She caught a glimpse of herself in the silver of her thermos. Distorted as it was, she could tell she was smiling. And her lips, which every lover seemed to comment on, looked like big clown lips. Men seemed to love them. She was always trying to suck them in. She didn’t believe for a second that Angelina’s were for real. Unfortunately, she knew too well that hers were.

“‘When the young dawn, with fingertips of rose lit up the world,’ ” she murmured, surprising herself with the Homeric quote. “Appropriate, though . . .” Isabel sighed with pleasure. The light here was absolutely exquisite! Oklahoma’s Tallgrass Prairie had been the right choice to begin her new photography collection, American Heartscapes. It was early spring, but the ridge in front of her was already covered with knee-high grasses, waving oceanlike in the morning breeze. The air had the scent of impending rain, but there were so many more scents that filled her. The grasses, the lake, the occasional odor of a skunk. Nature. What a high.

The sky was an explosion of pastels washed against a backdrop of cumulus clouds that puffed high into the stratosphere—mute testimony to today’s weather forecast of midday thunderstorms. Isabel hardly gave the impending storm a thought—she’d be gone before the first raindrop fell. But even if the weather chased her away, she didn’t mind. On the ridge before her, under the frothy cotton candy sky, was a sight Isabel knew would make the perfect cover photo for her collection. The landscape was dotted with bison. Isabel’s eyes glistened as she gazed at them, framing pictures—creating art in her mind’s eye. The huge beasts looked timeless in the changing light of dawn, especially since they were positioned so that there were no telephone poles or modern houses or even visible roads anywhere around them. It was just the beasts, the land and the amazing sky.