The Humming Cattle Guard

Word of the cattle guard on Weller Flat Road reached this office as a photocopy of its 1996 maintenance agreement, forwarded without comment. The guard itself is standard: twelve steel rails set in a gravel range road in the west desert, indistinguishable from thousands of others until the wind comes out of the west at a sustained twenty miles per hour or better, at which point air moving across the rails produces a steady tone that visitors with instruments have measured at a flat A. The human response has been proportionate: a bench, set back off the shoulder; a guest book in an ammunition box on a post; and the agreement itself, in which the Weller Flat Grazing Association and the county commit to preserving the rail spacing "as found" — a clause that appears to make the hum a contractual obligation. The guest book fills roughly once a year. Who supplies the replacement volume is not recorded in the volume.