A summer apart
I left Illinois, the freeway clogged by downtown Chicago to Wisconsin, to drive across Minnesota, over the Mississippi, through the green and tree-less rolling hills of South Dakota, around the increasingly craggy tops of Wyoming countryside, and into Montana, where the mountains come together like folds in a scarf. My drive to work has constant reminders of fatal sentences. Little crosses dot the winding two-lane roads, bunched together like flourishing bouquets of roses. 4 together, right outside Missoula; beyond the Sinclair gas station, 3 placed in front of a study pine. The hit deer sit still in the highway medians, their eyes open (I can see it even though I rarely go below 70 miles per hour), their heads crooked back beyond the natural curve of their necks. My home for the summer is a converted hotel. Dark wood masks the age of the building, but swallows have nested in the entry beams in front of the lobby for decades, one of the signs inside tells me. Their droppings coat the w...