The author, William Least Heat Moon, drove across the country avoiding the major highways indicated in red on his map. He prefered to travel along the lesser-known routes marked in blue -- those small, forgotten paths that connect rural America. The result, he said, was a deeper understanding of American culture. I think the book wonderfully illustrates the concept of personal journeys.
Heat Moon's journey took him 13,000 miles across America. He encountered everything from a Seventh-Day Adventist evangelist, a Hopi Native American medical student, and a teenage runaway. I wish I had time to tell you about my own "blue highway" experiences -- the time I fished in the Tongue River in Montana or white water rafted in the Virgin River in Utah or surfed at South Padre Island in Texas or climbed the Adirondacks in Upstate New York. I've always been a kind of backroads guy who prefers the mysterious paths of blue over the predictable and monotonous roads of red. Curiosity is my constant compassion. I question a faith that has to be protected by an illusory sense of security. It is the blue highway -- geographical and spiritual -- that allows us to bypass the staleness of aging and stop living vicariously. A baby boomer who can't settle down? Your looking at him.
When William Least Heat Moon stopped to fill his Ford with gas for the last time on his trip, the pump attendant asked, "Where you coming from?" Heat Moon replied simply, "Where I've been." I am grateful for every place on God's green earth I've been.
My spiritual journey has been just as valued and adventurous. Every new step of faith I take is but a way station on what is an eternal journey.
