Prose Style: Specificity and Proto-Germanic Word Origins

Word choice is everything in fiction, and everything is word choice.

I’ve read No Country for Old Men a few times, and every time I come to this passage, I wonder at its specificity.

Moss sat with the heels of his boots dug into the volcanic gravel of the ridge and glassed the desert below him with a pair of twelve power german binoculars. His hat pushed back on his head. Elbows propped on his knees. The rifle strapped ov…