My mother is driving a Range Rover and she says suddenly that we’re gonna take the back roads. She doesn’t say to where, but just swerves the hulking metal vehicle off the pavement toward the cane fields.
Then the grass parts and the wheels are bouncing like crazy across an ancient lava bed where molten rock has hardened in black ripples. They are thick and tall and make me think of mangrove roots.
This isn’t a back road, one of the other kids yells, it’s off road.
She sort of laughs and I can see she’s nervous about how little control she has at the wheel. You think? She says sarcastically.
And then the lava field is suddenly a red rock ramp up from the bottom of a ravine. Big flat ocra colored stones lay perfectly fitted together as if placed there by some cosmic mason in pre-history.
The landscape becomes lunar and southwestern with dead scrub running up the canyon walls.
When we crest, we are suddenly on a wide horizonless plateau and there are rivers and water everywhere. It is like a natural water park, with falls and greenery.
We’re in Denver, mom says.
But I’ve been to Denver and this is nothing like it.
