If you haven’t read Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon, the classic road trip book, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy and do so.   It should be a “must read” for anyone interested in solo travel.

As with most great travelogues, this is not just an autobiographical journey of a man traveling across the U.S. in an old van (dubbed “Ghost Dancing”), but a journey of self-discovery as well.  Wanting to see the real America, he avoids major highways and sticks with state and local roads–those colored blue on his map.  Personal problems precipitate his journey, but don’t prevent him from being fully engaged in it and learning what he can about the places he travels through.

The journey he records is bare bones.  When he embarked on it, he had just lost his job.  He outfitted his van to be his home, and brought only what he needed with him–a sleeping bag and blanket, a Coleman cooler that was practically empty, a gallon jug of water and a Rubbermaid basin to wash in, a portable toilet, some utensils and a skillet, some clothes, a camera, 2 books, writing materials, and very little cash.  Not exactly luxury RV living.  How many of us could live like that for a year?  More to the point, how many of us could live like that and turn our experience into one of the best road trip books of all time?

Heat-Moon’s book is influenced by Walt Whitman, whose Leaves of Grass he brings with him on the trip.  Like Whitman, Heat-Moon writes about characters from many different walks of life, so the reader really gets a feel for the cross-section of humanity we have here in the U.S.  He has an understanding of how geography, geology, and history shape us as human beings.  He’s got a good ear for real dialogue–not the snappy banter of writers who hope there novels will be turned into Hollywood movies.

If you enjoy Blue Highways as much as I think you will, try his 2nd book PrairyErth next, in which he writes about the Flint Hills of Kansas.  In this, he explores the intersection of history, geography, geology and humanity and does so with a wonderfully inclusive writing style, utilizing old newspaper clippings, first person narrative, lists, and various and sundry other forms of writing, all woven seamlessly together in a near-perfect example of what is possible with the written language.