Parallax

I remember watching corn-rows disappear into the far horizon as we drove. I don’t know if I sought an explanation or if my father, observing my fascination offered the concept. It was the summer I turned five and my parents and I embarked on a six-week loop around the lower forty-eight.

Parallax: 1. a. Difference or change in the apparent position or direction
of an object as seen from two different points.1

The phenomenon came back to me as I drove across Nevada, nearly causing me vertigo forcing me to re-set my gauge of distance. I followed Rte 50 west to Ely then headed Southwest on Rte 6. Next Gas 164 miles.

I descended from the Egan Range and the White River Valley stretched before me. Basin. I could see the entire length of road until it climbed the Grant Range. I guessed—10 miles? 15? I checked my odometer. Twenty-five miles later I downshifted and headed up. Range.

Each Basin, each range was distinct. My guessing game continued, some stretched 13 miles, 18, 20. Descending from the Grant Range to the tapering foothills of the White Pine Range, there were no signs, no habitations, only the range fencing that stretched on and on. In Railroad Valley the first cut of hay was in, irrigated by the water of Bull Creek. The next valley was the pale silver green of sage. Dried grasses gave the next a yellow cast. So too were the ranges identifiable. Some were toothy and jutted against the sky; others were rounded, eroded, sloping. Some had the clear horizontal layering of sedimentary rock, one showed vertical folds as if fifty-foot-high lengths of crepe paper stretched across its face. At a rest area trashcans huddled in the shade of junipers.

After the Black Rock summit a sign pointed to the Black Rock lava flow and even from the road I could see the tumult of basaltic rock on the otherwise level valley. A coyote jogged across the road in front of me then broke into a sprint, it seemed, for the pure joy of running.

Telephone poles gathered in the distance like an art lesson on perspective. A pronghorn walked across the road in front of me then trotted into the sage. He didn’t hurry; I didn’t touch my break.

I passed the Tonopah Speedway and Airport; Joshua trees marked the entry.
A knife’s edge of snow hung above the next range: the high sierras, 40, maybe, 50 miles away. The space between low, mounded plants grew, and stretches of white and grey sand filled the void until, further on, it was mostly sand. This is a parched landscape. The washes I passed had held ATVs more recently than flowing water. By the road a concrete shell of a building still boasted “Bar and Sluts” over the door, around it lay smaller, equally vacant outbuildings. I turned right and follow 6 toward the peaks and California.

Through it all, the foreground kept pace while the distant ranges held their ground; the middle ground shifted into being only through movement. Parallax.

1. "parallax, n.1" The Oxford English Dictionary.