Thatcher, Colorado was no longer guided by the sensibility of the seasons and finally fell apart after an optimistic century of overgrazing.
A thousand miles away, the mescaline infused oilman sat at a picnic table in a park in Grossmont, California. He was transfixed by what he thought was an emerald deer. He thought the deer was smiling at him and so he smiled back.
But the green deer was actually a flannel bush.
On a rough two-lane highway outside Thatcher, Colorado, two mahogany coffins in the back of a 1937 Plymouth PT-50 half-ton pickup bounced and banged into each other.
Nobody would notice the chips and dents.
