The land wasn’t flat like in North Dakota.
Low-angle autumn light glanced off buttes alongside Route 2. Barn swallows flitted over hay fields. Dirt driveways in Culbertson and Blair were dry and dusty. Covered porches had been closed up for winter and storm windows installed. The Continental floated ahead of me. The car was an apparition. Wheat and flax fields moved by like they were on a studio set. The land wasn’t flat like in North Dakota. Combines ran up and over knolls and ravines, harvesting wheat. Bright-red fire hydrants had been installed every quarter mile in one field, thirty-foot-tall iron sculptures of birds in another.
