I’m in New Mexico at the moment, sitting in the lobby of the Alamogordo
Fairfield Inn and Suites Hotel, trying to ignore the Muzak and the huge
saltwater aquarium, which was designed to distract the dust-blinded traveler
from the fact that he’s in one of the driest places in the country.

A modern hotel lobby is a perfectly good spot to reflect on the past few days,
which were spent in the remote Gila National Forest researching the raiding
culture of 19th century Apaches for my next novel.

We’ll catch up with Geronimo, who operated in the Gila Wilderness for decades, in a future column, but this afternoon, on the spectacular drive from the western side of the state across arid foothills, black lava wastes, and deep
arroyos running with sand and gravel, I happened to pass hallowed ground: the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, site of the world’s first nuclear detonation.

New Mexico Highway 380 enables a modern driver to cruise in a matter of hours across a desert so huge and forbidding the conquistadores named it “Jornada del Muerte,” or “Route of the Dead Man.” Somewhere in the middle of this seemingly endless hazy flatness, a roadside marker announces the location, a few miles away behind a military fence, of the Trinity nuclear test.

Ground Zero is officially off-limits, with the exception of one day of the year. On that day, the Trinity Site Open House, the gates are thrown open for visitors to pay their respects at the obelisk that marks the spot where the “Gadget,” as it was called for sake of secrecy, blasted the pre-dawn sands on July 16, 1945.

Unfortunately, this year’s Trinity Site Open House happens to fall a few weeks from now, so I won’t be able to see for myself the shallow crater left behind by the inauguration of the Atomic Age. There’s no great danger in visiting the site for a few hours; according to the U.S. Army, the radiation level is only about ten times the ordinary environmental dose. Visitors who hope to collect a piece of Trinitite — the greenish glass that was formed in the sandy desert floor by the intense heat of the blast — will leave disappointed: a government clean-up of the site decades ago resulted in the burial of all but a few pieces of Trinitite.

Some of the ramshackle rock shops that dot Highway 380 claim to offer Trinitite for sale, but for a look at a bona fide chunk of the stuff, you’ll want to head a few hours north to the outskirts of Albuquerque and check out the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History (NMNSH).

The museum is a modest two-story affair, clad in metal siding, with a big
kid-friendly sculpture of a stylized atom bolted to the front of it. If it
weren’t for the battery of missiles mounted by the front door, or the glimpse of an actual B-52 parked on the lot out back, you might think it was an upscale shopping outlet.

If a grizzled retiree greets you at the door, offering a map of the museum, your first instinct might be to head for the exhibits as quickly as possible, but a better idea would be to ask, “Did you work in the business?” If the docent
standing before you happens to be Charlie Schmidt, you’ll find yourself talking to a man who spent nearly thirty years in the Navy assembling nuclear warheads.

Many of the exhibits at NMNSH are designed to demystify the science of nuclear energy. There are several areas designed with children in mind, but the most fascinating — and upsetting — exhibits let you get up close and personal with actual nuclear weapons, including a pair of very rare “broken arrows,” the designation of bombs that were accidentally dropped or went missing.

The list of broken arrows is long and chilling. But even more chilling is the
display of American ingenuity, palpable in every design. There are bombs of all sizes, including a tiny one, like a cartoon bomb, that was designed to be fired by three soldiers and a recoilless rifle. There are nuclear weapons designed to be fired from a cannon; parachuted down from a plane; launched from an intercontinental ballistic missile.

You can learn about control codes, explosive yields, and submarine strikes. To the museum’s credit, balancing the “Gee Whiz!” tenor of the military area, there is an account, however brief, of the victims of Hiroshima.

When I mentioned the Hiroshima footage to Charlie Schmidt as we were preparing to leave the museum, and asked if he had any regrets about his career, he answered thoughtfully but in a way that left no room for doubt: dropping Little Boy and Fat Man had saved millions of American lives. “In fact,” he added confidentially, “there are a few countries I wouldn’t mind dropping bombs on today, if you know what I mean.”

I did know what he meant, but wandering among the aging bombers, rockets, and missiles behind the museum, I thought about my childhood in Washington, D.C., which was permeated by fear of a Soviet nuclear strike. As my daughter marveled at the intricate workings of the ICBM that was laid out on its side like a fallen brontosaurus, my fervent hope was that we were walking in a kind of graveyard: the final resting place of these terrible weapons.