In the current era, long-distance US Interstate travel has accelerated into a mind-numbing, Mario kart marathon broken only by pitstops at fast food and fuel joints interchangeable as LEGOs.
To go on the road to learn the country means exiting onto the old highways that GPS maps obscure. That roll through slow places, sprawling uncurated & tangled in personal expression. The unnamed territories of everyday lives that define us.
To see this U.S. is to embrace the slow road, no passing zones, and small towns. To risk getting turned around, detoured or lost. To re-learn navigation by street signs, paper maps and spatial reasoning. To ask for directions from strangers in order to locate yourself. To surrender certainty.
I made a trip like that this spring as Covid began to lift. In the next few days I’ll post some of the images I captured while looking to see what had become of the country during a year shut down; what had started to move again or remained still waiting for the right sign.
Driftless World 