an eyewitness. A new age had dawned.

After about two hours our caravan slows, and as neatly as when we left the fairgrounds, cars file into parking spots. We are now at Trinity, and ground zero is just a quarter-mile’s walk away.

Before you enter the fenced-in part, there’s a tent with Geiger counters and White Sands employees. Deborah Bingham has answered questions from visitors all over the world—England, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Russia, Mexico. “You see lots of World War II vets who think it was a good thing we invented the bomb,” she says. “But others say they wish the atom was never delved into.”

Radioactivity? “Any out here can be blocked by your skin,” says Lisa Blevins, a radiation-protection specialist. She says touring ground zero for two hours results in about two milliroentgens—less than the radiation absorbed flying coast to coast in a jet-liner. To prove her point, she points the Geiger counter at display items, among them a radium clock dial, some old Fiestaware pottery, and the rare Trinitite glass. The Trinitite produces the fewest number of clicks.

Inside the fenced-in area there’s a mockup of Fat Man (the bomb used at Nagasaki) on a big flatbed truck and a series of old photos. There’s also a jet black monument, proclaiming the site a national landmark. Near it the Japanese movie crew is busy filming a documentary. Two Trinity eyewitnesses are also present: Davis, the military policeman, now in his seventies, and J. C. Alderson, a weatherman.

Trinity looks like almost any other piece of arid land. But, if you peer closely at the soil, you’ll see tiny pieces of the residual Trinitite. (Most of it, over the years, has been carted out by the government.) Dangerous? “You would have to eat more than your body weight to have a health problem,” says Bingham.

But Bingham does warn that taking pieces is against the law. Some visitors don’t care. I see them sneaking samples into their pockets.

I’m intrigued by the mix of people. Some seem clueless, as if they might be at Disney World. But others have a serious, inquisitive look. Vladimir Shapovalov, a 50-year-old Ukrainian scientist and professor of metallurgy, has wanted to see Trinity since childhood.

“I know about this place,” he says. “It is important because nobody knew if Germany would make atomic bombs first. That would have been very bad for all the world, Russia included.” Asked if he feels any irony standing with Americans here, after years of the nuclear arms buildup, Shapovalov flatly says no. “It was only political.” He smiles. “People are the same everywhere, I think.”

Trinity is not commercially exploited like, say, Roswell, of UFO fame. The few souvenirs available—some hats, T-shirts, a mug or two—can be purchased at cost from three small military trucks in the Trinity parking lot. There’s very little advertising for the open houses either; most visitors find out

through word of mouth. Still, Blevins, the radiation specialist, says turnout has more than doubled since she started working here in 1987—from nine hundred visitors to around two thousand. “People are beginning to understand the historic significance of this place,” she says.

Overall I find Trinity a moving experience. And however you feel about tampering with the atom, I suspect you might too.

My most significant memory comes as I’m leaving, around noon, to return to Alamogordo with the caravan. To the right of the black monument, in a part of the fenced-in circle where nobody else has wandered, I spy a lone purple wildflower growing out of the sand. I bend down to inspect it, and there, on the desert floor six inches away, are two little pieces of Trinitite, undisturbed and sparkling green in the sun.