Part 5: Before The Sun

Chapters

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A drive from Oregon to Florida, to experience music and living across the USA, and ultimately join a jazz cruise. AKA, a listening practice, unfolding in real time—written on the road, in the spaces between cities and notes.

Day Nine

Fort Davis, TX to Austin, TX

Fort Davis releases me before dawn. Thirty degrees. A sliver of moon hangs over a sky crowded with stars, sharp enough to feel etched. The historic hotel behind me still holds the night's cold. I step outside anyway. I am awake.

I'm out by 6:00 a.m., hands wrapped around instant coffee from the lobby, breath visible, Max alert at my side. The cold clarifies. It narrows my focus. Everything unnecessary falls away.

The road carries me through Fort Davis National Historic Site almost immediately. After hours of highway speed the night before, the limit drops to twenty miles an hour and refuses to lift. Two lanes. Long pauses. No urgency allowed.

Texas is vast and indifferent at this hour. My hands grip the steering wheel, stiff with cold. The seat warmer hums, heating everything below the waist while the rest of me stays sharp. Darkness presses in from both sides.

Dead coyotes line the shoulder. One. Then another. Then more than I want to count. Limbs bent at wrong angles. Fur dulled by dust. The cost of crossing fast land that doesn't empathize. I ease my speed—not from fear, but respect.

The desert opens. No cars. No lights. Just the thinning moon, a sky full of stars, and the long stretch ahead.

I think about my father. He loved this kind of driving—early, cold, awake. The desert made sense to him. So did long distances and clean starts.

I remember our drive up the Alaska—Canadian Highway. I was in college. On a full-ride academic and athletic scholarship. School and sport braided together, discipline already built into my bones. That's where I met my college BFF. She already had a car—a black, rear-wheel-drive Thunderbird. Sexy. Impractical. Completely wrong for Alaska winters. Somehow perfect.

That trip bonded my father and me in ways I didn't understand at the time. Hours together. No agenda. We made up stories, sang songs, recorded ourselves on a handheld dictaphone. Boredom didn't dull us. It sharpened us.

Back then, I trained relentlessly. When my father stopped for lunch, I'd run the unpaved road for miles—bear country—determined not to lose my stamina or my vertical. He'd drive ahead, then turn back to find me still running. Locals would pull over, smiling. I'd finish with push-ups, squats, stretching—then climb back into the car and we'd keep going.

He was a Renaissance man. My mother too. But his particular gift was joy. He woke up singing. His favorite question—his theme song—was always the same: "Are you having any fun?"

Yes, Dad. I am.

The horizon lightens. Ink turns to slate. Cruise control settles in. Two hundred miles of visibility. Nothing pressing in from either side.

Passing through Iraan, the smell shifts—petroleum first, then sulfur, then something unmistakably sewage-adjacent. Heat pins it low. This is the Permian Basin: old oil, active wells, storage tanks, wastewater. Hydrogen sulfide carries first—a rotten-egg note you register before thought. I check the gas. I check Max. The air itself is the problem.

Speed traps appear where you don't expect them. Fatigue edges in sideways. A trooper lights me up, then lets me off with a warning. "Be careful," he says. It's information.

I dial the speed down. I'm not proving anything.

Miles ahead.

To Be Continued / See Chapter List At Top