"Don't know what went down here," he said. "Don't much care. But a man dies, it needs to be marked." Simple sentiments divested of qualification or abstraction, plainly spoken—just as the speaker was out here attempting to lead an unabstracted life. It was foolishness, but it was a damned near heroic strain of foolishness. Driving back I thought how, as Americans, there are mountain men or cowboys inside us all, Henry David Thoreau and Clint Eastwood riding double in our blood­streams and our dreams.
-- James Sallis, Salt River