The half-truck is a piece of the past in the present, and at this point it has become the whole of a synecdoche, because for me it has come to stand for the man I am, who can’t leave well enough alone, who must always put his stamp on things, who carries genetic fossils that cause him to break things to pieces or burn a savannah into this willowed river bottom. Also it reminds me of my neighbor, who likes to break sagebrush and fill in squirrel holes, and of our frustration with the Forest Service, which has finally and firmly allied itself with leaving even pine beetles alone.

The half-truck reminds me that if I break things those broken things will stay with me for life, and it reminds me that I can’t help messing with them until they break. It reminds me that I’ll burn willows again next spring, and will find in their ashes bits of once-hidden things, left there by careless children—now careless adults—or discarded by careless adults who thought that the things they had gotten rid of could not come back to haunt their children.