Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Old Horizons

The truck sat forgotten in among the trees of the shelter belt that had once surrounded a farm yard. It was a late arrival, having been left sometime after the house had been moved, the foundation dug up and the concrete recycled. The quonset and bins had been moved as well, while the corrals were torn down and the laneways plowed under, so that the land could be returned to crop. Someone had decided they couldn’t bear to take down the three rows of trees that encircled the old yard and at some point the truck had been left with them by parties unknown. 

Wheat grew on one side of the trees and lentils on the other. Both were the latest drought resistant varieties, necessary because after a wet spring, June had turned brutally hot and that had continued on through July. The sixth year in a row of drought with no end in sight. Yet the crops showed no signs of suffering from the heat. It wasn’t just the new varieties, though that was a large part of it. The fields, like so many others in those parts, were also covered in solar panels, standing tall above the crops, adjusting their angle to the sun, providing shade to keep the little moisture that was left in the soil from evaporating away.  

The gravel road that ran in front of the fields was still in good condition, though it was empty now more often than not. Most of the farm sites that had populated the road as it wound its way north from the highway had also been turned back to crop land, the result of consolidation that always followed the arrival of more efficient equipment and techniques. First it had been tractors replacing horses, then decade after decade of larger and more precise equipment, enabling more bountiful harvests even in the face of continuous drought. The few people left now farmed vast sections of land, but with the depopulation brought on by their own consolidation they had moved to be nearer to town, which itself was shrinking. Some had even moved farther away, there being little need to stay close at hand. 

Automated drones handled most of the day to day work in the fields now, making daily passes to measure and record everything. They were nimble enough to be able to target herbicide directly onto any weeds that grew up and could even target pesticides as well. Seeding and harvest was largely automated as well, with fields well mapped. The work there was in transporting the equipment to the field. Once it was there and set up they needed only to keep an eye on operations on their phone. 

The drones paid no mind to the truck or the trees surrounding it. They were not part of the field and were therefore irrelevant. If the truck had been left there as a message it was one that was ignored. But they were not the intended recipient. There were still margins, however narrow and restricted, where the old ways still persisted, for whoever might be looking for those spaces. And there was always someone who was, driven by romantic, possibly foolish, ideas who would spot an old truck sitting useless among some trees and would lose themselves out in the deep parts of the Quarter chasing some forgotten horizon.