Even still. There were ideas stampeding his mind. For example, that despite the glories of great human achievement (cures for malaria, etc.), of great human pride (the camera, the right of certain individuals to vote and own property), of great human advancement (spaceships, vast postal networks), of great progress (too many to list), it was still the humble that people wanted to receive in their mailbox. A sunset. A postcard. A picture from his little camera. And here was another. He had escaped the Great Modern Now. He was in the Great Rock Eternal now on his yellow horse with the blue ribbon, the silent packhorse following. How had this miracle occurred? It occurred because it had to. Fate is fact. How else to explain his new bliss on a yellow horse? Deep down people wanted moonrises not postcards of moonrise, even if they didn’t know it. It was better, too, to be a deputy, he knew now even after only a few months, than to see a deputy in a book or film or on a paper card. Same too with bison rutting by a fuming boil of geysers. Get into the fumes and breathe! Pride! How easy it would have been to stay at home in Verona. He knew, too (suspected strongly), that no one else knew what he now knew. These locals did not. These people—though born in the most spectacular sunsets and moonsets—were blind to sunsets, moonsets, and bison in fumes, blind though not with the blindness of urban folk, who were blind from not seeing sunsets, moonsets, or bison, but, since these things were ubiquitous to the locals, though they wouldn’t know that word either, blind from overfamiliarity with them, also from too little education. Poor things. Pride and humility! He had the rare, perfect mixture of both. As such, the deputy was one of the few who could really see this world: the power of nature, his own fragility and tininess—facts. The facts of this real life (not city life, not modern life, not factory-made in New Jersey) were therefore fresh and new to him, therefore visible, therefore more valuable, therefore (indeed) crystal-clear to his baby-eyes: the Wonder, the Devastating Wonder, the devastating improbability that he should exist at all. How did it happen? Humility! As he rode on this pack trip, his first ever, he was nearly overcome with this new world to which he was now newly born. The bare land the engine of the earth had made back in time for forward in time, it made him dizzy, these thoughts, the green beings exploding about him, the horses, the profusion of smaller humbler furred and feathered hidden in the green, prey animals running ahead, predators padding behind at a distance, hiding in cracks as he passed, waiting for their best chance, since the coyote, the bear, the wolf—he was sure—could not tell a good shot from a bad shot in a saddle.