Tag Cross-country 2020

I Feel Like Going Home

It’s a beautiful valley in an unexpected place, south of Elko, Nevada, deep in the desert, and with the mist hanging in the air it looks like some primordial morning, suggestive of a time before Man. But it’s not a…

The Third Van Gogh Sunflowers

The painting is by Vincent Van Gogh and depicts three sunflowers, arranged in a vase. It is twenty-four feet across, thirty-six feet high an it leans upon its easel some eighty feet in the air at the top. It is…

Lincoln’s Head

This post is from a series of articles chronicling a 2020 cross-country trip with my wife and two daughters and a boyfriend, from California to Ohio (to visit family) and Pennsylvania (to drop off my oldest daughter at grad school),…

Trump Country, 2017

I crossed America by car in the summer of 2017, looking for Trump. I looked for him in truck stops and restrooms, parking lots and malls. I looked for Trump in roadside signs and unplanted fields, in thrift stores and…

Notre-Dame de Kansas

This post is from a series of articles chronicling a 2020 cross-country trip with my wife and two daughters and a boyfriend, from California to Ohio (to visit family) and Pennsylvania (to drop off my oldest daughter at grad school),…

The Man In the Mulch

Writing this blog has proven so far to be rewarding in many ways but sometimes it can become a bit of a rabbit hole. This post, for example, was initially going to be a short post, sharing an odd public…

Small Concussions In the Distance

I’ve driven across the United States dozens of times, usually a round trip every year for the past sixteen years, and before this year I’ve never had trouble finding things to do. The trips I take take time, usually two…

Cahokia: The Bodies at Mound 72

He is lying there on his back, you see his resplendency, at least in your mind’s eye, in the white conch shell beads he lies upon, the shells brought here to just outside modern-day St. Louis from the Gulf of…

Cahokia: Digging in the Dirt

There are eleven UNESCO World Heritage cultural sites located in the United States, five of which are American Indian sites. Mesa Verde is by far the most famous with its cliff-dwellings, Taos Pueblo and Chaco not far behind, though Chaco…

Another Try at the Serpent Mound

It’s two hours out of the way along small highways, heading directly south of Columbus. Despite growing up in Ohio, and coming back to visit every year, I’d never heard of the town of Peebles. That’s not as surprising as…