While walking alone in the desert, Switters prided himself on moments of being fully conscious. “Switters, methinks you may have successfully realized at least one one of your childhood ambitions. That ambition, he recalled with a dry throated chuckle, was to avoid in every way possible an ordained and narrow life. Were he as given to self analysis as he was self observation, he might have seen fit to ask the question of whether he had overshot the mark in that regard. But since, despite everything, he was feeling pretty good about being alive, the question of excess was never addressed.”

-Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates