We travelled far and long, and I see only snapshot memories, little half-developed glimmers of vision born from fevers and the sound of children on the stairs and the whole world shifted.

The early morning we left in the freezing fog, I saw a herd of five black angus steers huddled beneath the mossy rocky cliff and the narrow black branches of the dripping fir trees. It had rained in the night and all the world felt damp. The cattle and the firs stood black in the fog, with ice on backs and branches. Ice outlined the trees on the tops of hillsides and the dawnlight glimmered through the silver.

Downhill we drove, great sweeping expanses and vistas of another world, the sunlight came in a rush when we reached the rainshadow, the brown lands. Stunted oaks and scraggled pines twisted out of the rocky ground, badlands stretched flat and craggy away to the east. Up again, up up up to the top of the pass and then down, clear sky cold with wintry sun, shaggy horses in the high valley breathing plumes of smoke.

The mountains collide at Shasta, the Siskiyus and the Cascades rise up and clash together, thunder from some ancient eruption and earthquake can be felt in the basin.
The up again, high into the wild unkind spurs of barren rock and forbidding dark gnarled trees. The pass spills out of the mountians abruptly, down and down, sweeping first east then west, a long grade to the hills then down to the valley.