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Published in the Fall 2015 issue of Jenny Magazine.

A little after nine in the morning I rode my motorcycle north out of Alpine on 118 to the observatory. In the distance and to the west were the Davis Mountains, and it would take a while to reach them. I had the highway to myself after a white SUV closely followed by an oil field work truck blew past me. Even though the speed limit kicked up to seventy-five, I cruised along at sixty.

Somebody more poetic—Cormac McCarthy comes to mind—could have used esoteric stylings of byzantine language to describe the West Texas landscape I found myself in, but I was stuck with simple words: the big blue cloudless sky above the horizon in front of me and, thanks to overabundant spring rains, lush green treeless plains to my left and right. It was the kind of world that made you feel small. It was the kind of world that made me feel exactly the right size.

(Read the full essay at Jenny.)