Dan had saved a corner of his cheeseburger for Fatback, and the dog was making a great ceremony out of licking the ketchup and onions off the greasy bun onto the seat beside me. We drove without speaking. Only the sound of Fatback’s incessant licking punctuated the great peace of the high-plains evening. I marveled at the sense of well-being that this vast landscape induced in me. There were no jagged edges, no fragments of meaning. All was massive, singular, and soft under the prayerful canopy of the sky. I thought of an old farmer I had met once in Bismarck. I had asked him if he ever went east. “Nah,” he answered. “Trees make me nervous.” In the deep amber peace of this prairie twilight, I could well understand what he meant. Grover and Dan rode in the front seat in silence. It had been years since I had ridden in a silent car. I generally tried to fill the space with music or talk from the radio or a tape. I counted it a deficiency when I was forced to ride in quiet. Now, in the enveloping dark of Grover’s old Buick, the pleasures of silent travel came back to me from my childhood.
