I bit a dried ball of piñon pitch. It tasted like cloves.

The wide horseshoes of mesa canyons, naked slopes of the Morrison formation, eroded, sleeked by rain and full of the sandy tongues left by its torrents: a water-made landscape without a drop of water in it.

The Morrison slopes were fissured, pristine—sandy corries where only animals had walked. Footprints of coyote, mice, ravens, deer.

*