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Dead coyote detour We’re all afflicted by Point A to Point B. Set the alarm. Get to school. Get to work. Fight the highways. Fight the parking. Fight the deadlines. rush rush rush then again the next day, and the next… until that long weekend arrives— and you're back on the highway, rushing to vacation—rushing to a slower place; a slower pace; cursing the time; cursing the cars. When, suddenly, something happens outside the city limits— the rush gives way to a dead coyote on the side of the road, and you think about that poor creature, and your eyes leave the highway to see the open field, from where he came. And you look the other way, across the four lanes of certain death, to see where he must have been going, and catch a hawk just lifting up into the sky… Oh, to slow! to stop! to circle! to linger! So, you take the next exit into the tiny town, and stop on the Square, and walk around brick buildings built before your parents were born— before your grandparents were born; before the superhighways; back when Nature had Her own pathways into town. This is where the real Texas lives— along redbird-flooded back roads; lingering on the front porches and pink granite courthouses along tree-named streets; the spirits of the old forever circling; forever leaping fences and concrete barriers to find their way back home. -66- ...

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