Blue Highways: A Journey into America

“Factory work’s easier on the back, and I don’t mind it, understand, but a man becomes what he does. Got to watch that. That’s why I keep at farmin’.”

Bob Wheeler, a farmer whom Heat-Moon encounters during his search for Nameless, Tennessee, expresses his sentiment that jobs can sometimes define a person, especially their self-understanding. In Wheeler’s ethos, there is more dignity in farming because it involves greater self-reliance than does factory work. His awareness empowers him to define himself rather than being defined by external forces.

“Highway as analog: social engineers draw blueprints to straighten treacherous and inefficient switchbacks of men with old, curvy notions; taboo engineers lay out federally approved culverts to drain the overflow of passions; mind engineers bulldoze ups and downs to make men levelheaded.”

As Heat-Moon observes the utilitarian angularity of modern construction, he laments the loss of old roads’ organic curvature—which he sarcastically describes as “treacherous and inefficient.” The author’s metaphor addresses the human tendency to forcibly extract order from chaos. In Heat-Moon’s estimation, that endeavor can sometimes be detrimentally mechanical; beauty resides in chaos, and chaos need not be entirely purged.

“There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t.”

It is difficult to locate Heat-Moon on this binary. In a way, the whole idea centers on a person’s risk tolerance. He would likely put himself in the first category, but without knowing much of his backstory, the actual risk he takes is uncertain.

“But now, about the county, men with caliper hands and parallelogram brains were taking the measure of the salt marsh and trying to ‘reclaim’ it—a misleading word since this tidewater has always belonged to the sea.”

Heat-Moon points out that modern humans are always trying to manipulate their environments, a project he considers doomed. No matter the human effort to re-engineer the natural world, it will always prevail in the end. The author also highlights the word “reclaim,” hinting at humanity’s acquisitive tendencies.

“To an American, land is solidity, goodness, and hope. American history is about land.”

This quote expresses part of American mythology. Compared to other nations, American prosperity historically was directly related to the availability of land and resources. Land is still a common trope in the American national identity, although this is more the case for the vast spaces west of the Mississippi River.

“Dubious about men who sought changelessness to release them from uncertainty and turmoil, I questioned a faith that has to be protected by illusory immutability.”

Heat-Moon is skeptical toward those of organized religions, especially those who intentionally eschew human relationships in favor of solitude. He makes the comment before interviewing the Trappists in Georgia, after which he gains a different perspective. While total solitude is still an uncomfortable proposition for himself, he understands the logic in the monks’ decision.

“He was more empty than malicious.”

Heat-Moon responds to the explicit racism at the bar outside Selma. The racist man in question uses slurs and epithets and seems to value segregation. Heat-Moon gives the man something of an easy pass here, as such a malignant combination of ignorance and hostility deserves censure. The author does, however, point out one of the common denominators in all forms of discrimination and hate—which is ignorance.

“It’s a sad history not because of the influx of settlers—after all, Indians had encroached upon each other for thousands of years. It’s a sad history because of the shabby way the new people dealt with tribal Americans: not just the lies, but the utter unwillingness to share an enormous land.”

On many occasions, Heat-Moon delves into the history of the Native tribes local to his travel destinations. Here, he makes the careful distinction that while Native American tribes were often in conflict with each other, and many conquered other tribes, they lacked the selfish bent of colonialist governments. Embedded in governmental mistreatment of Native American tribes was a condescending view that the Native tribes were uncivilized savages unworthy of dignity and respect.

“A traveler who leaves the journey open to the road finds unforeseen things come to shape it.”

The author implies that fate can guide the traveler to unexpected discoveries. This is the sentiment of the wanderer, the person who eschews the circumstances of their life in favor of letting the wind take them where it will. This is not the same as recklessness or being ill-prepared for such travels; rather, it keeps options open and begets experiences not otherwise possible.

“The wanderer’s danger is to find comfort.”

Heat-Moon warns himself that to stay motivated, he must remain active. After staying with extended family, the familiarity naturally led to a kind of complacency; this contrasts with the nomadic, road-faring lifestyle he desires.

“To insist that diligent thought would bring an understanding of change was to limit life to the comprehensible.”

There is a certain futility in trying to understand the nature and inevitability of change. Heat-Moon does not disdain this natural human concern, but he suggests that accepting change leads to accepting the wonder of life. Seeking exhaustive scientific, logical explanations can eclipse the beauty of mystery. Acceptance also leads ultimately to peace; one needn’t seek answers to unanswerable questions.

“A popular piece of sociology holds that Americans are losing confidence in the future because they are losing sight of the past. No wonder, when the good places that show the past seem so hard to find.”

