I took this on a rickety little country road in Texas where the speed limit was 75 mph (unfortunately I missed getting the speed limit sign in the shot). My truck was governed at 62, and even that was daring. I’m guessing not many people in Texas die of old age.
As night fell, this view gave way to a darkness the likes of which I had never felt. Driving a semi on one of the thousands of county roads in the middle of Nowhere, Texas in the middle of the night is like flying through space. When I stopped on the side of a road not much bigger than this so that my dog and I could relieve ourselves, it was absolutely pitch black all around me. It was a very disconcerting, scary feeling to be out in the wide open without being able to see anything at all but the millions of stars above, knowing that anything could be staring back at me here on the ground in pitch black backroad Texas, Earth. There’s nothing like standing on the side of a dark road with your dog, wondering if she could take out a coyote if necessary, gazing at more stars than you knew existed, and humming Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” while praying that you’re not peeing on a rattlesnake, to make you feel like a tiny speck in the universe. Texas can be humbling in many ways, I suppose.
I’d love to give you the specs on this photo, but unfortunately I can’t find the original in Lightroom. All I can tell you is that it was taken with a Nikon D5200.