I recently went to Little Rock for work. I drove there on Monday afternoon and drove back on Tuesday. It was a short trip and a long drive.
Arkansas has so many trees and it was raining most of the time I was there. The highway I was on was Interstate 30 and the road was cut through a thick grove of trees. I had my car windows cracked and could smell the mixture of conifer trees and rain. The clouds looked someone took a sponge and dipped it in gray paint and dabbed the night sky. I turned down the music in my car and listened to the rhythmic slosh of my tires over the waterlogged roadway.
I arrived that evening. My hotel was downtown and looked out onto the city library. I was a few blocks away from the Arkansas River. There is a riverfront park and the bridges spanning the massive river were lit up in red and green lights. The fog was hanging over the downtown skyline and illuminated by neon lights from the building signs. Lights were on in the office windows and I couldn’t tell if anyone was working late or if they were just on for the security team. The eerie part was the lack of people and traffic. A few of the restaurants had patrons in the windows and occasionally someone would emerge and disappear into the foggy night. A lone streetcar was decorated with lights and garlands and apart from the driver was completely empty. It followed me around the downtown area like a toy train car on the model tracks we would build as children. I walked by a shop window and a small light was noiselessly blinking in the window. I felt like I was walking through a Christmas village that was created just for me. After an hour I turned up the collar on my coat and disappeared into the fog back to my hotel.
A Walk Through The City 