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The morning I saw my first nuclear explosion I wore cozy-soft, yellow-flannel PJs with feet in them. My father, an uncle, and an older cousin, piled into a mintchip ice-cream green Plymouth station wagon and drove in the dark to Donner Summit. We parked and clambered up a ledged escarpment that faced southeast to Nevada’s distant nuclear test site. Me, second-grader, comfortably piggybacked, clasping to the fullback shoulders of my cousin Michael who, before he left for Camp Pendelton and then Vietnam, walked among us that summer like a Greek god. We settled onto the abrasive granite; I recall birdsong,