I WOULD LIKE TO tell you how to get there so that you may see all this for yourself. But first a warning: you may already have come across a set of detailed instructions, a map with every bush and stone clearly marked, the meandering courses of dry rivers and other geographical features noted, with dotted lines put down to represent the very faintest of trails. Perhaps there were also warnings printed in tiny red letters along the margins, about the lack of water, the strength of the wind and the swiftness of the rattlesnakes. Your confidence in these finely etched maps is understandable, for at first glance they seem excellent, the best a man is capable of; but your confidence is misplaced. Throw them out. They are the wrong sort of map. They are too thin. They are not the sort of map that can be followed by a man who knows what he is doing. The coyote, even the crow, would regard them with suspicion.
There is, I should warn you, doubt too about the directions I will give you here, but they are the very best that can be had. They will not be easy to follow. Where it says left you must go right sometimes. Read south for north sometimes. It depends a little on where you are coming from, but not entirely. I am saying you will have doubts. If you do the best you can you will have no trouble.
(When you get there you may wish to make up a map for yourself for future reference. It is the only map you will ever trust. It may consist of only a few lines hastily drawn. You will not have to hide it in your desk, taped to the back of a drawer. That is pointless. But don’t leave it out to be seen, thinking no one will know what it is. It will be taken for scribble and thrown in the waste-basket or be carefully folded and idly shredded by a friend one night during a conversation. You might want to write only a set of numbers down in one corner of a piece of paper and underline them. When you try to find a place for it—a place not too obvious, not too well hidden so as to arouse suspicion—you will begin to understand the futility of drawing maps. It is best in this case to get along without one, although you will find your map, once drawn, as difficult to discard as an unfinished poem.)
First go north to Tate. Go in the fall. Wait in the bus station for an old man with short white hair wearing a blue shirt and khaki trousers to come in on a Trailways bus from Lanner. You cannot miss him. He will be the only one on the bus.
Take him aside and ask him if he came in from Molnar. Let there be a serious tone to your words, as if you sensed disaster down the road in Molnar. He will regard you without saying a word for a long time. Then he will laugh a little and tell you that he boarded the bus at Galen, two towns above Molnar.
His name is Leon. Take him to coffee. Tell him you are a journalist, working for a small paper in North Dakota, that you are looking for a famous desert that lies somewhere west of Tate, a place where nothing has ever happened. Tell him you wish to see the place for yourself.
If he believes you he will smile and nod and sketch a map for you on a white paper napkin. Be careful. The napkin will tear under the pressure of his blunt pencil and the lines he draws may end up meaning nothing at all. It is his words you should pay attention to. He will seem very sure of himself and you will feel a great trust go between you. You may never again hear a map so well spoken. There will be a clarity in his description such that it will seem he is laying slivers of clear glass on black velvet in the afternoon sun. Still, you will have difficulty remembering, especially the specific length of various shadows cast at different times of the day. Listen as you have never listened before. It will be the very best he can do under the circumstances.
Perhaps you are a step ahead of me. Then I should tell you this: a tape recorder will be of no use. He will suspect it and not talk, tell you he must make connections with another bus and leave. Or he will give you directions that will bring you to your death. Make notes if you wish. Then take the napkin and thank him and go.
You will need three or four days to follow it out. The last part will be on foot. Prepare for this. Prepare for the impact of nothing. Get on a regimen of tea and biscuits and dried fruit. On the third or fourth day, when you are ready to quit, you will know you are on your way. When your throat is so thick with dust that you cannot breathe you will be almost halfway there. When the soles of your feet go numb with the burning and you cannot walk you will know that you have made no wrong turns. When you can no longer laugh at all it is only a little further. Push on.
It will not be as easy as it sounds. When you have walked miles to the head of a box canyon and find yourself with no climbing rope, no pitons, no one to belay you, you are going to have to improvise. When the dust chews a hole in your canteen and sucks it dry without a sound you will have to sit down and study the land for a place to dig for water. When you wake in the morning and find that a rattlesnake has curled up on your chest to take advantage of your warmth you will have to move quickly or wait out the sun’s heat.
You will always know this: others have made it. The man who gave you the map has been here. He now lives in a pleasant town of only ten thousand. There are no large buildings and the streets are lined with maples and a flush of bright flowers in the spring. There is a good hardware store. There are a number of vegetable gardens—pole beans and crisp celery, carrots, strawberries, watercress and parsley and sweet corn—growing in backyards. The weather is mixed and excellent. Leon has many friends and he lives well and enjoys himself. He rides Trailways buses late at night, when he is assured of a seat. He can make a very good map with only a napkin and a broken pencil. He knows how to avoid what is unnecessary.