Crossing into New Mexico I noticed how flat and red everything had become, the vast southwest, and -behold!- rocks, dirt, and sagebrush! It was a sincerely different looking place, but I kept driving. I’d drive with the windows rolled down, when the weather would allow it, and sometimes I’d blow the heater on, full bore, so I could be comfortable, and still take in the scent of every state, from chaparral to tumbleweed, hay to corn, and city to seashore. The new windshield was like a movie screen, and I just sat back and watched this film of America. I’d kick up the volume on my little radio, and just work my way through all my cassette tapes, often a movie soundtrack or ambient mix, and sometimes just the sounds of local radio. It was a long, slow, unedited scene, like one of those old Warhol films, only much more interesting, in that the camera would pan every time I turned the steering wheel.

I drove across the Continental Divide with little fanfare, but my own, sort of, desperate bliss at the concept. I had Bruce Springsteen singing “This Land is Your Land” on the stereo, and I was screaming along with him at the top of my lungs, having a bit of fun to myself, a large bag of Doritos at my side. When I got to Las Cruces I knew I had a decision to make. The intent was to head to Chicago, where my old high school chum, Mark, was in college. I could either take the smart, northern route up through a town called, ironically, “Truth or Consequences,” or a southern one down through El Paso that would eventually take me past the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. It was a simple, mindless decision to make. Sure, it would add a few days to my trip, but what of it? All I had were days.

I pulled off the highway that first night just beyond the Guadalupe Pass, in Texas. The car had begun making an odd crunching sound every time I made a left turn, and it was getting worrisome. I parked in a lot at the national monument and stepped outside to feel the brisk, night air, and gaze up at the stars twinkling in the vast canopy above me. I thought, no one in the world knows where I am right now, and I was not disturbed by it, but here I was, seeing for myself, just how big and bright the stars were at night, deep in the heart of Texas. I wrote the joke in my journal, waiting for the handclaps, which never came. I felt alone, a tad lonely, and yet, excited for tomorrow, when I’d get to see the Caverns -which was something of a childhood dream.

I climbed back in my car into the driver’s seat, looked at a map for a bit and then made a sandwich. The journal I’d finally started was my first, and it felt awkward writing down so much of nothing that had happened on the highway that day, so most of the words were of my concerns for things back home, girls I’d been thinking about on the road, and whether or not the car would even make it the next 500 miles (my daily quota.) I settled in awkwardly behind the steering wheel, pulled my sleeping bag over me for warmth, and then, as an afterthought, locked the door. Before I went to sleep, I flipped back to the inside of the cover on my journal and scrawled out a quote from Star Wars. There’s a scene where Princess Leia gets a look at the Millennium Falcon when she’s being rescued from the Death Star. She looks down at that hulking, weathered mass of metal and says to Han, “You came here in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.”