There should be a name for where the river starts running, not in one place, but spread out like capillaries, nerve endings, roots, branches, a name

for where the tips are reaching, touching snow fields receding up the mountain. The snow disappears and the land turns green, new grass,

moose meadows, flowers, white pelicans floating on the lake.

Up high on the mountain the sun hits the snow

and it vaporizes straight into clouds, rising up like dragons

or Tibetan Garutas.

The air is newborn and crying. They call it the headwaters, but it's not the head,

it's the lungs. And there are two of them, one on each side of the continental divide, which is 3,000 miles long,

200 miles wide, the Rocky Mountains.

That's how I was thinking about beginning my story. mountains.

That's how I was thinking about beginning my story, about going to Colorado and riding my bike

around the continental divide.

I thought it would be a good metaphor, the divide, in presenting the opinions and lives of people I met along the way,

and perhaps I'd find a way by talking and listening to bridge the cultural divide that separates our country.

But while I did go ride my bike back and forth over the mountains, crossing the divide in

a number of beautiful idyllic places, taking the measure of late springtime in the Rockies,

I did not talk to anybody, at least not on tape.

I was sitting in my car at a lake, about 8,500 feet above sea level,

the top of the Platt River,

when Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord.

I listened to a speech on the radio. Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Accord.

I listened to his speech on the radio,

...