The mountains erupted out of the gaping landscape with impossible might, etched against saturated blue sky with equal parts gravitas and elegance. One wished to capture and hold them, but the scenery never sat quietly for its portrait, and instead wiggled and squirmed disobediently, this moment stirring the heart to rapture, and that, an austere and unforgiving reminder of life’s transience. A sunbeam piercing through the sullen clouds could change the mood of the scenery in an instant, casting brilliant light on a single rocky detail below as if nothing else mattered in all the world, and as quickly withdraw back into the firmament, turning its back in defiance for hours or for days. Other times foggy vapor lay low around the mountains like a petticoat, cloaking the rocky vista and scrubbing away its fine lines, leaving them to the imagination with cool indifference. Still, some managed to hold onto them for a fleeting moment, Ansel Adams through his lens, Georgia O’Keeffe through her painterly brushstrokes, John McPhee with his captivating pen.

Hills, valleys, and flatland below bowed in reverence to the snowy peaks above them, stretching out as an apron with a fencerow hem, or serving as a verdant vessel for freshwater, nature’s mirror upending the crests above in stillness and utter perfection. Populations traversed this landscape through millennia, suffered and perished in the shadows of the mountains, or survived against the odds to yield progeny with stronger bone, muscle, and sinew, and sharper wit. Outposts grew up under them and in time prospered as vibrant centers of industry and art, but always the mountains loomed as an eternal reminder of animal frailty and mortality.

Gemma pushed her wobbly shopping cart across this mighty landscape, a grotesque caricature wholly out of place like a beggar who stumbles into high mass in a glorious cathedral, seeking grace. Thank you for shopping with us, whispered the sun-bleached white script printed across its red plastic hand guard; elsewhere the cart had rusted in the weather, and a single wheel had not even the decency to reach the asphalt shoulder beneath it except on occasion, and instead whirled around crazily in midair.

A brisk early spring wind inspired her to stop and draw up the weary puffer coat zipper all the way to her throat, and to cinch its hood tighter around her jawline. Her bony yellow and purple fingers fished around inside one pocket amid loose change and cellophane wrappers and finally withdrew a single crumpled cigarette; turning her back to the wind and finally lighting it, she drew in a single long drag with her eyes closed tightly, taking in the comforting perfume of tobacco in the same breath and letting her shoulders relax a little.

Her cart overflowed with earthly possessions bundled inside plastic bags mainly, others strewn loosely about the bottom. Stuffed under it were her dogeared foam bedroll and a tightly wound sleeping bag, held together and secured to the frame with bungee cord. Two shopping bags heavy with flotsam and jetsam dangled one on each side of the cart, the better to steady its payload; these she guarded more carefully than the rest, for she kept inside them a few belongings of any real value in the world, but mainly to her.

She carried on down the shoulder towards a vanishing point in the far distance; from time to time the cart lurched unpredictably owing to its one useless wheel, and when it did Gemma could feel the bruise growing inside her upper back, a grievous injury rendered in the night by a carload of renegade boys. Its high beams had shone on her at a distance on the open road; the passenger window lowered as the car slowed on its approach, and for an instant Gemma hoped a Good Samaritan might offer help. Instead, a boy who looked no more than twelve had lobbed a crowbar through it forcefully towards her, catching her off guard. It had only just missed her head but found her upper arm, and knocked her clean to the pavement. Then the car had peeled off into the night, leaving the woman for dead. In the gathering light of dawn, she awakened cold, stiff, and with new vitriol layered over the unceasing hum of despair.

Monsters, all. No child of mine would behave that way, she mused now in the light of day, wincing as the assault unfolded again her mind’s eye, and feeling new pain growing in her opposite hip. But in truth she did not know how they behaved, because Gemma’s progeny had long ago abandoned her to find lives steeped in the industry and art their ancestors had known but that had somehow eluded her. These thoughts swirled inside her head when she stopped to massage her shoulder tenderly and take one last puff on her smoke before flinging its butt into the meadow’s edge and continuing on her way.