Nevadastan

Woke up after my wife. She’s out on her early morning walk.

“Hell, the sun isn’t even up.”

Rolling from bed, I go to the kitchen, make some coffee. As the percolator gasps, wheezes, gurgles and chugs, I thumb through my cellphone at the various news stories.

Corona virus, face masks, riots, anti-Trump, left, right, hatred. Stories I can’t believe, one-way or the other.

The Reno Gazette Journal has the headline, “Nevada Search for Missing New Zealand Para-glider Suspended.” Someone must have thought they were being pretty cute, ‘para-glider suspended.’

James ‘Kiwi’ Johnston vanished August 20. Has it been that long since I’ve checked the local news?

Reading on, it says he posted to Facebook, “Dressing for 18-thousand feet in 100 degrees in Nevadastan.” It’s a place I know all too well.

It’s where many US troops are taken to train for desert warfare because it has features and terrain, similar to Afghanistan. I know both very well.

Johnston and a couple of mates took off in their para-gliders, heading to Wendover from the Shoshone Mountains. His GPS stopped sending signals about 250 miles east of Reno.

“That’s some bad land to be lost in.”

Standing on my front porch, coffee in hand, I watch my wife coming up the driveway. She smiles, goes inside, I follow.

“I need to read the local headlines a little more often.”