none of us can escape it. for ages, we identified ourselves with the image of the lone cowboy, the perception of frontier values, self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, the freedom of wide open spaces. few places in america still manage to embody that mythic landscape of the imagination like the state of new mexico. what does freedom mean? it's different things to everybody, it seems, but something about this place manages to capture the overlap between a whole hell of a lot of very different cultures. old route 66 runs through new mexico like a collapsed vein, right through santa fe and albuquerque. it must have seemed like magic once. families loaded in a massive chrome and steel chariots with powerful v-8 engines and took off down that blacktop highway. they slept in whimsical motor lodges and bungalows, swam in kidney-shaped pools.