Revisited

A highway tries to contain a culture, a lifestyle defined by the two major cities it contains. I chose to leave it in 1985 to build a new life. Twenty two years later I return. Outside the confines of this circumnavigated harness, the harsh West Texas landscape opens my eyes to a different kind of life. Oil derricks, cattle ranches, windmills and cotton fields are the scenery for hundreds of miles along the way. When I arrived at the place that I once dreaded and, by grace, escaped from... it was gone. Beautiful new upscale apartments now populate the the area where I once died. The street no longer exists, and the I can only imagine that remnants of the building I stayed in might be buried beneath the soil.