Nevada

Out there in the midwest of the Beautiful Land is a big flat dry space. It has odd cities of the plain in it; some remind you of the long-dead idea of Sodom and Gomorrah, some remind you of home, some remind you of a discomforting dream of the amoral faerie. It is a midsummer night's long slow and sandy nightmare.

Into that ancient desert land came a wanderer from the Tin Isles. He had a sharp eye and a shrewd gaze. He took notes. He had been in many hot lands, but this was one of the driest, one of the dustiest. We don't really know how much time he spent there, in flesh or spirit, in history or out of it, in truth or in fantasy. But if he had not been there, he ought to have been.

He travelled a lot. From the Tin Isles to Saint Andrew's Rift is a great expanse of ocean, followed by a long journeying from the east coast of the Land. And everywhere, the Iron Horse carried him, through the rolling plains and the whistling deserts, the swamps and the glorious hills.

It must have been that journey on that colossus of roads, that sprawling web of steel, that inspired him to think of the Nevada Train and write a poem about its route across the broad expanse. You can find it here.

The most famous line is the first in the poem. Here it is:

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and Nevada Train shall meet..."