Chadron

Spent the weekend in Chadron, Nebraska, a town pushing 6,000 located way up in the northwest corner of the state. It's so far from Omaha that its clocks move by Mountain Time. 

 

Traveling by car, I enjoyed the way picturesque stripes of white snow decorated the brown hills. Our oxygen level thinned as the elevation rose higher and higher, all the way to 3,400 feet. For a moment I thought we'd detoured into Colorado.

Sold a few books, spoke a few lines at the Nebraska Writers' Guild's 6 Corners of Nebraska held in the local library. Dropped into a noisy restaurant called The Ridge, and there I ate the best 8-ounce sirloin I've ever tasted. Superbly cooked medium rare, its bright pink center pushed to the edge of red. Cutting that steak felt like cutting butter.

Early the next morning, I set out by foot, surrounded by dozens of churches, hundreds of houses, many big, almost all tidy. And heard thousands of voices trilling in the morning air. Some I recognized, the raucous bluejays, cantankerous crows, hard working woodpeckers, plus a swarm of sparrows, a peck of pigeons, gaggle of geese—and a solitary rooster!

Packing up the SUV at dusk, I stopped to watch a solid gold sunset, the blaze at its core lifting into long slices of pink and purple. Standing sentinel, spindly lines of winter trees raised their skinny arms and bony fingers stiff in the night air, as though they waited only a breeze to cast circles in the night for their coven.