Enter into open space, a high point on a slope over the river valley. At dusk, the leaves of the trees carry a darkness over the road, crumbling black asphalt veering over the edge of a bluff. The air is thin and weightless. Nobody has driven here for a long time.
The trees obscure any visual sign of life in the valley below. Underneath the foliage, somewhere, there are houses along streams. Someone is pulling weeds in their garden, piling brush to be burned. Someone else is bringing out the food for a party on their back porch, looking longingly, for a second, into the dark understory.
The peak this road was built on seems higher than all the others around. It stands empty of the swarms of insects that usually gather at dusk. The view of the valley is made, not by the usual construction of a scenic viewpoint, but by the slow failure of the slope itself. It seems like a very poor place to put a road.