Serial, chapter the first

    What I imagined to be cacti, shrubs and bushes were streaks of dull green as I stared out the train windows where I met a man on a quest. This, in itself, was not significant. One is always meeting men on quests in this world. The countless miles of nothing between any place worth being turn the smallest errand into a journey.
    His name was Eustace Grimehorn, and his quest was to taste the meat of every animal within his lifetime. He had prepared a list, from A to Z, of those animals which were known to him (perhaps forgetting the less delectable varieties). He described, in his excitement, having completed the As - including such creatures as the ‘Armadiller’ and the Antelope - and moving on to the first animal on his B list: the Bald Eagle. He was taken with the idea, not only through imagining that it must taste like edible gold (being equally rare), but also because he felt that it would make him ‘more American.’ The idea made me somewhat uneasy, so I made an effort to divert him to another task.
    “What about Alligator?” I said. This had not been on his list.
    “They’s under G, for Gator.”
    My first meager attempt thwarted, I moved on to other strategies. “Why Bald Eagle?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Well, why not just Eagle? If you must specify a distinct variety of each animal, your list will be too long and redundant to ever be completed. Why not just Eagle, and be done with it?”
    His eyes quivered, and stared straight through my head. As I attempted to explain, he became increasingly more agitated, so I resolved to move to another seat. As I left him, he was already happily writing in the many varieties of eagle with which I had tried to convey the futility of his task. Still, he was not to be diverted, and hoped to find a Bald Eagle family roosting along the California coast. He had shown me the rifle he would shoot them with, leaning against the window; and he had flint and steel to make a fire, and a metal spit which he could assemble to roast them on once they had been plucked. I declined his offer to join him in the coming feast, and excused myself to the dining car.
    I was not in the mood to eat, after his explicit instructions on how to prepare large birds for consumption, but I could not grudge him his excitement as I found a seat in a different car. I was on a quest, myself.
    Most journeys end with a goal, but mine began with one, which I sought to move further away from until I reached an optimal distance. The goal was law school in Boston, and whatever dry existence might be waiting for me afterward. In order to move both geographically and socially away from this grim prospect, I had decided to make my way into the West, where there are neither laws nor schools. I looked on the surreal and inhospitable landscape flying by the train windows with an excitement only surpassed by our own Mr. Grimehorn and his noble task of devouring the entire natural world.