Against All Odds

 It hung on longer than I believed it could, far longer even than it should reasonably have been expected to survive. Each time I rode past and saw it still growing there in the middle of the trail was a surprise; even the bookies out in Vegas were perplexed by its surprising longevity. Someone was losing money on this bet, someone else was winning big. When the trail was first cut through the wilderness it was one of many bordering the path; any passer-by would have been hard-pressed to distinguish it from any other of its neighbors. Time had other plans though and a procession of passing wheels cut another path, wider around, cutting it off from the others, isolating it. Seemingly overnight it found itself no longer on the edge of the trail, but in the middle of it. Once that happened it could only be a matter of time, yet month after month, it was still there. Once I thought its time had come, it had been worn down to barely a few nubs sticking out of the ground, but then Spring arrived and it seemed to recover. Some riders, probably, would not have given it a second thought, but I think enough riders saw it's battle of survival against overwhelming odds, noted its location and made the effort to steer clear and around. I was rooting for that one sage plant, isolated but hanging on in the middle of Tin Can Alley. All the wishful thinking, all the steering wide around was for naught, as last evening's ride revealed it was gone. Whether by intent or by accident, it was gone.

all that remain is a dark patch of dirt where the little sage grew

I stopped for a while to root for these little gnat-catcher-type birds. There were a bunch of them and boy were they getting their fill - so many bugs: