Brightest New Mexico. The sharp, red cliffs of Gallup. Mesas and mountains in the distance. Lava beds baking under the sun. Old volcanoes. Indian villages, cornfields, antique adobe churches, children splashing in a stream, an enchanted mesa. And over all a golden light, a golden stillness, a sweet but awesome loneliness—one old white horse browsing on a slope miles away from any sign of man; no fences; one solitary windmill standing by a grove of junipers, cowpaths radiating toward the horizon; a single cottonwood tree, green as life, in the hot red sand of a dry riverbed.

Proud of my freedom and hobohood I stood in the doorway of the boxcar, rocking with the motion of the train, ears full of the rushing wind and the clattering wheels, and stared and stared and stared, like a starving man, at the burnt, barren, bold, bright landscape passing before my eyes. Telegraph poles flashed by close to the tracks, the shining wires dipped and rose, dipped and rose; but beyond the line and the road and the nearby ridges, the queer foreign shapes of mesa and butte seemed barely to move at all; they revolved slowly at an immense distance, strange right-angled promontories of rose-colored rock that remained in view, from my slowly altering perspective, for an hour, for two hours, at a time. And all of it there, simply there, neither hostile nor friendly, but full of a powerful, mysterious promise.

In the evening we came to a town of 35,000 souls that lay in a shallow valley in the desert between volcanoes on the west and—on the east—a mountain range pink as the heart of a watermelon.

Albuquerque. Through the middle of this small dusty city ran a wide but shallow river the color of mud, shining like polished brass under the cloud-reflected light of sunset.

The train slowed, approaching the yards, I jumped off and rolled in the cinders, tumbleweeds and broken wine bottles of the ditch. Dragging my gear I crawled to my feet and limped along the street toward the heart of town. Great golden spokes of light streamed across the sky. Blue herons croaked in the willows by the water. Three rough-looking toughs in blue jeans and straw cowboy hats followed me up the road, laughing, welcoming me to New Mexico. “Chinga tu madre, cabrón.” Sons of Pancho Villa. I said nothing. They lost interest in me and turned away. I entered the city, up First Street into Albuquerque’s skid row. It looked familiar.

After three months of wandering I was homesick. I longed for the warm green hills of Pennsylvania, for the little wooden baseball towns, the sulfurous creeks and covered bridges, the smoky evenings rich with fireflies; I thought of the winding red-dog road that led under oak and maple trees toward the creaking old farmhouse that was our home, where the dogs waited on the front porch, where my sister and my brothers played in the twilight under the giant sugar maple, where my father and mother sat inside in the amber light of kerosene lamps, listening to their battery-powered Zenith radio, waiting for me. I was sick for home.