Deep In This Land
January, 1990
there was no sky, no valley, no shadows—only the bitter emptiness of the landHe dismounted and went ahead to break trail through hip-deep drifts and so came out of the pines to the rim of the valley and paused there to rest himself and his hard-pressed horse. The great wind had quit, the flakes fell in thick, wavering laziness and the trees were brittle-still; the weather pall hung low and he had only a shadowy view of the rough bare land that ran away toward the plains of central Oregon, but di...