The Wide Open World We Used to Know I remember the mornings of my youth when the world still felt incredibly vast and wide open. The air would be sharp and cold before the sun crested the eastern ridge smelling deeply of damp pine needles and turned earth. You could step off the back porch […]
The Great Divide of the Mind and Map I remember the first time I drove across this great country of ours. I was just a young man then, with a full tank of gas and an endless stretch of two-lane highway ahead of me. The journey started in the dense, green embrace of the eastern […]
Long before highways cut across the landscape of the United States, before interstates connected coasts and regions, America already had a transportation system that defined its growth. The Mississippi River, stretching from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, served as the nation’s first true highway—an artery of commerce, culture, and settlement that shaped the […]