Prolonged Exposure

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The late-afternoon sun angled across the sweep of the bunchgrass prairie, casting harsh shadows around mesas and on the lowlands where arroyos cut the sand into fantastic patterns. The wind gusted fitfully, as if nervous about the clouds forming over the San Cristobal Mountains to the south, along the Mexican border.

With my eyes closed, I could watch the changing patterns of shape, color, and texture. I could even see where an aging pinon clung in the loose, powdery soil on a distant rock outcropping, and I could see, in the shade under that pinon, a Saye’s ground squirrel industriously sifting through the pinon-nut hulls for one that held a morsel.

The image was strong enough that I could smell the prairie, and hear it, and even, sitting there quietly in my chair, imagine that I could feel the ghostings of fine sand particles across my bare feet.

The landscape would hold as long as I kept my eyes closed. If I opened them, I’d see the hedgerow that marked the back property line of my daughter’s home. And beyond that, if I cared to get up and stroll across a quarter acre of manicured bluegrass, I would catch a glimpse of power lines and rooftops, an expanse of suburbia that stretched, as far as I knew, all the way east to Lake Huron.

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