it was pitch black dark outside when my wristwatch alarm went off thursday morning. i stood in the shower until my second alarm went off about a quarter hour later. i pulled my lunch out of the fridge and stuck it in my bag along with some gloves and clothes, tied my boots, and pulled on my down jacket. it was somewhere south of freezing and not any lighter when i stepped outside to find the rest of the guys.
by the time we hit the good roads it was plenty light and i remembered to text message the teachers to let them know i'd be out of town. we flew along smooth new highways above hayfields and rivers and small villages, past the growing bones of dams, factories and prisons.
somewhere beyond huju the highway gave way quickly to dirt roads, which in turn gave way to snowy lanes lined with white-barked trees. long straight single lines of trees along long straight stretches of snowy road along long straight runs of streams coming down off the mountains were broken infrequently by little bridges cutting to the opposite bank and by small villages of mud and stone and people.
curls of smoke rose from the chimneys in the windless morning. men and women turned hay in farmyards and walked along the road with their pitchforks on their shoulders. one man led his black hog off the road into a stand of trees at a gentle bend of the stream.
eventually the ridges and peaks and streams and fields and herds and haystacks and stone walls converged as they must when one drives up-valley. there we parked, got out, and walked up.
