Beowawe, Nevada, is a tiny, almost nonexistent settlement at the edge of Nevada’s open desert. Its sparse roads connect the town to Interstate 80 and to isolated country of rolling hills, rocky outcrops, brush, and waterless arroyos. In the story, this landscape frames Sandy Sarver’s changed relationship with travel: roads once associated with abuse become routes she chooses for herself, though one unexplained destination continues to draw her back.

Setting and Access

Sandy’s house trailer stands on an unlandscaped half-acre at Beowawe’s southern edge, along Route 21, a two-lane blacktop. Heading north through town, a traveler soon reaches Interstate 80, which runs east toward Elko and west toward Battle Mountain. The contrast between that familiar route and the empty country to the south defines the town’s setting: beyond its few buildings, the road gives way to a vast, sparsely inhabited landscape.

The Desert Roads

On Christmas morning, Sandy drives south rather than taking Route 21 toward the interstate. After about fifteen minutes, the route dwindles into a gravel roadbed that continues through another eighty-three miles of uninhabited terrain. She turns east onto a one-lane dirt track, then eventually leaves the track and crosses the open ground, traveling north and west. The winter landscape is mostly bare and brown, with only scattered patches of shallow snow; the distant mountains are white, but the local region receives less than fifteen inches of precipitation a year.

Sandy’s Return to the Landscape

The drive carries a personal reversal. Sandy has only recently understood how her father’s abuse made highway travel frightening: as a child, she was driven between Barstow and Las Vegas, where he sold access to her, and the road meant either dread of what awaited or return to the abuse at home. Now she drives fast and skillfully in a four-wheel-drive pickup, taking pleasure in the movement and the open country. The change does not erase the past, but makes the act of driving her own.

Without setting out to reach it, Sandy arrives at a familiar place in the surrounding terrain. Her subconscious often guides her there by wandering routes, so the arrival usually surprises her. The slopes, ridges of rock, grass, and brush look much like countless nearby places, yet this spot alone gives her a profound peace. From there, Interstate 80 lies only a couple of hundred yards to the north, while the Tranquility Motel and the Tranquility Grille sit beyond the highway on uplands to the northwest. Sandy glances toward them only once; her attention remains on the ground around her, whose mysterious attraction and quiet stand apart from the nearby traffic.