IT IS NO ACCIDENT that the dominant cultural medium in the United States is television. To reinforce the box-like world view gained from hours in front of the tube we have surrounded ourselves with television analogues. Reality has become a metaphor for a 19-inch screen. More than anything else, it is from the windows of a car that we see the world, and the world we see is a General Motors version of Stagecoach or The Streets of San Francisco.

But every now and then, the land presses in. Cathode ray insulation can't prevent a direct confrontation between man and the great outdoors. Driving across the continent seems completely safe, completely isolated until the breakdown.

The barrier between me and the world beyond the road's shoulder as I set out from Detroit heading west on Interstate 80 was the presence of man. In the Great Lakes urban belt--the Mid-western equivalent of the Boston to Washington drive--there is no "real world" to disturb the traveller. Even further west, until the Great Plains start their ascent to the Rockies, the world is unequivocally man's--safe and predictable. There is not a mile of road, from Illinois to Nebraska, down into Colorado, that passes through unfenced land. Along every mile you can see farm buildings, a town--organized, controlled, regular use, of the land. The great four-day show unwinds, leaving me spectator to the true-to-life drama around me.

Even the Rockies could not break the spell. After a few days in the car, sleeping, seeing the world through glass panes, the whole experience seems less than real. Within the car is one world, anything outside is just entertainment. Rocky Mountain National Park might as well have been Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

It was in the Rockies that the malaise began to hit. In a typical end of school urge to get out and be real, I had hoped driving across country would bring me back to the genuine article, Tom Wolfe's Right Stuff, the American Dream. Instead I found myself trapped in Freddy Silverman's fantasy, riding I-70 out of the mountains into the Utah desert.

Grand Junction, Colorado, a town like a hundred other western towns, stretched like rags on a clothesline down five or six miles of four-lane mainstreet, motels and chain store steak restaurants dangling off the side, was the journey's nadir. Planted in the middle of nowhere--away from the mountains, on the edge of the desert--its only excuse was the conflation of the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers. Like my automobile, the town itself is an escape hatch. Nothing strange penetrates past the jacked-up cars in which everyone cruises.

The rule, in town and on my trip, is simple: stay with the car. It is your most important possession. It is home, and more--it can take you, protect you and move you on to another scene when weirdness threatens. The next day, as I rolled out of town, I gave up all pretense of a larger goal for the trip than simply getting back home. The time had come for the speed run across the hinterland, to burn off Utah and Nevada and rush down Donner Pass to the Pacific Ocean.

Unfortunately, Utah and Nevada generally defeat such attempts. As I left town, the land changed from low foothill country of Colorado. Watered hillocks gave way to the terrifying, barren and twisted land that sees less than seven inches of rain a year. The road, no longer flanked by fences and farms, cannot remain a symbol of man's secure hold on his own turf. It seems instead an imposition, almost an irrelevance. As I passed the turnoff to Salt Lake other motorists evaporated. I was left all alone on a superhighway, seeing five cars in half an hour.

The break came shortly thereafter. Even from within the car the world pressed in. There was nothing around me. No towns, no houses, no power lines--nothing blocked out the desert and sky but the edge of the road, the broken glass in the run-offs. It wasn't the American Dream, but it was an acceptable substitute: the random and the strange. Driving down 70 could not fit anymore into my easy categories--the images flowing past my windshield demanded my attention. The television mode with its comforting torpor collapsed in the face of scenes no screen could capture.

One hundred and fifty miles past Grand Junction, past the last house, I hit a traffic jam. Under normal circumstances this would have been completely unexceptional, but this was nowhere. A quarter of a mile ahead, the worst of reasons was lying moaning on the ground, a victim of a three-car accident.

I was travelling with a freshly minted M.D. off to San Francisco to become an intern, so I was privileged to see the fabled Dr.'s black bag in action. The driver who caused the accident was in the worst shape, suffering from a broken pelvis, internal bleeding and unbelievable pain. We were in a little draw, a canyon that served as a wind tunnel, and he, driving a pickup-trailer rig, was doing about 70 when the trailer was caught in a cross breeze and began to fishtail. After the trailer had totaled the side of one car coming at it, the whole rig rammed a camper, flipped and ejected the two riders. One had a few scratches. The other was on the ground.

The collection of medical talent that accumulated there, two hours driving from the nearest settlement, was a testament to the size of the American health care establishment. Within 45 minutes, the accident victims had been looked over by two doctors and two nurses, bandaged by a service corpsman and given helpful advice by an Eagle Scout with advanced first aid training. An hour later the ambulances and police arrived.

MEANWHILE I HAD done what the unskilled do on such occasions. I helped move the wreckage, directed traffic, carried water to the injured, and in moments of respite, watched the skilled hover about the wounded. As the land had done on the road up to this point, the world of men crashed through the insulation. Away from the car, I walked up and down in the noonday desert heat, sickening at the sounds of pain, and straining as I joined the crowd cleaning up the refuse.

When the authorities came, the spell started to crumble. Utah highway patrolmen took over, moving people and their cars, organizing the transfer of the wounded to the county hospital. My doctor friend and I climbed back into the car. Within 20 miles the road was mine again, and once again I could use both lanes to swing around the curves.

But this time the network control couldn't reestablish itself. It may not have been the American Dream, but what I had seen was definitely the genuine article. When I left the car in the desert, the moving picture screen lost its hold over me. Even the sight of Reno couldn't stifle my lately restored ability to see what passes for the real world.