He opened the car windows and picked up speed. "You can put your arms out and touch the cornfields." I picked up speed, played Eyes of the World in the police-free pre-dawn, opened my windows and then the green of agriculture turned to the orange of spring in Lancaster. Miles of poppies, miles of curves and bumps and farm machinery wet with dew. Walking the orange, I related the ladies at the hotel to the rows of homes in Sonoyta, which felt more like a collection of yurts than real homes. They looked empty with their bare bulbs illuminating empty bookshelfs and a piece of furniture or two. What emptiness their eyes had shown! What a beating their minds had taken from years of television, or perhaps the misuse of religion, to make them so uninterested in everything.

I didn't require adventure, and had little desire for the true unknown or original. What I wanted was to know something I had not known before, nor had I expected to find. I wondered what prejudices those ladies' parents had instilled in them about the world.

I needn't require of them or myself Bangkok or the shores of Antarctica. But the town next door? In travel, as in reading is all of our fantasies and need to understand at least what interests us. For them, an open field will always most certainly contain a nest of bees, or a rotting corpse.

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