Ten Thousand Horses

The midmorning drive to the airport on Saturday was less than a sixty-mile trip, and on almost any road system in the United States it should have taken an hour at most. But when combined with his trancelike state, the serpentine road-way that led back down the mountain turned Matt’s sober trek into a two-and-a-quarter-hour journey. The sun was intermittently in his eyes as it rose ever higher into the morning sky or was flashing brilliantly against the steep rugged mountains to his left or right as he traced his way down from High Summit’s nine thousand feet above sea level to Colorado Springs’s mere six thousand. Driving through the town of Divide, Matt shook his head in bemusement. Divide, indeed. He was at a divide, and what his personal ...