“The following evening as they rode up onto the western rim they lost one of the mules. It went skittering off down the canyon wall with the contents of the panniers exploding soundlessly in the hot dry air and it fell through sunlight and through shade, turning in the lonely void until it fell from sight into a sink of cold blue space that absolved it forever of memory in the mind of any living thing that was.”

—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, 1985.