[gj667cc]

I read it for the first time a few years ago, and due to purely coincidental timing I finished it over the course of a weeklong trip to Big Bend National Park in West Texas. McCarthy lived not far away in El Paso when he wrote it, and the scenery in Big Bend is the embodiment of the way he describes the desert in the book. Haunting and inimical, yet simultaneously beautiful and magical. Being in that setting and hiking and backpacking through the heat really underscored to me how such a stark environment could have driven humans crossing it to unspeakable violence.

I don't specifically remember any of the passages you quoted, which I think means that I'm due for a reread. A few descriptive scenes stick out in my memory, particularly the burning tree and the cattle graveyard.