Of the many surprising things to happen in the States was the frequency with which we went through time zones. We had been warned of it, but it wasn't as simple as passing a state line and going back an hour: in some states, Native American lands keep to one time zone whilst the rest of the state keeps to another, so we would pass in and out of zones, not ever quite knowing what the time was. Often we found ourselves turning up in a place and finding we had an extra hour before things shut, and sometimes we arrived and were noisily putting up the tent when we found out it was 11pm and everyone was asleep. In the end we ceased to be fazed by it; we were mostly keeping to the time as dictated by the sun, so it didn't really matter what time the clock said.

Driving into Utah, having had an inspiring conversation with a Navajo man about his ranching on the family corral just above the Grand Canyon, I was struck with the feeling, again, that I was putting my energy into the wrong kinds of work and should get on with writing. All of a sudden, the skies darkened and it started to rain, large, heavy drops. Just beneath the red cliffs to the side of the road and stretched above a small white house, a complete rainbow appeared.