Late winter last year, I drove the stretch of long, quiet highway between Reno and Winnemucca to go find the editor of a small local paper and talk about doing a city beat column. The town sits alongside Interstate 80, tucked into rows of abandoned, burnt orange hills with their bellies dug out. I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper with the directions written on it and held those in one hand while I drove the main drag, glancing at street signs and numbers. Even for that town, the building I eventually came to was too small and unlikely for a newspaper to be run out of. I got out and went in, anyway.

I decided for other reasons I couldn’t live in that place, but I remembered today the lady sitting on the bench outside the sandwich shop where I stopped to grab something to eat on our way out of town. How she sat there not saying anything. Not looking like she was waiting for anything. She looked me straight in the eye and held my gaze the whole way, who does that? She wasn’t ashamed of her aloneness. After, I took off out onto the interstate, anxious to put less distance between myself and what I thought I was sticking around Reno for all that time. Sorry right then that I’d presumed I was ready to leave it.

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The wind made it hard to hold still, especially with the cold whipping across my bare legs and arms. But I got some nice shots from the peak, overlooking Albuquerque, the foothills, my neighborhood. I’ll try and get those into the New Mexico gallery sometime later today.

It was an interesting feeling standing there shooting that scene - and then remembering what I’d forgotten - that I had stood there almost 20 years ago with my Dad, in that very same spot, taking those very same pictures.

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I’m picking the burrs out of my shoes.

I love that I can walk to Albertson’s to get dog food by way of the sidewalk down to the corner, through the gate of four crooked wooden posts, down the rough rock banks, jump into the arroyo, walk it 50 feet or so, jump out and onto the groomed dirt trail and walk it out, above the city lights, to the main road, hop through two parking lots and then come back the same way I came.

The only navigation after dark being the pattern of cracks in the arroyo to remind me of my exit point.

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