Everyone had always told Cory he was a little too stubborn for his own good, but he didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought. He knew what he wanted when he saw it, and by God, he was going to get it. What did it matter that the land he bought was as bad as the badlands could be, or that none of the neighbors had managed to keep a single tree alive for longer than a few months? They didn’t know what he knew. This was his destiny.

He couldn’t live there like they did - out in his camper on the cracked dry land, listening as it called out roots to hold it all together and save it from the punishing wind. If he didn’t do anything, the dust would take it all away like so many hopes and dreams. He had to go into debt to buy all the trees, but it wouldn’t be the first time and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last time. He would worry about how to pay it all off later.

Cory had to hire someone to help with digging the holes. Soon his parcel resembled Swiss cheese, and he still had trees left, so he lined the road that snaked up the brown and grey hill, where even the sagebrush was in a permanent state of life and death struggle against this moment of glory it had been given by some accident of nature. The trees Cory planted would just be the beginning of a renewal of life in that desolate and wind-revenged slope, he thought.

When they finished planting, winter came, and with it the snow.  As everything around him sank into hibernation, Cory had hope for his evergreens. He needed to hold on to that hope. There was nothing else for him in the harsh, bitter air. He sheltered in his trailer and cranked up the heat, letting his hair grow long and wearing the same pair of stained jeans day after day, cowboy boots pulled up over them the few times he ever had to go out.  He hadn’t been able to scrape together the last few wages that he still owed to his ranch hand who had dug the holes, but once the spring came, he would think of something. He always had before.

Except that the winds came first, and the entire world seemed to rock shakily back and forth like his makeshift home. Through the haze of dirt and sleet that pelted down from an angry, broken sky he couldn’t see the way the trees were bending in two to caress the ground, the roots ripped out to greet the sky and huge gaping holes in the ground like mouths. The few trees that remained upright soon turned brittle, like a Christmas tree left in the living room until February.

Cory tried to stay inside and stopped answering his phone, but the young man who had helped him the previous year came right up to his trailer and started pounding on the doors loud enough for the neighbors to hear. He came and went at least ten times, but after pretending to be out Corey knew he had no choice but to face him the next.

It wasn’t long after that they found him sprawled in the dirt, head down as though he was still trying to bury it in the sand. Everyone knew that the land had killed him just like it had the trees. The ranch hand had been arrested, but everyone said he had only been the weapon that had delivered the blow.