PEAK AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. Readers of my blog know that two things I love are driving my car — an Audi TT Coupe — through a beautiful landscape and listening to my favorite radio show Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan. I just completed a drive from Madison, my home town, to San Jose and back, going out by a southern route that took me through Arches National Park…

… and returning by a northern route that included the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Big Horn Scenic Byway, and — yesterday — the Badlands. The Thursday morning rebroadcast of this week’s radio show began as I was entering that spookily ravaged landscape. The theme was the devil, and I was steering my car through swooping curves past eerie rocks like this:

On the radio, it was Robert Johnson, singing Me and the Devil Blues:

It must-a be that old evil spirit
so deep down in the ground.