Scholars Mind

Driving the Back Roads

“Beware thoughts that come in the night,” writes Willian Least-Heat Moon, in the introduction to his 1982 road trip travelogue masterpiece, Blue Highways. Read the book’s first page here, then discuss with your team: do you agree with him that traveling in a circle has more purpose than traveling in a straight line? If you were given a car, unlimited gas (or endless EV charging), and all the time in the world, where would you want to drive it?

Key concepts

Circular Versus Linear Journeys
A line aims at somewhere new and ends there; a circle returns you to the start, so the only thing it can possibly produce is a change in the traveller. That is the claim worth testing rather than accepting.

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Every work — at a glance

  • Blue Highways — William Least Heat-Moon (book)

    Thirteen thousand miles around America on the small roads printed blue on old maps, made in a van called Ghost Dancing after the author lost his job and his marriage in one week.

What to know

  1. 01
    A circle's only possible product is the traveller. Least Heat-Moon ends where he began, so nothing about the trip can be measured in arrival — thirteen thousand miles bought him a notebook of strangers' voices from towns nobody stops in, and a different man at the same address.

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Across subjects

Music has the same trick. A sonata's last section returns to the theme it opened with, in the key it started in, and it does not sound the same — because

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Blue Highways answers with 'back where you started, and not the same person' — the difference, not the distance, is the point. Argue the other side: lines are how anything new happens, and exploration, migration and discovery all needed somebody who refused to turn around.

Practice — a sample

LITEach term below names a kind of travel writing or route EXCEPT —

  • A An overland route
  • B A travelogue
  • C A blue highway
  • D A road journal
  • E Route elasticity

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

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