The Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York is a cavernous, dark, dirty beehive of vehicles, scurrying travellers, hustlers, religious people pushing books and leaflets containing the word of many gods, stores, waiting rooms--and, on the Monday night after spring term finals ended last year, me. I was heading out on the 11 p.m. Greyhound for Los Angeles, pack and sleeping bag on my back and cap on my head. I was looking for America.

I had stayed in New York only long enough to gather supplies and buy a bus ticket, and then I was on the rolling behemoth that would not stop until it crossed the continent, even if Greyhound did change drivers every five hours or so.

First, though, I had to pass through scenic New Jersey, scenic southern Pennsylvania, scenic Ohio--ah, the natural wonders of the interstate highway system, with three squalling brats across the aisle as background music. Still, this was the price of cheap transportation west. Anxious to reach the wide open spaces, I stayed on the bus as state after state rolled by, telling myself I would get off when I reached America, the old "When it's right, you know it" type thing. Indiana merged into Illinois, which metamorphosed into St. Louis, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Every so often they'd file us off the bus for meal breaks, coffee breaks and bladder breaks. We would take in a local place, like Joe's Real Bar-B-Q Cafe in Amarillo, where the patrons still wear cowboy hats and look askance at anyone who saunters in with a Maoist cap on his long haired head. I ate fast and left before the posse arrived.

Finally, I could take no more and decided to get off in Albuquerque, N.M. The bus rolled in just before midnight, two days out of Port Authority, and although the local buses had stopped running, I figured I could walk out of town and camp out. Wrong. It is about seven miles, uphill, from the bus depot to the western edge of town, a high flat plateau, or ten miles east to the base of the Sandias mountain range.

After struggling for a while in full pack, I got a cab--all right, it's a bourgeois thing to do, especially when you are trying to be a road person, but I was tried, and the cabbie told me it wouldn't cost more than a couple of dollars. Uh huh. He took me for seven bucks, but I stiffed him on the tip; that should teach him to take advantage of green, Eastern kids.

I started walking into the desert, looking for any slight rise of fall in the land, or any bush over seven inches high, or any other sort of sleeping place. I climbed over a barbed wire fence and headed out across some farmer's land, my flashlight the only light for miles and my breathing the only sound in the night. Except for the mooing which I heard after about a mile--soon followed by the sound of cows running across my path about 40 yards ahead.

I stopped, watched silently, then turned away from them and began to head off into the distance, when I heard a moo about three octaves lower. Now I don't really mind a cattle stampede, but I have an inherent dislike of large cows with horns and male hormones, which is to say, bulls. Suddenly, a comfortable sleeping place seemed unimportant, and all I wanted was to find that fence again and put it between me and the bovine bunch. I walked backwards, slowly, trying not to irritate the bulls.

Once out of range, I ran as fast as I could, considering the circumstances. I reached the fence 20 minutes later, climbed over it, and went to sleep right there, by the side of U.S. 40, the main road through the south-western part of the country. I woke up to trucks roaring by one one side and cows staring at me across the fence on the other.

No matter, it was a bright, clear day and down below was Albuquerque, and I was Away From It All in the desert and in just five minutes I had flagged down my first car. I had never hitchhiked before, but this was easy. The middle-aged occupant had once had a multimillion dollar turquoise business, but he'd lost it all through some bad breaks, including his back and left leg, and had traded in his 1976 Jag for a 1960 Rambler. He took me to a gas station in Gallup, where two Mexicans in a pickup truck let me ride in the back and either watch New Mexico fade away backwards, or, if I turned around, to watch the driver's t-shirt, which contained the local folk wisdom of "Four Wheelers Eat More Bush."

New Mexico soon became the Arizona border, Fort Defiance (Actual Fort Defiance Souveniers Here! Spend Money!), and then, turning south, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and Winslow, Arizona loomed up. Eagles or no Eagles, no girl in a flatbed Ford drove up to the corner where I was standing, so I continued on the Flagstaff, and by nightfall to within five miles of the Grand Canyon.

My first glimpse of the Canyon came in the very early morn, from the back of yet another pick up--an awe inspiring huge gap in the earth, a fuzzy, hazy red purple brown green fusion of colors and shapes and forms and rock layers. And just up the road was the South Rim Village, where hotels and shops and restaurants and cards and fat Iowa tourists in Winnebago motor homes greeted my eyes.

Leaving my pack in a hotel, I headed for the Bright Angel Trail, ignoring all warnings about being prepared for the hike down into the Canyon. The signs that said "WARNING--Take four quarts of water with you or DIE!" were meant for those fat Iowans in Winnebagoes, not for healthy young adventurers like me. I cockily jogged the eight miles down to the mighty Colorado, drank from its roaring waters, spit out the dusty mouthful, and after some exploring went to sleep in a side canyon to avoid the noon heat.

When I awoke at 1:30, I again decided to ignore warnings not to hike in the midday sun, and started up the South Kaibab Trail. Twenty yards up the trail was a big sign saying "WARNING--THIS TRAIL NOT RECOMMENDED FOR HIKING OUT. THERE IS NO SHADE, ONLY ONE EMERGENCY TELEPHONE, AND IT IS VERY STEEP. TAKE AT LEAST FOUR QUARTS OF WATER, ALLOW SIX TO EIGHT HOURS FOR HIKE! MULE RESCUES ARE COSTLY AND NOT ALWAYS AVAILABLE." Scratched under that was the legend "Jim Duggin did it on only two quarts, 4/13/77." I had no water at all, and I planned to make the whole ascent in three hours, so I set off at a rapid pace.

The first hour was fine and I rested ten minutes before setting off again. Then I went for half an hour before resting. I started again, sweating now, breathing harder, throat drying, back and legs burning from the sun, and as I came around a ledge I ran smack into what joggers call The Wall. Not The Wall at Fenway Park, but a massive physiological-psychological being who sits on your chest and squeezes your lungs and makes each step an act of supreme will worthy of a Nietzschean Superman.