I noticed my sense of atmosphere sharpening. I could smell a situation the moment I opened the vehicle door. Humans have a musk of anger, a sweet tang of lust, a rolling bland contentment, and a hot spiking fear. I learned to balance atmospheres, to fine-­tune my own vibratory emissions to counteract or augment an air, or to maintain a neutrality that allowed the emotions of the moment to roam free. The practice provided an interesting pastime; the talent eventually proved invaluable.

My traveling companions were laborers, execu­tives, drug addicts, runaway housewives, drunks, salesmen, businessmen, families, grandparents, and rock singers. I met butlers and metermaids and razor­-scarred criminals. I came to know cheating husbands and ordinary women who beat their children. I en­countered bastardizations of the language, dialects from all over the country, accents from all over the world. I heard terrible jokes, revulsive propositions, and enigmatic compliments. I was told impossible stories and I came to believe them.

We traveled along freeways and highways and one-­lane mountain roads. We traveled with air condi­tioning and with dust, in sedans and Jeeps and pickup trucks and limousines. We traveled in buses and old Checker cabs and motor homes and once in a boat being pulled by a truck. I rode long distances in tractor trailers with leather-­worn wildcatters and to the corner drugstore in an antique car with a precious grandmother. The variety was infinitely surprising. And renewing.

My energy expenditure was far less than when I lived at home with Alice and Rolf. At home, I was always pacing off nervous energy, but while traveling, I was relaxed, peaceful, at ease. I had nothing to do but stand and wave my thumb at passersby. I’m a small person, under five-­foot-­three, and I’ve always been thin, so I got along fine on one solid meal a day, and I always kept an apple or an orange in my pack, just in case.

The importance of eating, I discovered, is the sociability of the act, not necessarily the nourishment. We ate at roadside stands, truck stops, cafeterias, and friendly kitchens with pastry-­baking wives bustling about. We broke bread together on hilltops and over campfires and standing in parking lots. We even spent time together eating soup-­kitchen broth and breadcrusts in cities large enough to have missions for the needy.

In those cities, we were swallowed by trucks and skyscrapers and exhaust. In little burgs, we admired the freshly painted facades and pastel shingles classi­cally designed to entice the visitor. We visited muse­ums and saw statues. We saw clouds reflected in mirrored buildings, and we locked the car doors against the slums and the Saturday night peep-­show crowds.

I was not impressed with civilization. All around, I decided, man’s best shot at creation was as pitifully inadequate as the words I have to describe it.