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FALL 2019 ISSUE 02 / VOL . 04
Oddly , a day of wheat is far from boring . Now I know why Monet painted the same haystacks 28 times .
Toward the end of the day the terrain shifts from absolute flatness to small hills and mounds . Water trapped in roadside depressions captures the golden stubble — each pond looks like it has the eyelid of a snake , retracting as the angle changes .
We ride toward clouds . It is impossible to judge due west , but the obscured sun still illuminates the edges of higher clouds , visible through patches of blue . What appear to be mountains on the horizon are potash mines . For the first time in five decades I wish I ’ d paid more attention to those grade school maps with tiny symbols for crops , minerals , livestock . And other resources . Nothing prepares you for the size , the abundance . What is potash ?
I tend toward silence and observation , fly-on-the-wall journalism . Don is more garrulous . He believes in the European notion that “ Time is relationship .” He makes a human contact at every pit stop , meal and roadside encounter . Over breakfast he asks the waitress what she knows about potash . I watch her face as she recounts a tour of a mine , descending on an elevator for 20 minutes . Her guides opened a panel in the side of the cage and she watched the earth rush past . She watched men dig out rooms of potash , rooms the size of warehouses . When she returned to the surface she could taste something like salt on her lips . She thought it was used in fertilizer , but the fact was not as transfixing as the look on her face as she relived the descent . I call Don the conversational equivalent of a Seeing Eye dog . Lesson : Scenery has a human component .
Above : How strong exactly is that corral gate ? A bull outside of Golden ponders the mating potential of an R 1200 RT . Bottom : Everywhere we looked there was abundance ; the fields of gold that feed America .