Cold blue is a color in Northern Nevada. Set against Chevy white snow, frozen ground, bitter winds, and bad roads. It’s a true blue, like cheap tarp, silver ore, and old Dodge. It’s also the color of my sister’s ghost. Who talks to me. Tells me to go home. To the ruins of intangible time. Stripped bare and stark as shallow breath. 

Now I’m at Cosgrave. A rest area, in the middle of nowhere, overlooking the Humboldt River on the road to Dun Glen. It has 4.2 stars on Google Maps. “…the views are great…but there’s no soap.” 

It was the last place she went before she died. On her way to Reno. She surrendered there. Exit 158. Turned around. She went back to Winnemucca, twenty miles east where we grew up. Home to die. Then time collapsed and bent my knee.

Just off the parking lot, a path leads to a series of interpretive signs oxidized by the sun. They convey the hardships pioneers faced when they traveled through the Nevada desert on their way to golden California. Their horses died, oxen too. They abandoned antiques, drank rotten water. They hated Nevada. Called the Humboldt, “The Humbug”, said the desert was a wasteland…far worse than could be imagined. 

My sister has been waiting for me, in our beloved wasteland. It took me years to come back to her. She is subatomic. I close my eyes and lean into her memory. I remember everything I tried to forget. I sway there for a minute or two and through the howling wind, I hear her say, “Welcome home, sister.”