The story
Roll your window down a finger's width and let the desert in. Out here on the seaway flats the creosote runs to the horizon, and rising up among it stand the ocotillo, those tall spidery wands clawing at the sky, leafless and gray most of the year, tipped with red flame after a rain. The land is wide open in every direction, more sky than ground. By day this is a sun-struck immensity. By night, with no town lights for miles, this same black sky fills edge to edge with stars, which is exactly why they keep it dark out here on purpose.
