Illustration by Radio 19Tip By Malia Wollanwhile El Paso fought the State of Texas for
decades to avoid being enveloped by Cen-
tral time. And then there’s wishy- washy
Arizona, which splits the year between
Mountain and Pacifi c thanks to its refusal
to participate in daylight saving time.
Rural grandeur is all that comes to mind
when most outsiders think of the Moun-
tain West. For the rest of the country, the
fact that people actually live there seems
somewhat inexplicable — especially when
they fi nd themselves in the improbable
position of placing a call to Denver or Salt
Lake City. ‘‘Wait,’’ these coastal suits are
forced to ask their assistants, ‘‘what time is
it there again?’’ Whenever I’m back home,
I delight in being slightly askew from the
daily rhythms of white- collar productivity
— two hours behind New York, one ahead
of San Francisco — and how that trans-
lates into a feeling of freedom from the
liabilities of membership in civil society.
Comfort with our hinterland status is also
what distinguishes those of us on Moun-
tain time from our neighbors on Central,
forever ensnared in an unwinnable game
of catch-up with the East Coast. Unlike
in Dallas or Chicago, there’s not much
wealth to be had on Mountain time, and
even less notoriety. What the time zone
off ers instead is a sense of detachment
from the economic and cultural centers
of the nation.
The appeal of that apartness should be
evident to anyone who has welcomed the
slackened pace of life under quarantine.
What’s special about Mountain time,
though, is its resonance with the natu-
ral splendor it encompasses. When your
daily life includes views of snow- capped
peaks, vertiginous canyons and crimson
buttes, the exigencies of the present have
a tendency to fade from notice. So you
miss a conference call or forget a doc-
tor’s appointment. Take a breath. Go to a
window. Watch the sun set behind the far
mesas, casting the horizon into bands of
orange and lavender. Once darkness falls,
admire the candor of the stars. Mountain
time is governed less by minutes or days
than by a metronomic knowledge that the
landscape that overawes our funny little
species predates us, and will outlast us, too.
Some of that feeling is, of course, illu-
sory. There are still offi ces on Mountain
time, as well as ranch hands who need
to be mindful of the daylight and truck-
stop attendants dozing off on the night
shift. Sure, maybe the part-time denizens
of glitzy retreats like Aspen and Jackson
Hole keep their iPhones close even as
they kick up their Luc chese boots. But
for those who actually live on Mountain
time, hours can be more than mere rows
on a Google calendar, each day dutifully
color- coded into a rainbow of commit-
ments. One can only hope that as the
pandemic drags on, the disconnect that
many people elsewhere are feeling with
their old lives will prompt them to follow
the West’s example, to slough off the stric-
tures they previously tolerated.
Last year, I was reporting a story on
the Navajo Nation and forgot that it,
unlike Arizona, follows daylight saving
time. Thinking I had plenty of time to
kill before an appointment with a source
in the town of Kayenta, I took a detour
through a hamlet where a tall grove ofshady cotton woods stands opposite
the shuttered Shonto Trading Post, the
height of the trees seeming to defy the
region’s aridity. I paused to admire how
the cotton wood leaves shone yellow in
the October sun, then watched, heart
momentarily caught in my throat, as
a school bus came lurching down the
cliff face that overlooks the village, its
bulk somehow negotiating the hairpin
curves of the narrow, unpaved road. All
seemed well when I fi nally rolled into
Kayenta, until I glanced at the clock in
my motel room and realized that, rather
than arriving right on time, I was now
an hour late to my meeting. I called my
source and apologized profusely, but he
couldn’t have cared less — he drove back
over to meet me, and we chatted well
into the evening.How to Suture a Wound
‘‘You can use thread, dental fl oss, even
the hair from a horse’s tail,’’ says Cheryl
Lowry, a physician and deputy director
at the Center for Polar Medical Opera-
tions at the University of Texas Medical
Branch in Galveston. During a decades-
long medical career in the Air Force,
Lowry sutured wounds on all seven
continents, including one on a bleeding
head after an icy amateur rugby game in
Antarctica and one on a man’s leg after
he accidentally slashed it open with a
machete along the Amazon River in Peru.
A medical- grade suture kit is the most
hygienic option, of course, but some-
times you have to improvise. Lowry once
stitched someone up using a loose thread
pulled from the hem of her own shirt. ‘‘If
you’re using dental fl oss, make sure it’s
not the fl avored kind,’’ she says.To determine whether a wound needs
stitches, peer closely. If you can see fat or
muscle, which Lowry says looks ‘‘beefy,
like raw steak,’’ you should probably
close it. Wash your hands with soap (wear
sterile gloves if you have them). If you’re
untrained in suturing and happen to have a
skin stapler, use that (anyone can order one
online). Lowry suggests practicing with the
stapler on a banana at home before you
set off into the wilds. Duct tape, butterfl y
bandages and cyano acrylate glue can also
be used to keep a cut closed. Before you
suture, clean the gash out with water. If
possible, try to create some water pres-
sure by using a bottle with a squirt top or
by fi lling a plastic bag, poking a hole in it
and squeezing the water into the wound.
Most suturing needles are curved like
new moons. If you have only a straight
sewing needle, bend it into an arc. Hold
the two sides of the wound closed with
your less dominant hand and stitch with
the other, starting in the middle. Like other
needle work, suturing can involve a variety
of stitching techniques. Lowry prefers a
method called the interrupted stitch, where
each stitch is tied off using a surgeon’s knot.
Pull the knot tight enough to hold the two
sides of the wound fi rmly together with-
out squishing them up into a tent shape.
Most simple lacerations can be sewed in
less than 10 minutes. If you’re improvising
without a suturing kit, you probably don’t
have anesthesia either. Lowry says, from
personal experience, ‘‘It really hurts.’’So you miss
a conference
call or forget
a doctor’s
appointment.
Take a breath.
Go to a window.
Watch the
sun set.Kyle Paoletta
lives in Cambridge,
Mass. His reporting
and criticism has
appeared in Harper’s,
Th e New Republic and
Th e Nation.