Journal of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

failing internal compass was causing me. Driving a Jeep with Massachusetts plates while lost somewhere in Tennessee wasn’t the most comforting thought in the world, and before long my eyelids were feeling about as heavy as my belly was light.”
    After that first night in Tennessee, however, Kodikian seems to have navigated the roads, at least, without much problem. He moved on to Nashville, Memphis, Biloxi, and New Orleans, where he made the leap across the Mississippi. And it was there, in Kerouac’s magnetic West, that he had his first encounter with New Mexico’s desert.
    It happened at White Sands National Monument, which lies about 250 miles to the west of Carlsbad, not far from the fabled Trinity Test Site. The monument is one of the Chihuahuan Desert’s great wonders, 250 square miles of impossibly white gypsum sand dunes that lie over the land like an undulant sea of sugar. Kodikian pulled into the park on the Monday, July 7, with plans to tour the park and camp for a night. If he was expecting a campground with showers, bathrooms, and BBQs, he was disappointed. Camping at White Sands is organized almost exactly the way it is at Carlsbad Caverns: you get a permit, park along a scenic driveabout six miles from the visitor center, then hike a mile down the trail, and pitch a tent. Raffi did all of this without incident. And then, after setting up camp, he went off to see the desert, an event he reported in his
Globe
article:
    Not long after leaving, I noticed a rainstorm coming, so I headed back to camp to put the top up on the Jeep and throw my stuff under the tent. On the way, I noticed the wind had started picking up. It wasn’t long before sand was in the air, and I knew I needed to move. I started to run, but by the time I was halfway there, all I saw in front of me was a sheet of white. The sand felt like a sand-blaster on my bare legs, and I had lost my sense of direction. I had to decide whether to lie down and ball up or move as fast as I could in what I thought was the direction of the Jeep. I opted to move, and when the wind let up slightly, and my legs could do it, I ran. For all I knew, I could have been heading straight into the desert. But as I came over the top of the next dune, I could barely make out the Jeep about 50 yards away. Thank God.
    When Kodikian returned to his Jeep, he realized that he had locked his keys inside, but he was able get in through the zipper window at the rear. The sandstorm passed, he returned to camp, and the experience became just another colorful anecdote. He headed on to Arizona, where Kirsten Swan flew in from Boston to join him, and the two drove on to California and up Highway 1 in what Kodikian called a “tour de romance.” In San Francisco, they both visited relatives and she caught a flight home, while he made a leisurely drive back across the entire country. The way back tookhim to more national parks in Utah, Colorado, and the Midwest. His sister, Melanie, joined him in Chicago, and the two drove on to Cleveland to visit a cousin before returning to Massachusetts.
    “My trip has been caked on my tires, dripped on my boots, and seared into my memory as one of the greatest experiences I could have imagined,” read the final lines of his
Globe
article. “And God willing, I’ll get the chance to do it again.”

    That’s my buddy, Dave Coughlin had told anyone who would listen. He’s a real writer for the
Boston Globe.
He’d bought copies of Raffi’s article and followed his adventures with pride—and envy. Kodikian’s life had seemed a lot more interesting than his own in the summer of 1997. He had finished college two years earlier, and gone on to learn that the roads we take toward our dreams don’t come with well-marked turnoffs and fast lanes.
    “Environmental policy, Coughlin’s chosen field, was completely inundated when he graduated,” said a coworker who worked with him at Wellesley Town Hall. “It was rough. There was nowhere for him to