The road is such a powerful universal symbol in Southwestern music precisely because each road is specific, real, fateful. No way to tell you how but to focus on a particular road. For instance, US84. Eighty-four winds down into New Mexico, southeastward, crossing the Great Divide not far past the state line. Here 84 curves, climbs, and descends through mountains, and every time it crests a hill the vista takes your breath away.
Crutches line the walls outside that chamber, left by cripples who walked away.
Most barely get by these days, for affluent Texans, Californians, and Yankees buy their land and hike up every price tag. Now you're out of the high mountains, in terrain of rolling plains, mesas, arroyos, where you can see for miles and miles unobstructed in every direction. Here 84 heads south until Fort Sumner, where Billy the Kid is buried. His assassin, Pat Garrett, was himself assassinated years later, not a long drive from here. Now 84 heads due east to Clovis and becomes the main drag of that town.