We whizz past mile markers and clumps of civilization. From the urban sprawl, into the sprawling open. The landscape opens up before us. Wind farms wave us onward with the rhythmic roll of their graceful arms. Low brush and wire range fences stretch across miles and die in the distance where the false horizon meets the mountains. This is the West.

Much of this expanse is National Forest or falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. These public lands, already threatened, are suddenly more endangered than ever. The U.S. Department of Energy could be spearheaded by a person who once vowed to dismantle it (after he remembered that it exists). We should be alarmed. There is a cause and effect disconnect, an accountability void.

We pass through Tribal lands, marked by the meager resources we offer our nation’s only true race in our weak attempt to make reparations for our violent colonialism. A school goes by here, a hospital there, like architectural exclamation points punctuating this cultural sentence.

These are the thoughts that come to me through the whirring hum of the tires.

–Maggie

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