North of Thoreau the highway runs out into sagebrush flats where you can watch a rainstorm cross fifteen miles of country before it ever reaches you. Thoreau Navajo Outreach keeps lawns and yards along that stretch — mowing while the grass is up, trimming the edges close, clearing brush and debris, pulling the weeds that follow every good rain. It is the ordinary kind of work that makes a house look tended from the road, and that matters where the road is long and the houses sit far apart. Summer rewards anyone paying attention out here: two weeks of rain and everything answers. Leaving a yard cut low and clean, swept and open to the wind, is a fine way to finish a day.