Path Lights

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They look at the bottle; they look at me. My first guess is that somebody threw it down from the rim of the arroyo. But then it would have bounced down the slope — it wouldn’t have stopped dead like this.

I think of the pilot tossing a Coke bottle from a plane in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” But, as a detective once told me, “Most of the time, we find that the thing that probably happened? Is the thing that did happen.”

So eventually I turn around and see the San Rafael Bridge — which I just walked under, so I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s there — and then I understand what must have happened.

Because you might not know. You might drive across the bridge and toss a bottle over the rail never guessing that people walk and ride horses below. Or you might say to yourself, “This bottle could fall to the bottom of the arroyo and hit someone in the head, which is O.K. by me.”

The dogs want to get going. Either they’ve already forgotten the bottle or they’re worried that another one might be on the way. But I tell them to stay, and I pick up the bottle and hold it in the sunlight. It’s empty but still cold. Blind Street Ale is what it held.

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