2This is an adventure story in its own peculiar way, a novelization of true stories, a small portion of the early years of a life of wanderings and musings and pain and passion in the southwestern deserts, and there were a few hard lessons learned along the way. This story is not a suggestion for others to follow, but a few nuggets may lie among the slag heaps and ruins left behind. And most of it is true. The time frame is the 1960s and 70s. The protagonist is a young man growing up in the Southwest at the time of the Viet Nam war, the birth of the hippie generation and the attendant idealism and hope for social transformation.