He met memorable characters everywhere he traveled and we get to experience their direct quotes as well as the author’s take on the situation. There were the Trappist monks he stayed with in Georgia, the rowdy bar patrons he drank with in Texas, the future doctor in Arizona, the runaway teenager in Wisconsin, the maple syrup farmer in New Hampshire and many more. Throughout the journey, Heat-Moon narrates from a sort of inner monologue and lets us feel like we’re in the passenger seat.
Blue Highways is in the same genre as John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, but more humorous and with a bit more heart. The goal was to discover the true America and his true self by using primarily 2-lane back roads and going wherever his mood and his atlas took him (2-lane roads were blue on maps in those days). He set out from Columbia, Missouri on the first day of spring in a ’75 Ford Econoline van he named Ghost Dancing with $428 stashed under the dash. What better way to do some self-discovery than a little road trip? Perhaps a 13,000 mile circular trek around the entire country would do the trick. The writer had been laid off from his teaching job at the University of Missouri and was going through a rough patch with his wife. Ever feel like you need to get away from it all? In 1978 William Least Heat-Moon did.
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