Wandering America on reesew.com

Wandering America: The White Album

Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone I meet is in transition. The spaces are never one’s own, merely borrowed for a moment – campgrounds, hostels, gas stations. I catch everyone, in some way or another, in their own story, in the ebb and flow of their grand journey elsewhere. I wonder what we all think we’re doing here.

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Wandering America: All Hail West Texas

Mon, 12 May 2025 09:38:01 -0600

I saw a light flash up at me, picking me out of the midnight desert landscape. “Looks like we’ve got a problem,” the voice behind the light said.

Out in the desert, the mind is pulled, over and over again, back to its survival instincts. I was near the campground and dozens of visitors with food and supplies, and yet a small part of my brain was continuously calculating how much water I had, when I needed to eat, listening for new sounds: a background task that slowly syphons away my mental battery.

Wandering America: Hot Springs and OKC

Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

First stop on my Journey Across America is perhaps one of the least-National-Park-ish National Parks: Hot Springs. Hot Springs is arguably more along the lines of a historic site than a National Park. Most of the famous sites are architectural: the old colonial architecture of Bathhouse Row and The Arlington. But hey, it’s an absolutely lovely place to stop by for a day or so.

Wandering America

Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am back on the road — this time exploring these great United States, and particularly the National Parks.

I have a natural inclination to wander. It’s great to spend a lot of time in a single place, to get to know its rhythms and routines, but I always feel a little spark in my chest when I get back on the move. This morning I started off down the highway, and about twenty minutes in I looked out at the tall grass along the roadside, bending in rolling waves against the wind. My body relaxed, my vision opened up to the whole landscape. Everything was right where it should be.