Endangered Trail

As dawn’s first light struggled to breach the horizon, he mounted his cow pony and rode up the rugged incline toward the Hungry Valley Rez. The air was crisp, a sharp 35 degrees that pricked at his skin, a reminder that winter still held its sway.

He paused atop the ridge, gazing down into the Spanish Springs Valley. The scene that unfolded before him stirred a deep ache in his heart—the once-quiet expanse was now a tapestry of homes and bustling enterprises, each structure a witness to man’s relentless march.

His thoughts turned to the coyotes he had observed on his daily journeys, those wily creatures now more frequently traversing the asphalt that had replaced their wild paths. They were harbingers of a fading era, forced to adapt to the encroaching civilization that encircled their territory.

The realization struck him with a palpable weight: he was also an endangered breed. The burgeoning world, brimming with progress and prosperity, threatened to sweep away the land and the essence of his existence.

He sat there, caught in the silence of the morning, feeling the chill of the future closing in around him. Soon, these rides—sacred moments of solitude and reflection—would become nothing more than echoes of a time long past.

The beauty of this land, unmarred by man, would retreat into memory, and he would have to wander the shadows of what once was a solitary figure adrift in the tide of progress.