But I am also made of juniper and cottonwood. I am also made of sagebrush and tufts of coyote fur snagged on the barbed wire fence.

The desert is also in my heart.

Dawn of the second day found our train in Utah: sunrise over the mesas, cloaked in glittering snow. My heart sang with it, sang through the red canyons, the lonesome flats, all cross-stitched with the tracks of desert things. We came into the mountains. I read rabbit and coyote and elk in the snow.

I have sandstone bones.

The man with the gold rings calls this landscape desolate. He says barren. He wrinkles his nose.

My heart sings. I am made of snakeskin, scorpion, and spine. I am made of silence and bright, sharp stars.

I read mice, mule deer, the brown lanes of cattle, the wandering wide steps of geese along the creekbeds, we pass magpies, bald eagles, a flock of ravens that goes on and on and on.

There are some tracks I cannot read.

I am made of mystery, of the shadow under the stone.