4 1/2 ft

By Sunday, we had ridden in open-sky country for two days and my vantage still felt fresh. We'd biked by skull- and antler-covered trees and horn-covered barns. I caught myself as we were riding, on the lookout for a sod house homestead. The concept popped into my head as part of the time-travel media information lodged in my head. Following this Mr. Wizard approach to time logic, I admit that, as a child, I was sure my parents had grown up alongside Laura Ingalls Wilder, good neighbors in pioneer times, each with their own Little House on the Prairie, probably living near one other on the banks of the Plum Creek, in Montana, this place of sprawling, wild earth.

My dreamy morning thoughts before breakfast turned to helping the rest of the team with logistics and setting up the flags, cameras, and our bikes. We prepared to start drawing Day 3 at the Charles Waters campground near the Bitterroot trail where we spent our first night under the stars, next to a roaring creek. As I fiddled with the flag for my bike, a man, probably around my age, 54, asked what we were up to. Before I could respond, he told me he just sold his house in Bakersfield, California, and didn’t know what he was doing next. He said,

“Tell me about the flags. They kinda remind me of Christo.”

I thought about the correlation and it made sense. He was right on. He had lived near where Christo had erected the orange umbrellas along Highway 5.