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JOURNEY'S END_ If there were ever a place a hitchhiker decay bony thumb sticking out from a huddled carcass, Tierra del Fuego would be it. A rugged, windswept landscape stretches to the horizon in all directions. The only evidence of human visitation is barbed-wire fences and the narrow grav el road on which I stood , thumb out, surrounded by the Patagonian stepp. The vast, rambling plains, inhabited by lonesome shrubs, sheep and dirt, have that feeling of eternity. As I tossed this disturbing image of impending decay around my brain, I began to blame my bony thumb for my predicament. The only to reach Ushuaia, Argentina-the southernmost city in the world-from the Chilean mainland town of Punta Arenas was an expensive plane flight across Tierra del Fuego. Not an option. But according to my guidebook, neither was hitchhiking. The lack of traffic crossing the barren gravel roads of Tierra del Fuego wasn't conducive to thumb travelers. But I had reason to believe oth erwise. I decided to give hitchhiking a shot. In school I was taught that one of the major physical attributes leading to human's so-called "advanced state of evolution" was the thumb. I was easily convinced. Although the thumb is just a two-inch protrusion flesh and bone, without it we would probably still be fumbling about uncoordinated hunter-gatherers. And the thumb has another, greater, purpose: it has helped many a traveler find their way freely along. The Spanish term for hitchhiking is a deda, or, quite simply, "by finger." Maybe this ill-fated attempt to thumb my way across one of the most re hunks of land on Earth was the ultimate test of the thumb's evolutio weight. After a short ferry ride across the Strait of Magellan to the ti Chilean town of Porvenir, and a brief ride with two German wanderers took me about a half-hour inland, I sat at a desperately isolated gravel i section on Tierra del Fuego. After waiting for hours on end, I began to iment. I tried both thumbs. I incorporated a variety of different postures. even though I'm fortunate enough to have the type of thumbs that bend back, I could barely slow the infrequently passing cars whose occupa stared at me like I was a short-haired reincarnation of Jesus. In fact, I of felt like Jesus, cast out alone in a dry and unwelcome land. Doubt clouded my thoughts. Maybe I'd vested too much in thumbs. Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the first European to Tierra del Fuego, saw more life here in 1520 than I did in 1996. He n it the Land of Fire for all the glowing campfires he observed from hund of shorel i ne native settlements. I began to get frustrated. Maybe the thumb was an inconseque tial by-product of human evolution. I started to wonder if I'd been a victi of a poor childhood education. My thumbs were bunk, and because I know it, I was stuck in this cold, inhospitable, underpopulated, incred inclement island at the bottom of the globe. The human brain's got to more important than the thumb, I thought, and reluctantly decided to u it. After eight hours of standing in the same place, I started to walk. Shortly after my evolutionary revelation, I heard the crunching gravel behind me. It was probably the fourth vehicle going my direction in twice as many hours. Oddly enough, I couldn't refrain; I hadn't quite give up on my little digit. Without turning to face the vehicle approaching, I stu it out. A truck pu lied over. ----------------------------------���