The desert lay before them like a great and terrible dream, the wind moving in long sighs across the emptiness. The bones of old cattle lay bleached in the sand, and the sun glared down from a sky that held no mercy. The land did not welcome them, nor did it refuse them. It was simply there, indifferent and eternal, as it had been before them and as it would be long after they were gone.

– Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (1992)