In the wintry mountains above Santa Fe, the snow is spotted with flecks of ash from the coal-
fired Navajo Generating Station, some 350 miles away.

On a Southern Californian mountain, I tender
the glowing embers of an ancient civilization.

While Henry was roughing it at Walden Pond, his mother was home laundering dragons and
snakes, differentiating gems and stones, distinguishing black and white and settling uncertainty,
without an eye on soot from her son's exhaustless mind.