Denver International Airport, Colorado

I was in Fort Collins last week. The weather was poor, the work days were longish, and my motel was surrounded by traffic. I usually try to find an out of the way corner; some place derelict or abandoned or unnoticed; a place for walking around, making pictures, and feeling lonely. But I had no luck until Friday afternoon when we drove down to DIA for our Saturday flight. It was there, at a box-like motel on the edge of the airport that I found what I was looking for. The place is developing quickly—a few acres of condos here, an office park there, a couple of Marriotts over on the other side—but not that long ago it was just a bunch of ramshackle farms on the edge of the Great Plains. And, where it hasn't yet been paved, the prairie is still the prairie. I walked out behind the hotel into a field of weeds, across what was once a country road, and over a pipeline right-of-way. The wind blew cold, the sun was setting, and the fields were muddy with trash and dried grass. But, the larks were back . . . , and the hawks, and the sparrows. I squatted down so I couldn't see the sprawl, and I listened to the song of a lark and watched a hawk hunting. I felt a little better then, more like myself, more like I could tell what was going on in the world.