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“We can’t get any word out of there,” she tells me. “They’re not saying anything about it on the radio. No one ever talks about the little towns.”

Back in the parking lot, we convene our small band. We have two camera crews, three SUVs, and a satellite truck. The main roads south are closed, but we hear on the radio that one highway is open for emergency vehicles only. We figure we’re eligible, and move out.

WE DRIVE PAST downed trees and power lines; debris litters the highway. Miles of scattered steel and broken homes. I see the misery, but I keep on going. After a while it becomes just a blur. It’s a strange sensation, a schizophrenic feeling. People have died, but we are alive. Others are stuck; we are moving forward. We have gas and food, a phone. We can raise our satellite dish and broadcast around the world; all it takes is a few minutes to set up.

I don’t know where I’m going exactly, but I know what I’ll do when I get there. There are pictures to take, a story to tell. All the rest falls away. Right now I have no bills, no mortgage, no mundane details of life to worry about—just this moment, this mission. I’ve been here before, sat in this seat, looked out this window at a hundred different landscapes passing by—Sri Lanka, Niger, Somalia, Bosnia. This moment, this feeling exists only at the edge of the world. It never lasts long, like a rare orchid that grows only in treacherous terrain.

When we get to Gulfport, the motion stops and reality sets in. It’s worse than I imagined. The worst I’ve ever seen in America. Sri Lanka after the tsunami is the closest comparison I can make. For a moment that’s where I think I am: Kamburugamuwa. Little Maduranga throwing stones at the sea.

Downtown Gulfport is in shambles. People stagger about with no shoes, licking at their tears. Tractor trailer trucks that have been flung about, lie in a pile like abandoned children’s toys. Nearby, a seal lies stunned, alive, barking in an asphalt parking lot. A lady douses it with cups of water, trying to keep the seal alive. When she leaves, police shoot it in the head. Two bullets. Point blank. I remember being surprised the scarlet blood didn’t spread very far.

Next to the waterfront, a casino barge, a block long, sits on dry land. Through a gash in the side, silver slot machines sparkle. An urban search-and-rescue team walks by in the dying light in steel-toe boots, with lamps on their helmets, looking for anyone who may be alive. “Hello!” they call out. “Hello!” Silence.

WEDNESDAY MORNING WE’RE in Waveland, Mississippi. We drove from Gulfport in the first light of day. Coast Guard helicopters pass overhead on their way to New Orleans to pluck people off rooftops, and bring in badly needed supplies. Choppers from all over the region are heading there. Nobody seems to land here. I’ve heard only a few reports out of Louisiana. We still have no cell phones, no e-mail. I know the levees have broken, and so have the promises. The city is flooded. It was predicted, but no one seems prepared. The Superdome, the Convention Center, the places people were told to go, are overwhelmed.

Mississippi has no levees, no wide-scale looting. Here the drama is of a wholly different sort. The water has pulled back into the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the land dry, destroyed. On every block, around every corner, there is loss. In Bay St. Louis and Waveland, miles of shore-front homes are gone. Block after block, nothing but debris. I’m not shocked by the loss of property; it’s staggering, but destruction is nothing new. It’s the silence that shocks me. There’s no heavy earth-moving equipment, no trucks with aid rumbling past. I stand in a field of timber that once was a street and can hear the wind blowing through the remains of people’s lives. A sheet of plastic caught in a tree rustles in the breeze. Flies swarm over the corpse of a dog. A helicopter moves on the horizon. It intrudes, for a few seconds, then silence once again.

I spot a team of men picking through the