Reddit reviews Blue Highways: A Journey into America
We found 10 Reddit comments about Blue Highways: A Journey into America. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Great product!
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, travels the back roads of America.
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon is a now a travel writing classic, originally published in the early '80s. After separating from his wife, the author (a 30-something professor) converts his van into a sleeper and goes on a big circular road trip around the US. He sticks almost exclusively to the "blue highways"--smaller roads that used to be main routes before interstates--and writes about the people and landscapes he encounters.
It's a fascinating portrait of America, very rich and descriptive. Yet it moves along at a steady pace because he never stays in any one place too long. The whole thing is disarmingly exquisite, and I think that's why it has endured.
Very enjoyable film. Living on the road is something I've wanted to do since I read William Least Heat Moon's book Blue Highways.
Get a copy of Blue Highways and a Ford Transit Connect. The book will explain how to live out of a vehicle, and will help lift your spirits. It sounds like the sort of adventure you need. The van only has a four cylinder engine, so it should be somewhat economical. I'd think that by adding a power inverter and free WiFi, this could be fun.
yes.
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I had my life in a complete shit, at about age 25. I was divorced, working jobs I hated with a degree I didn't want to get but was pressured by my parents to get because it was lucrative. I got laid off on my birthday, my wife cheated on me, we had moved to Seattle where I knew next to no-one and it was very difficult to make friends easily. I left with hardly anything except the dog and was very happy. Do you know why? Because I had had some damned stupid epiphanies when I was 16 where I had seen myself on my death bed and glimpsed all these things I saw to do before I died. (Try imagining yourself there and what you'd want to see, its sobering.) And you know what? I knew two things. I refused to give that old man any regret. and all the wounds I had now were a part of who that old fuck was.
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Shit now it got tough. I set out to do what I loved doing, but had no idea what the fuck that was. So I read a lot of philosophers, psychologists and people I respected's biographies. R. Buckminster Fuller helped. So did Joseph Campbell. I learned about my Unconscious mind. I began to un-learn bad habits by forcing myself to do things I didn't want to do to unlearn fear. I read books on Unlearning such as "The Essential Crazy Wisdom" and "Shaving the Inside of your Skull." I unlearned attachment to money by living on hardly anything and reading "Your Money or your Life". I unlearned attachment to social norms / groupthink by doing strange things in public. Seriously. It didn't help when girls started liking me for this, that was only encouraging. But it was good too because I got good at calling myself on my own bullshit, like when I was being ungrounded, or attached to things that are insignificant.
Finding out what you Love is tougher. Campbell says "follow your bliss" and then he saw what people made of that and said "I should have said 'follow your blisters'." For me, I tried to remember what it felt like to play as a child and I tried to do one thing a day that felt like play.
Of course by now you're wondering if I got another job. Naw, I consulted here and there, but shit for the life of me I'd have the weirdest people ask me to do the weirdest things. Since I was nutty, I started finding there were lots of nutty people with nutty money. I began working for lawyers, writers, pharmacists, flag makers, silk soy milk, the world health organization, universities, I even worked in hollywood. shrug.
Life is weird if you let it be.
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Soon I began to find various mentors, I contacted authors by hunting down their emails. I took them to lunch. It didn't take too long for me to become homeless at this point (hell everyone was being then and I figured I might as well choose it because I was being lame and wasn't traveling.) And so I began traveling around meeting authors and taking them to Thai restaurants. I learned so much about my own potential, my own proclivities. Fuck I learned what my learning style was, after 20 some years in an education system no one had bothered to even test that shit. I used couchsurfing.com a lot and read books like Blue Highways and then learned more and more about not trusting what my limbic system's predictions of what I thought life was, and rather would put myself in situations and truly experience these things, and was time and again wowed by the wonder of this.
Of course around this time that movie about that wanker who died in Alaska came out and everyone kept telling me how I reminded me of him. Sure I went camping a lot too but that kid was a numbnuts. Damn dude.
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Pretty soon I was traveling around like Kane in Kung fu, getting in adventures and helping people and shit. I'd move from place to place, went all the way down the Pacific Ocean side of the US, then across America, mostly on foot. I met amazing people, met celebrities, couchsurfed in mansions and only slept out when I wanted to. It was as if because I was so curious as to who I really was inside, everyone was really curious in me. I think an ounce of that curiosity is enough for the average person to get by. If you have any curiosity of who you are, or what your potential is, then you'll do pretty well. But the problem is you get superstitious because life is so fucking crazy. seriously.
