6 a.m., and I continued west. Arkansas was amazingly flat after the rolling green hills of Tennessee and Virginia. The vast expanse of open country seemed to pry my heart open, too. The sun was shining, and the air was hazy with the moisture rising off the rice fields. Lovely… but not dry enough.

At Little Rock I turned south. I knew there was desert in Texas, and I was determined to get to it. I had a single cassette tape of bluegrass music, and I played it over and over until I was sick of it, and then sang songs at the top of my voice to keep myself awake. I laughed for twenty miles straight after I shot through the little town called Hope and saw ahuge billboard of their native son, Bill Clinton. Father Sun was high overhead and baking the mists out of the ground when I went through Texarkana.

Slowly, slowly, the miles crawled past and the air grew hotter and dryer. I took deep breaths of it — it was fantastic. South of Dallas, I left the interstate and followed the smaller roads into the Texas Hill Country. The hills aren’t technically desert, but they’re dry and rocky and lovely. I felt like I was coming into the sun’s own lands, like Odysseus visiting the island of the sun’s sacred cattle.

Land of the Sun

Somewhere southwest of San Antonio, I stopped by the side of the road. The sun was setting, and I knew I had to turn around if I was