The GPS Said Twelve Minutes

Nine miles out, the screen said twelve minutes. Everybody heard it and everybody relaxed. Somebody in the back started talking about dinner. They had been driving since six and camp was, apparently, basically there.

Whatever the estimate was based on, it wasn't the road in front of them.

The line held for about a mile and a half. Then it dropped into a wash and stopped being a road in any sense the app would recognize. Loose rock, then a step-down that took two people out of the truck to look at, then a long sandy section where the whole thing became about momentum and not stopping in the wrong place.

Speed went to about eight miles an hour and stayed there. Marisol, driving, stopped watching the screen entirely and started reading the ground, which is the only useful thing to do at that point. The estimated arrival went from twelve minutes to twenty-five to just an arrow with no number, which is the app's way of admitting defeat.

It took two hours. It was also the best two hours of the trip. The light went orange and then pink and then that particular blue, the wash walls got taller, and there was a stretch where the road ran along a ridge with the whole basin opening out to the west and nobody said anything for a while.

They pulled into camp in the dark, hungry, and immediately told everyone else about the route in a way that made it sound like they'd earned something. They had. Nine miles.

Now, when the screen says twelve minutes, somebody in that truck always says 'twelve of whose minutes,' and it's funny about half the time.