Half-collapsed hilltop cairns. The sun burns away the clouds, and we strip down to our T-shirts. I remove my helmet. Bluebells line the pavement, attended to by frantic bees. A herd of elk races across a freshly cut field.
Mosquitoes nibble our ankles.
The land is rifted with dry valleys and pocked with buttes. When our shadows grow long we race to Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs, where Anne and I, silly as teenagers, ride the spiral slide until well after dark. Of course, the one night we determine that it's too beautiful to unpack our rain fly, a major storm moves in. When we emerge from our damp tent at sunrise, the whole structure blows away and gets snagged in a barbed-wire fence, puncturing the bottom with holes. It does not say what to do with bicyclists.