The other problem with this lifestyle is that you begin to see how fucking feeble and fragile our society is. Drop oil and 99% of this country is fucked. I mean close the 7/11 and you've killed 80% of the state of california cause they can't get doritos. I wish I were joking here. Anyhoo, I decided to go a little rural and walked and walked until I found ways to help people and learn gardening, survival skills, etc. I did work with Iraq Veterans in Sweat Lodges helping them find themselves. I couchsurfed. I wrote Universities and made up titles and gave lectures on subjects I loved but had no credentials on. People hesitated to let me on stage, but I was well received because I loved what I was talking about. I learned hypnosis (mentor) and put friends in trance to help them learn to speak with their Unconscious minds. I lived.
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Now mind you I did all this with my dog too. He had a good time. People loved him but then I got summoned home by a death in the family. While there, I did what I needed to do and gave the abridged version of what I was doing with life to people (Rilke: 'never horrify your parents by telling them what you truly are.')
Next I decided to find people who were like me. I had been homeless a year and figured I'd need to find some people who basically lived as if in the 1800s. I kept wandering until I found a farm where they had an extra cabin. They liked me, I fit in great and was invited to live there. I lived here still and am having a great time. I built earth batteries to power it. I carried water from a spring that comes out of some rocks at the base of a mountain. I have a beautiful girlfriend who wants to paint and kiss me and pet my dog and plant our garden. I write stories and make japanese swords out of scrap pieces of wood that smell.
Now at this point, I can't tell you how to do it, thats your own way. Thats what you see when you think of yourself on your death bed. Sure its morbid, sure it takes a lot of time, sure it is fucking insane and horrifying, but thats what gives it meaning. Things like that strike you to your core and there you are, who you really are. Just keep breathing and calm yourself. Its just your imagination.
TLDR: my life sucked. I stopped doing what others told me to do. I stopped making decisions out of fear. I played every day. Then did crazy shit. Now am happy.
Two books to read:
Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon and Ghost Rider by Niel Peart (the drummer for Rush, who is BTW, an excellent author, and has done some epic solo journeys). Both are solo travelogues.
A quote from the first book:
"A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."
The main reason I recommend Ghost Rider, is for one of Neil's road habits, which is that he collects stickers from the Ranger Booth at National Parks, and has a goal to collect them all. This is a cool idea because it gets you somewhere you might not otherwise go, and he seemed to meet a lot of interesting people this way.
edit: I would add about Ghost Rider, that it is also an incredibly moving book, in that it deals with Neil's grief over the loss of his only daughter (car wreck) and his wife (cancer) in the span of year. His way of grieving is to ride his motorcycle some 12,000+ miles.
Blue Highways
Read it. Take them. Second on joining Planet Fitness, will give you access to nice bathrooms/showers/AC/WiFi along the way, as well as an exercise outlet. Find one next to Wal Mart and bonus campsite out front. $1,500 will be challenging, but get as far as you can go. Couchsurf where you can, learn to love Ramen. You won’t be able to afford many meals out, stock up at grocery stores, not convenience stores. Set your expectations low, your tolerance high, and just take the experience for what it is. You’ll learn a lot. Quickly. As a parent, I’d hope you have a safety net, or at least are not burning the bridge on your way out of Florida. Enjoy it, if I have any regrets at 51, it’s that I didn’t do something similar before settling in to life, but am looking forward to do this in another decade, albeit a bit more comfortably.
I enjoyed [Blue Highways] (http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Highways-Journey-into-America/dp/0316353299), but it's a few years old. Maybe something by [Sarah Vowell] (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sarah+vowel)?
Blue Highways - A Journey Into America by William Least-Heat Moon
The idea is that you take only the blue-colored highways on a map (meaning the lesser-traveled roads, i.e. NOT big Interstates) to meander your way across the country and you'll experience more.
/s Not sure what color they would be in Google Maps though...
edit: broken link and description
Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. I absolutely love travel writing, and this is the best travel book that I've ever read.