::THE LONG WAY::

Today I drove from Port Aransas to Dallas. 'Twas nine hours of exhaustion and Tahoe-induced claustromania. When darkness fell, though, the border between inside and outside blurred (because inside the vehicle, it was dark, too), and my surroundings blossomed:

Just as Counting Crows's "Einstein on the Beach" rounded the lyric, "One more sun comes sliding down the sky," I spied a shooting star to the north.

Lines of semi trucks, slumbering for the night with their amber marking lights blazing, looked like constellations on the side of the road.

A band of clouds arched across the dark-dome sky and looked arrestingly like the Milky Way.