Western Expansion.

Good evening, Fort Collins, Colorado. Many thanks to you and yours for the blazing big sky, the temps solidly in the 50s, and all the wind there is. I guess when the landscape runs flat for three million miles and then out of that comes a Rocky Mountain without a hell of a lot of warning, why then, you get wind. Wind warnings on the interstate north out of Denver. Actual tumbleweeds. Additional wind. And this isn't that windy, say the locals.

So, so strange, the age of the jetliner.

The forecast returns to the Gate City tomorrow night, and what I hear is that tomorrow will be seventy degrees and trying for eighty, a day not to be missed—unless, perhaps, you can stand in the shadow of the Rockies and think about just how far away you are from everything else, just how wee you are, just how much those folks riding west out of St. Louis must not have been able to believe it when these things popped up on the horizon however many days—days—before they got to them. And it'll be 70 again in 2740Xland, right? Right. But somebody take a picture of it for me, would you? Put it in a Mason jar and save me some. In the meantime, I've just discovered fresh-ground coffee in the hotel room, which means if I can survive the night—an MFA reading and the postgame that arrives with same—that all will be well and good come tomorrow.

I do love it out here. All the largeness. I realized I'd missed it from the last time I came west. But it makes me miss home.