We have been driving for four hours when I suggest we pull off the road to light a fire and make a cup of tea. Nungarrayi looks at me as if I'm mad. "We can't stop, Nangala," she says. "That country gives me the creeps." In the wake of The Trou bles-protracted feuding and related anx i eties-the desert has become dangerous. Most people are disinclined to venture out of the town and into the desert to go hunting. Many are reluctant to break a journey for any purpose aside from the need to relieve full bladders, and on those brief stops keep as close as pos si ble to the roadside. Two de cades ago the situation could not have been more diff er ent. As a doctoral fieldworker in the mid-1990s,