The blue highways take the author to these “good places,” but these are roads less traveled than the interstate that leads to centers of commerce. Place and history are inevitably linked, and when modernity directs people to centralized commercial hubs, it alters their historical perspective. There is history everywhere, but such systems as the interstate make that history more obscure.

“Our religion keeps reminding us that we aren’t just will and thoughts. We’re also sand and wind and thunder. Rain. The seasons. All those things. You learn to respect everything because you are everything.”

Kendrick Fritz, the Hopi college student, says this to Heat-Moon. While it reveals something about the Hopi worldview, it also starkly contrasts with the onslaught of American commercialism. American culture lacks a core set of values such as Fritz’s—in their place is an increasingly powerful materialism.

“A car whipped past, the driver eating and a passenger clicking a camera. Moving without going anywhere, taking a trip instead of making one.”

The author takes a simple image—two people in a car, one eating and the other with a camera—and pronounces it an emblem of modern hollowness. His remarks show his disdain for the fast pace of modern life and suggest that people vacationing are not doing so fully. The author wrote the words in 1978, and the pace of the world has only increased since then. Heat-Moon sees a world where people are unable to truly absorb their surroundings and most likely do not even realize what is happening.

“Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he’s going or to understand what he sees?”

Fate again is at the center of this comment. One of the book’s primary motifs, fate is a positive force in life. The paradox is that humans are a naturally curious species. We want to know the answers to things; we want to understand; we want to make sense. In Heat-Moon’s view, this natural desire should never eclipse a basic understanding that some things are unknowable. Such understanding brings freedom.

“If a man can keep alert and imaginative, an error is a possibility, a chance at something new; to him, wandering and wondering are part of the same process, and he is most mistaken, most in error, whenever he quits exploring.”

Mistakes are not to be feared. When handled appropriately, they can lead to growth. If a person errs, this fact should not indict their entire way of living. Mistakes are natural and even necessary, and a quest for infallibility is misguided.

“The idea is to come away from things, away from ourselves, come away from it all toward God. Buying things is an escape. It’s showing what you aren’t. It’s loving yourself.”

Arthur O. Bakke says this to Heat-Moon during one of their many exchanges on living according to divine will. While Heat-Moon is dubious of organized religion, Bakke’s point is not lost on him, and it even echoes Heat-Moon’s own views on American materialism. The two men, though different in spirituality, agree: People are worth more than things.

“No place, in theory, is boring of itself. Boredom lies only with the traveler’s limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough.”

State of mind is central to this message. How a person perceives their surroundings matters more than the surroundings themselves. Therefore, curiosity should be embraced and cultivated.

“The wall looked enduring, and it would serve for a while, but there would come a time when it would be a pile of rock to no end. I had undercut the biggest dream of all—the one for permanence. Maybe that’s what we really felt in the stones: how man is the tool of his dreams, dreams that rise only to fall back to earth.”

This passage concerns the stone wall the author builds with his friend, Scott Chisholm. The work is hard, and when Heat-Moon later reflects on it, he realizes that the wall will most likely outlive him. Nevertheless, like all things, the wall will eventually deteriorate. Heat-Moon recognizes that the wall symbolizes something beyond a simple task. The larger significance—that the wall’s construction is an endeavor for permanence despite there being no such thing—is an existentialist paradox.

“Our beginnings do not foreshadow our ends if one judges by the Hudson River.”

The Hudson River’s very modest headwaters are a mountain stream in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. At its delta, the river flows past New York City and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the more famous rivers in the nation, and its history is legendary. This quote expresses that one can start with humble beginnings but transform into something large, significant, and legendary.

“New businesses had come to use the old buildings in new ways so that Woodstock wasn’t a restoration or even a renovation, but rather a town—like the best English villages—with a continuous and evident past.”

Heat-Moon is often on the lookout for places where there is harmony between the old and the new. When he enters Woodstock, Vermont, his first opinion is that the town has achieved this balance. Woodstock has incorporated its history in a way that is natural and seamless, where its past has not been obliterated by modern “restoration or even renovation.”

“‘Our destination,’ Henry Miller says, ‘is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.’”

American author Henry Miller echoes the sentiment that perception is reality. It matters how a person perceives their destination, literal or metaphorical. It is important to keep an open mind and not allow preconceptions to distort understanding.

“There are all kinds of reasons why there will be industrial development here, the greatest of which is that to make change is the most human creation.”

Heat-Moon says this while in Greenwich, New Jersey, and it his response to hearing about the energy company that used nefarious real estate tactics to buy up land for new development. He points out that development is natural to civilization. The larger ramification is that the need for development is endless.