The Twenty Sixth Day....

At the Grand Canyon Andy and I sat on stones. We drank a tribute to the endurance of all deep things, that they go on getting deeper, and left in the wake of a motorbike gang, though of the friendly and peaceful kind, at least they were to us, and arrived late, but not too late, at Monument Valley as the night came in, the rocks I had known in pictures and cowboy films for sixty years standing around us as domesticated as garden gnomes waiting for you in your garden after a long day. And in this soft last-light, and in the settling down of the day's swollen heat, with the huge stones darkening into deep reds and purples and yellows, the tiny lights of the human places in the distances, it was as comforting a place as I have ever been.

Once I woke, post-drunk, in a nearly-dawn Edinburgh graveyard, lying on the grass on no grave in particular, tall stones all around, alone but not alone. It was, like Monument Valley, kind of re-assuring.

There were differences. A grave-yard in Edinburgh is a lot wetter for a start.

But we were already shadowed by our time in America running out. So we kept going, though often stopping (being easily distracted on principle) then going again.