Where did this all start?

I don’t consider myself an unconventional person. On the contrary, I’m kind of a rule follower. Ho hum. So it probably seems unusual for someone like me to chuck it all and head out into the wind in a van with my dogs. But it doesn’t seem at all odd to me. It seems perfectly natural.

I think the wanderlust might have been triggered when my brother gave me a copy of this book back in the mid-1980’s.

Blue Highways is the story of a man who loses his job and his wife on the same day. To “find himself”, he takes off in a van that he names Ghost Dancing, and travels on an extended trip around the U.S. The name Blue Highways refers to his preference for sticking to the back roads, which at the time of the book’s writing in 1982, were colored in blue on the road atlas. The author, William Least Heat Moon, visited the tiny towns on the blue highways and get to know the locals. One detail that I recall is his practice of rating cafes after the number of calendars on the wall. A three-calendar cafe would invariably have better food than a two-calendar cafe.  I loved the book, and throughout the years have read certain passages over and over.

There is an especially funny section that he writes about the drive up past Fountain Hills, Arizona to Payson.  An excerpt follows:

“I don’t suppose that saguaros mean to give comic relief to the otherwise solemn face of the desert, but they do. Standing on the friable slopes they are quite persnickety about, saguaros mimic men as they salute, bow, dance, raise arms to wave, and grin with faces carved in by woodpeckers.”

EVERY time I make that drive, I think of this passage.

The book presents, in my opinion, a perfect balance between the romanticism and realities of being on the road. He has a long section on loneliness, for instance (NOTE: I’ll report back on that in a few months :-).

The copy pictured is fairly  new — only a few years old.  My dog-eared original is back in Phoenix in a safe place. For anyone who likes road travel or has a bit of the wanderlust, I highly recommend. Maybe you will catch the bug and join me out here!