Sunday Sept. 1 Spent all last night putt-putting through Utah, the train moving dreadfully slow.  At one point I awoke to the most star-filled sky I've ever seen.  Out my tiny berth window I could make out the little dipper, its points twinkling brightly in a landscape of black.  We were in the middle of nowhere, no electric light anywhere save that coming from the train.  At daybreak, we entered Nevada at the cowboy outpost of Elko.  I recall hearing on NPR some ten years ago about a cowboy poetry festival that takes place here.  Naturally a body, even a hardworking, uneducated one, would wax poetic when surrounded daily with wildness and nature. There's something about Nevada that speaks to my soul in a way that Utah does not; even Colorado in its color and beauty seems tame by comparison to untamed Nevada, full of tumbleweeds and sagebrush.  It seems the perfect place for the free of spirit to live without bounds or laws, unencumbered by tradition.  It stands to reason it's the only state with legal prostitution! We just passed the trashiest looking ranch -- empty steel drums strewn here and there, rusting into the dusty earth.  Cattle, scared by the train, trotted off uncorraled into the rugged hill.  A rusted out late 70s Toyota pickup sits twisted into the dirt.  Makes me wonder if there's a heirarchy of ranchers around these parts, these slovenly types the bane of those with pristine manicured patches, picket-fenced and perfect in their neatness.  These slovenly types either wake late or give up on work early, and yet the cows know no difference.  These likely are the ones who get their cattle stolen, a la Annie Proulx's cowboy tales; or maybe they're the ones who steal.  Who knows?  The cows sure don't. Something in the decrepit nature of this attracts me.  It's dying, like the factories of East Baltimore.  Dying but still standing, hanging in there, testimony to its own resiliance.  For five years I lived on Grundy Street in Highlandtown; for five years I gazed out my second-story kitchen window at the empty Black and Decker factory.  I loved its windows, so empty and  square and symmetrical.  I loved the dull sullenness of it -- "Here I am.  Another day and I haven't grown prettier, but nor have I gone away," it seemed to say.   Growing up in an alcoholic home, where Mom cheated on Dad or at least toyed with the thought of it, it seems natural I'd be attracted to such seediness.  I lived with slow-broiling death every day! Another retired couple at breakfast in the dining car; many retired couples on the Amtrak.  First I meet the lady.  John is still in the berth and I'm in the observation car, drinking coffee, waiting for the dining car to open.  She sips her coffee two tables away and complains -- a lot.  She seems to see everything in the negative.  Her shoulders shudder, her face pinches, her nose seems to twitch at what she finds unappealing about her husband.  She's off on a roll, talking about his camera habit.  "He has gadgets and wires," she tells me.  "And he can't keep track of anything!"  I want to tell her she's lucky he's got a hobby.  But I like observing her, the way she seems to collapse into herself with the force of her complaints.  She's from Mississippi.  When I mention our 4 planned days in San Francisco, she talks about its strangeness and the liberal in me gets its hair up, thinking she's about to go into a tirade about gay folks.  But no, it's the homeless that bother her.  "It's sad how many," she says, and now that John and I are on our last day in San Fran, I know she's right.  The homelessness is out of control here, and yes it's sad.  Surprise me out of my shortcoming!  I'd boxed her into Mississippi southernness, thinking her a gay-bashing bigot!  Over breakfast she admits she's an alcoholic -- 31 years sober!  I give her heartfelt congratulations. Winnemucca Nevada:  The sun is up over those black hills yonder, so dark compared to the brick red and washed white of Colorado.