So here you are, leaning against the trunk of your car, that peculiar vessel to which we Americans grow so attached. A man’s first, best marriage is to the car of his early life (you paraphrase Updike, because most worthwhile sentiments must be paraphrased). Somewhere amidst the voluptuous glacial hills of Central Michigan, their redundant, phugoid suppleness, vaguely lubricious. Hollows and dells, creek beds parched after a dry summer. But the sky portends rain, a tenebrous and low pewter. The thrush of the interstate is nearby, invisible and omnipresent white noise. The field you are pondering wading into is ripped by wind. A lone tree – elm? oak? red maple? you should know these differences, the quotidian names of the world, but you don’t – defines the field, cravenly usurping the wind’s attention. What here is unseen? The insects and the roots, the primordial bacteria, the overlooked machinery of existence. You think you could spend a lifetime walking this field, season by variable season, and still be surprised anew every day. We miss too many details, are encouraged to miss them. You smoke a cigarette – for the hell of it, why not be destructive? – and try to manage an essential picture of the place. You could spend a lifetime, you think. But you won’t, and soon you are on the highway, you and your betrothed.