And there, too. From the air, they beckon like roadside attractions, asking that you pause and contemplate, if only for a moment, setting the whole rig down right there. From the air, desert golf courses look like scabs, like tiny wounds on the skin of the sand. Even the towns are wounds. But land is cheap in the desert, or it was once, and technology barrels forward.
Golf courses unfold again and again in the least green of the scorched earth.
They knew I would show up eventually. Brothers do this. They fly off to Vegas to play golf, to a spot both crowded and lonely at once, familiar yet insulated from everything that is likewise familiar. Playing golf anywhere is like that. You slink away to the edge of your world for some communion.