the westering sun,

to consider the unholy terracing of a gypsum mine,

to track the faded circles where

irrigation gantries once and no longer traverse cropland,

to caress with approving imagination the curves

that flex and flow from mountain-stone into desert floor,

to cherish the fractal mystery of the wasteland from above,

(now shrouded in the crystalline obscurity of cloud-cover)

(now glimpsed only past the mind's hooding eyelid)

- you once, you finally

see.

***

I wrote this as I flew to a funeral recently. It's been a tough several months since our last Postal Project excursion. My hope is that the project isn't dead; I believe strongly in the value of what we're doing. But it's going to have to be at a walking pace, a labor of love.

In the meantime, I'll continue to post snippets of our Nevada-crossing excursions, whether they're Postal Project-related or not.