In the dirt, some pigeons are pecking like a meandering troupe of tin toys. Beyond them, a row of trees hang in the air, swaying softly — not unlike the willows that decorate mourning samplers. In this part of the world it’s hard to tell the seasons from simply looking at leaves (these are mostly celadon with tawnier patches). Behind, a colossus camel back juts up; it must be 30 stories high. And above all — that blue, always that blue — a situation of color and space so abstract it’s hard to imagine any feel comfortable with it.

Between the “mourning” trees and the pigeons a small girl rides a palomino. It canters from a trot. Its wheat colored muscles twitch. The metal tack glints. Closer, a woman sits on a dilapidated golf cart; she is 82 and resembles a gaunt Gertrude Stein. She wears sunglasses that look to be borrowed from a Nascar driver. The old woman and the young girl are communicating through discrete microphones. The woman’s voice is quiet and constant — even when it admonishes it’s soothing: “good girl, yes that’s right, use your knees, no, no, you’re leaning forward, up, up.” Her dulcet monotone matches perfectly the ceaseless sound of a nearby highway.

Between a pair of rotting white fence posts, about six feet apart, two tight rows of ants rush in opposite directions. Some carry what look like eggs, some seldomly, a bit of leaf.

Apparently not too far from all of this, an eight-million-year-old mastodon skull was found.