What does the constant divide divide, anyway? Will we see a big line on the ground?” Tara was tense and she knew Nick was, too, but Claire was having the time of her life, asking continuous questions from the backseat of his truck. Driving in fairly heavy traffic on I-70W, Nick had let Tara do most of the talking, but he answered Claire’s last question. “It’s an invisible line that marks where rainwater and rivers flow in different directions on the Contin-en-tal Divide, not the Constant Divide. If you had a rock and you poured water on top of it, the water would slide off in different directions. To the east of Continental Divide,” he went on, gesturing broadly so she could see from the backseat, “water flows into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it goes toward the Pacific. This pretend line goes through five different states.” “Colorado and what else?” came the clear voice from behind them. If Claire didn’t have a seat belt on, Tara was certain she would have tried to crawl up into the front seat so she could keep an eye on every nuance of her and Nick’s facial expressions.
