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My anticipation of the blue skies of New Mexico was particularly keen in the middle of an English winter. Waking to find it snowing on our first morning in Albuquerque was therefore not what I had in mind.

The snow was no deterrent to my companion's motive: the hunt for the perfect boot. Albuquerque has stores and warehouses crammed with boots, as well as Stetsons, jeans and belts. Boots in all sizes and colours made from crocodile, lizard, snake, ostrich, elephant and armadillo filled aisle after aisle and by the time we emerged from the fifth store we visited, laden with parcels, the sun had come out and the sky was blue.

It did not snow again during our trip, but snow lined the road on our drive to Santa Fe, a town with adobe houses which has attracted writers and artists for generations. The centre is filled with galleries and boutiques selling a mixture of tourist souvenirs and genuine art: jewellery, crystals, paintings and the ubiquitous boot. Local Native Americans sit on the pavement outside the Palace of the Governors selling beautiful handmade jewellery.

The Miraculous Staircase in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe was built in 1873 by a mysterious man who appeared from nowhere. He disappeared without payment when he had completed the extraordinary task of fitting a spiral staircase into a space deemed impossibly small. The result is a masterpiece.

Returning to our powder-blue rented car, which was reminiscent of the Fifties spaceships which appeared in comics, we headed for Taos on the old road stopping at the Santuario De Chimayo, where pilgrims go in search of a cure. D.H. Lawrence had a ranch near Taos, where he lived in the Twenties. The shrine houses his ashes which were brought back from France. I was asked by a couple there whether I had come to worship at the shrine. I muttered, feebly, something about just being curious, but some do go to worship. The property, six miles along a dirt road, has spectacular views over the flat desert plain to the distant mountains where I had left my companion to ski. As we had driven up into the mountains that morning the landscape had changed from desert to alpine and I imagined him shivering in the snow while I basked in the sun.

It was not until we left Taos that I really began to feel the freedom that comes through driving through the vast unspoiled landscapes of the southwestern states of the United States. New Mexico has a land area 30 per cent greater than the whole of the British Isles, but a population of fewer than two million. Empty roads and the radio at maximum volume on the car stereo all contributed to the feeling that this really was a country where nothing was forbidden and anything was possible. From Taos we drove north west through the Carson National Forest and the San Juan mountains to Aztec.

Anasazi is a Navaho word which describes the ancient settlers dating from AD1 to 1300. It is a mystery why in about AD1300 the Anasazi suddenly vanished from this and many other sites. The Great Kiva, a semi-underground ceremonial area, has been reconstructed, but much of the original fine brickwork dating from the 11th or 12th century still exists.

The earth suddenly becomes red upon reaching Utah, contrasting vividly with the green sagebrush trees dotted around the desert. Straddled between Utah and Arizona in the Navaho Indian Reservation are the sandstone buttes, mesas and cliffs of Monument Valley, the setting for countless westerns, including John Ford's Stagecoach . At midday the rose red of the sand peaks stood out against the patchy clouds, but towards dusk the clouds evaporated and as the peaks were touched by the setting sun they changed hue, becoming a softer amber colour before the evening shadows began to highlight the curves and angles of these dramatic outcrops. In early February the valley was virtually empty and once the car engine was switched off a cloak of silence descended on the landscape.

Paradoxically, although I felt dwarfed by the magnificence of the space, driving along the long straight roads which go through much of the south west made me feel as if my soul was expanding and I started to see my life back in London as if through the wrong end of a telescope. It seemed so very small and remote. The insignificance of our time and presence on the planet was emphasized by a walk through the Petrified Forest National Park. Littered throughout the eroding desert landscape are vast numbers of what appear to be fallen trees. This forest met its end a quarter of a billion years ago. Over that time the trees have been changed, atom by atom, into rock and crystal, a frozen memorial to the tropical rain forest that once covered the southwestern states.

More empty roads and more miles that day took us to Alamogordo, an unknown backwater until July 16 1945 when the world was changed for ever by the first atom bomb detonated, at the Trinity test site 30 miles north of the town. Seventeen miles due west is the White Sands National Monument, 300 square miles of white gypsum dunes, the largest gypsum deposit in the world.

Our attempt to see it at dawn was thwarted while the nearby military base performed one of its regular missile tests. When it reopened we found ourselves once again in splendid solitude, walking through one of the most extraordinary landscapes I have ever seen: a vast expanse of glittering whiteness interrupted only by the occasional yucca plant.

Enormous car parks with 'congested area' signs indicated that at times the Monument must attract many tourists, but wandering alone among the dunes in the warm sun I felt that surely there could be no better time of year than this to visit the national parks of the American south west.

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