FROM THE BOOK

The mythology of the wide-open West and the “anything” you can do there has been central to America’s self-conception since the colonists first turned their backs on the Atlantic Ocean and confronted the wilderness in front of them, at once compelled and intimidated by the idea of all that land as an open frontier. In his essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau admits to feeling the magnetic pull of the West: “The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.” Tempted by the promise of untapped resources, the frontiersmen set out for the territories, displacing indigenous populations in their quest for presumed riches and a way of living free of bourgeois constraints. Seemingly unlimited space meant seemingly limitless options for fresh starts and self-invention. If things didn’t work out as planned, there was always more West in front of them, more room for reinvention. Until, of course, there wasn’t.

These days, only a few decades distant from the days of the unmapped, “wild” West, you can view a remote patch of the southwest desert via Google Earth, zooming in close enough to see the individual branches on a particular ocotillo. And yet, the idea of the West—particularly the Southwest— as freedom, as openness, persists: “Discover the freedom of the Southwest’s open roads,” the Lonely Planet’s USA Best Trips guide promises. The sweeping vistas of the American West continue to inspire this land is your land, this land is my land feelings, and for good reason: in the eleven westernmost states, the federal government owns nearly half of all the land, most of which is open for public use; only about four percent of the rest of the United States is designated as public land.

I myself was seduced by the Lonely Planet version of the West. Five years ago I drove across the country by myself in a Volvo sedan I was convinced would make it to 300,000 miles, pointed toward California and daydreaming of palm trees. I remember the afternoon I drove through West Texas, that evening’s slow and gaudy show of a sunset, pink and gold smeared across the wide horizon. I could drive fast out here, and there were long stretches with no other cars on the road. Space; freedom. I had never realized just how watched I felt in the cities of the East Coast, where I’d spent most of my life, how hemmed in by their pure human density. Something about being the only car on the long ribbon of road beneath that wide expanse of sky made me feel suddenly and distinctly American. And that Americanness was somehow tied to this public kind of privacy, the sense of being outside and alone and unwatched.