Arizona
I worked with a drilling company in Arizona. It was our job to go out into the mountains and drill for earth-core samples. The samples we took were sent Into Minneapolis and tested. If the resents were positive, the mining company would come and dig in the earth. I was classified as a drilling assistant and it-was my job to follow the driller around and do anything he told me. My driller was in his early fifties, and he liked to talk about baseball and smoke cigarettes. The mining company supplied us with a small camper that had two beds and a small kitchen and an air conditioner that didn't work.
We camped in a string of the Rookies that bordered the northern rim of the valley. At night, we could see the lights of Phoenix, and the tremendous sky that In Arizona seems to be larger than the sky of Towa.
My driller had a terrible time trying to sleep. He smoked too many cigarettes and he would wake up in the middle of the night coughing and spitting. He’d light a cigarette and puff on it through the night. It was insanely quiet in those mountains. You could hear the gentle wind blowing, and the tumble weed bouncing along the ground and the silence would make you think of things that you thought were impossible to think of. I would think of my driller and the life that put him out In the wilderness and the roads of life that put me out in the wilderness, and I would fall asleep under the huge sky and know that there was probably a party In Phoenix with a pretty girl.