In a modern vehicle you could cross 500 miles of rocky desert in one day, without even getting your pants dirty.

This is made possible by the many layers of insulation modernity puts between you and the world. The car sits on inflated rubber tires, on top of which sits a chamber suspended by springs and pneumatic shock-absorbers. This chamber contains adjustable plush chairs and entertainment options, and protects you from heat, rain, dust, and rattlesnakes. The whole apparatus rolls along a smooth ribbon of pavement that’s been cut into the landscape with dynamite and bulldozers.

This system of insulation against the desert and its harsh conditions is so effective that it feels like you’re not even in the desert. When one of those layers of insulation fails – a blown tire or faulty air conditioning – the reality that you’re still just a vulnerable human body surrounded in three dimensions by brutal desert becomes inescapable.

You are always completely embedded in your surroundings like this. Your body and its sense organs are always in intimate, unbroken contact with your surroundings, molecule-to-molecule, whether it’s the searing air of a desert or the cool interior of an air-conditioned car. This condition — your continuous, unbroken contact with the world — can be overlooked but never escaped.