I have camped somewhere perhaps I oughtn't, but I was so exhausted after my sixty-something mile day that I saw a break in the fence and I practically dove for it. The hammock is up, supper is snatches of granola bars and trail mix, and bed is forthcoming.
But through the wind and the crickets, I can hear them. West first, owing to their wildness and frontier essence, East following, because this far into the continent, there's no distinction. Coyotes. They sound different than I expected, even though I've heard them before many times, and often near my own house in Missouri. I expect the low cry of a wolf or a hound, something loud and strong, something I could make with my own voice. What I hear instead is an altogether higher sound; coyotes are sopranos. When one picks up, they all tend to cry out together, giving the pack the sound of a fountain bubbling out across the wide plain. And it's high. They make the top notes of a song from a different world, one altogether foreign and uncomfortable.
The trees that hold me up are scrubby and short. I've had to use branches on their outside edges, and even so, the nylon at my head is rubbing one trunk, at my feet, the other. When the wind gusts, the edge of the hammock catches like a sail and moves, scraping bark and twigs like the bow of a violin, but the music it makes won't soothe me. Mixed with the coyotes, it's a haunting melody.
My watch alarm wakes me at an ungodly dark hour, and I pull down the hammock without a flashlight. Breakfast is two more granola bars. I can't be trusted to light a stove in the dry brush of my camp. The road is empty. On the horizon, far away to the southwest, a line of flickering red lights blink on and off in unison, marking a distant wind farm. Nothing changes for half an hour but the soft quality of the light. My breathing is mechanical. My feet spin at a nearly perfect rhythm dictated by the near-flatness of the road.
Finally, the road comes to a dead T, and my path turns south. That's when I see it: a sunrise to rival my euphoria at Foss. I start to wonder if I'm getting ungodly lucky, or if sunrises and sunsets are just better on the high plains. My mother always said the sky is bigger in Oklahoma and Texas, and I think she meant it as a joke. In Missouri, where I grew up, there's always some kind of tree to block your view, even further north, away from the river, where the land changes ten feet of elevation for every mile you walk. Even there, farmers have fencerows and solitary giants. But here, where trees don't scrape the sky as much as cower from it, there's nothing between the eye and the horizon. The dawn is allowed to stretch, to yawn and gape, to take its time.
Southbound into Allison, Texas, I keep stealing glances at the sunrise on my left. It keeps getting better. By the time I reach town, the colors are starting to become unrealistic. I'm laughing, because nobody would believe the way gold can fade into purple so fast you don't notice the absurdity of the pink between. I drop my postcards and consider leaving town when I see a truck pull up outside what looks for all the world like an unconventional restaurant. There's no "indoors," but there are picnic tables scattered around. There's a sign that says "Open!" and a service window in the side of a small pre-built structure. I make a gamble that nobody will mind if I borrow one end of a picnic table for breakfast.
The woman inside looks out and sees me before I have a chance to ask for permission.
"Hello, there! You look like you've come a long way!"
I take the time to explain my journey while I pull out my breakfast makings. Peanut butter and oatmeal--preferably Raisin, Date, and Walnut--and a stove to boil the water. This is my every day on the trail, partially because the oatmeal is very cheap, and partially because it's a flavor I haven't gotten sick of yet. A thought occurs to me while explaining that I started in Massachusetts. "I'm wondering if you could boil any water for me? It would save me some fuel and work."
"Of course! Is there anything else I could get you? Toast? Eggs? I haven't set up for the day yet, but if you've got some time . . ."
This is the best idea I've heard in a long time. "Yeah, I would love some eggs and toast, are you kidding? I'm not in too big a hurry. I'm just trying to get to Pampa, and it's only, what? Fifty miles away?"
She shakes her head like fifty miles on a bicycle is the craziest thing she's ever heard. Maybe it is. While she runs water to put on her stove, I've got a moment to look around. I've already dropped by the post office. Across the street, there's an old gas pump that looks like it's mainly rust by now. There's a sign for a church across from a separate church. Add twenty houses and that's Allison. The edges of it are extremely well-defined. You would never have to guess at where the town ends and the prairie begins. Looking east again, I see that the sunrise has clambered up over the horizon and begun to stretch itself luxuriously across the sky. The few clouds that streak it only serve to augment a color palette that would drown in pink otherwise. Now there's a flashing of yellow smeared across the underbelly of every purple cloud, and high overhead the pink of the sun is fading into royal blue as the world wakes up. I walk down past a duo of barking dogs to a place where houses and trees don't obscure my vision. For whatever reason, an old friend comes back to me: "I don't know why all these people keep taking photos, taking photos. All the time!"
I ventured an appeasement: "Maybe they want to remember later." We were standing on a bridge overlooking the Neuschwanstein castle. I had already taken a dozen photographs, searching for one I might be able to put on the wall. I had already bought a watercolor from a man who had picked the perfect spot and set up a stool and easel. I was trying to cling to the moment, and when she thought about it, Shaina's nose crunched up with her eyebrows.
"All they will remember later is taking pictures. I think it is better to just look at the thing and to live that moment."
It's hard to say which sight was subjectively better. The sunrise had the ephemeral feel of all atmospheric tableaux, and the castle had an unfinished permanence. Both sights were on the cusp of perfection, but while the sunrise was constantly growing and changing, the castle was captured in a final moment of near-perfection. The first was alive, the second in stasis. It's hard to say which was subjectively better, but I have no photographs of the sunrise that will never again occur. Simultaneously, I could take you directly to my collection of photographs capturing the same view of the castle that you could pay to see today. Maybe Shaina was on to something, but I applied her advice in a topsy-turvy way.
By the time I return to the little Allison Diner, the proprietor isn't the only person there. She sells two pre-made sandwiches to the man in his dually pickup and brings me two cups of boiling water, two slices of toast, and an egg. Fantastic. As she sets down the food, she throws me a pointed question. "You're not going anywhere, are you? I've got to go pick up Lucy and she'd love to meet you."
"Oh, I'm stuck to the bench until the food is all gone, guaranteed."
"Good." Lucy, it turns out, is having car trouble and needs a ride to work. By the time they've made it back, I'm only through with the eggs and toast. Allison is a small town; it isn't far to go. I repeat my story ("From Massachusetts? Holy heck!") to the new arrival, and an older woman pulls up in her Cadillac DeVille to hear the tall tale too ("Where do you sleep? And aren't you afraid on the road?"). Lucy takes a photo of all of us on her phone, to share the moment on Facebook. "Ain't a lot that happens around here. I bet most everybody already knows. Wow! Bicycling across the country. That's crazy." I write down the address for my blog so they can check it out.
Riding out of Allison, the town abruptly disappears and the grass and cows begin again. The distant windmills are no closer than they seemed when I awoke. The wind isn't overwhelming. The day is nice enough I've shed most of my layers already. The sunrise is gone and the sky is a soft blue. There's a gas station with a proper shop and restroom fifteen miles down the road just past where the road I'm on dodges through the nothing town of Briscoe on its way to the smeared out twin towns of Mobeetie and Old Mobeetie. I'm destined to make Pampa by two in the afternoon, but I don't know it now. I don't know that this account won't be written down for another three months and change. I don't know that the sunrise will still rate among the best I've ever seen, and I don't know the regret of looking through the photographs I've got of my trip and only finding that early morning smear at the corner of County Line and 277 where I first turned south and caught a portent of the colors that would develop later. I don't know the regret of forgetting every person's name in Allison. I don't know the regret of finishing my trip.
But I'm only two thirds done. How could I know?
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