This is the third in a series of posts detailing my 2010 photo series ‘Roughing It.’ The images are based on characters and scenes from Mark Twain’s eponymous volume about his travels and adventures in Nevada and other Western states.

“This was all we saw that day, for it was two oʼclock, now, and according to custom the daily “Washoe Zephyr” set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air–things living and dead, that flitted hither and thither going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust–hats, chicken and parasols sailing in the remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles  a shade lower; door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on the next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next; disrupted lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots.

It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes.”