I’m taking this winter to plan details for my quest next spring to explore the country in the shadow of John Steinbeck’s classic book Travels With Charley in Search of America. I’ll write about our plans from time to time and would love to hear your thoughts about what we have in the works.
As you know, beginning this spring, I’ll take the Listening to America Airstream around the country. This will start a multi-year journey to explore our nation as it approaches its 250th anniversary. I’ll have a few themes to guide this journey and serve as organizing frameworks or threads. My first framework will be John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley cross-country journey in 1960. He drove the perimeter of America, about 10,000 miles. He said he was in search of America. I have much to say about what he thought he was doing and what he was doing on the journey in his truck camper Rocinante, but that is for another time. I will follow the Steinbeck itinerary (more or less) and write a good deal about Steinbeck. I love him more now that I am really getting to know him. There is a complexity, even a brokenness, in him that I find fascinating. With Grapes of Wrath (1939), he placed himself permanently in the top tier of American literature.
But on my 2024-25 journey, I’ll be giving even more attention to a larger set of questions as we approach the 250th birthday of America.
How are we doing at 250?
What’s left to be done?
Is America still one nation or two or more?
What does America mean to you?
If you could do one big thing to make America better, what would it be?
And so on. As I think about this in advance, I have some preliminary ideas and concerns about how the adventure will work. I’m guessing you don’t sit next to someone at the diner and start the conversation by saying, “What does America mean to you?” Or maybe you do? I expect that at the beginning, at least, I will get a quantum of relatively unsatisfying responses. “We’re the greatest nation in history, man.” “America means freedom, and I’m not sure we aren’t losing it.” “We’re the most generous nation in the world, by far.” “It’s unlimited opportunity.”
Not that there is anything wrong with any of those statements. But there is a great deal of formula in that. It feels like American patriotic talking points. I want to know how people feel, but I also want to know how they think about how they feel and what lies behind the surface declaration. My response, “If you think we are losing our freedom, where do you see it disappearing?” “When you say the greatest nation, tell me what you mean by that.”
I don’t want to come on too strong, but I know that I’ll be moving fast through America, so there won’t be much time to build the trust that would lead to answers and comments closer to the bone, the heart, the soul. The pain. The Dream. I need to practice opening up serious conversations quickly and ensuring I designate sufficient time for them in my itinerary. I don’t want to travel 10,000 miles and hear only the usual talking points on every issue. We have national talking points these days, thanks to mass, social media, and Facebook tropes.
What America Is and What America Does
I’ve been thinking lately that it is not as much what America is as what it does. Everywhere I turn, people are doing fascinating things with their lives: climbing all the Fourteeners in Colorado, fashioning guitars from discarded lumber, painting watercolors in each of the national parks, or learning Sanskrit in preparation for walking the Silk Trail. Of course, many people are doing nothing — binge-watching the complete NCIS franchise. I’m sometimes one of them. I suppose most people do not choose to push the boundaries of their daily lives. But there are more bold spirits out there than you think, and they are spread out all over, sometimes in great isolation. You could spend 20 years traveling America without exhausting the remarkable creativity, intentionality, and mastery that probably skips no single zip code in America. Think of the possibilities.
And yet. The other day, I read a passage in a book about traveling around America. The following sentence: “Everybody’s story is interesting.” No. I have done a fair amount of traveling myself, and I can tell you not everyone’s story is interesting. Maybe they would be if the storyteller were better at it. But my experience is that they are not all interesting. Most but not all. But I also know that another American man (or woman) of my age traveling the country and meeting ME at a campground in Ohio might very well conclude, “That’s not interesting. He’s not interesting.” Especially if I started to talk about Dostoevsky.” That can ruin a party.
Books of the Road: I’m reading everything I can on this broad, fascinating subject. I don’t know that Travels with Charley is the greatest of the road books. Still, it is almost universally beloved. I think Kerouac’s On the Road is a greater book in many ways. But they are apples and oranges. Steinbeck was no kid when he made the journey. I also nominate the journals of Lewis and Clark, the record of America’s first great road trip (as the historian James Ronda puts it). I think Blue Highways is in the mix, as well as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
This journey will only work (and be worth the carbon footprint!) — if it is much more than a retracing of Steinbeck’s trip. I’m going out to listen to America. Great idea, easy to say, maybe not so easy to accomplish. I anticipate that I am going to have to grow/mature in some ways that are counter-intuitive for me. That’s promising and frightening at the same time. Listen is a big word if you define it generously. Think of this catechism: Did you hear? Yes. But did you listen? Yes. You listened, but did you truly LISTEN? I’m going to have to disable a couple of the force shields — we all have them — if I expect to succeed at this.
I feel a solemn responsibility to do this right, to see America and listen to America and report it all back to you in an agreeable way. This is the most critical “moment” in my lifetime, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and America 1969. What is this dis-ease in the American soul (on all sides of the political spectrum)? What’s roiling about in our social structure? Why is there so much rage and discontentment? What do you think the future looks like? Are you ever disappointed with America? Or when do you most admire America? Can we keep the republic?
I need your help. If you know of books I should read or documentary films, please let me know. If you have advice for me, I’m listening. Please tell me if you know of people and places I need to encounter. If you want to help make this happen, we need: gas cards, a Ford F150, and some electronic equipment. But mostly, I need and want you to come along for the ride.