A roadtrip is born

are you coming with me? 🚙

Last spring, I devoured Travels with Charley in one sitting, and by the time I realized what I was doing, the Space Needle caught my attention in the rear mirror of my car.

I was on the ramp to take the i-5 down to California. Seattle was out of my view in no time.

I didn't plan it. I simply started driving to Salinas. I had no intentions or expectations. Not in the big, existential way—though, maybe that too—but in the most literal sense, I had no idea what I was up to.

No strategic packing, much less a lot of money to spare. I didn’t tell many people or even document much because I wasn't thinking of it as anything but an impulse, something I felt like doing, and so I went along with my gut.

That's how I travel best, anyway. The moment I start planning, I start resisting.

Down south it was, I drove all night and by morning, I reached the northern coast of California.

That was when something settled in me.

Something clicked. It felt right. And it was right.

I thought traveling, especially by car, would cure something inside of me.

It took me over fifty thousand miles on the road, spread across a decade of short and long drives, to realize I had been wrong.

The road isn’t some kind of cure to my spiritual aches.

The need to be on the road is the disease.

Along with that, Steinbeck told me there is no cure.

Travels with Charley was essential. Because if I hadn't read it, I wouldn't have known what I was looking at, and, more importantly, what I was feeling—and what I was about to do.

Well, I mean, what would end up doing a year later.

Which is what I’m doing now.

Had I not gone with Steinbeck in mind, I wouldn't have taken in the texture of the town, the way it both held onto him and let him slip away, the way time stretched and folded in on itself when I stood outside the house he grew up in. Or worked in the library named after him.

I didn't write about it at the time.

I just let it be an experience. I didn't even take many pictures. And for a while, I believed thatt had been a mistake. I wished I had recorded more, taken notes, and done something to capture the moment in a way that would make it easier to translate into words later. But in hindsight, that was the only way it could have happened.

If I had gone in with a project in mind, it would have been an entirely different trip. And I don't think the idea—this idea—would have come to me at all.

Because it wasn't just about Salinas. That was just the first pull of the thread.

Steinbeck was the first ghost to rise. But then I started thinking about all the others, about how American literature is stitched into the land, not just in Salinas but in Concord, Hannibal, Monroeville, Asheville, Oxford, Portland, Benington, Indiana...

I thought about Poe wandering through Richmond and Baltimore, about Twain on the Mississippi, about Flannery O'Connor's peacocks in Georgia. I thought about the places that had made them, the places they had made in return. And about the road in between. About the journey to get there.

And I knew I had to go. Now I am going.

This will not be just a research trip, not in the traditional sense. I'm not interested in these places' dry, factual brochure-version. I want to feel them in my bones, nostrils, skin, and feet. I want to walk through those streets the way I walked through Salinas—without expectation, without a script. I want to let them settle into me before I try to make anything of them.

But I'm going to document it this time. And I’ll be talking about it afterwards.

There’s so much to rediscover, to learn, to experience, to struggle through.

Not just for content, not just for an audience, not even just for the future. But also for me, so I won't be trying to pull something from the ether when I sit down to write.

I'll have something real, something grounded.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. My writing, reading, teaching, love of American literature, obsession with seeing things firsthand, and need to go—they all point in the same direction.

It isn't about Steinbeck alone or any one writer. It's about the throughline, the way stories, landscapes, and history all intertwine, the way literature isn't just something we read but something we live inside of.

Among other works, it was here that Steinbeck worked on "Tortilla Flat", "Cannery Row", "The Red Pony", and "Of Mice and Men".

So I'm going.

Not just to Salinas, not just to retrace Steinbeck's steps, but to follow the thread as far as it will take me. To see where the ghosts linger. To see what's still there, what's been erased, and what's been rewritten by time, tourism, and memory. To understand, as much as I can, why these places mattered—and why they still do.

This time, I'm writing it down and sharing it in almost real-time—because safety comes first.

But before I go, I have to strip my life down to its bones.

I'm getting rid of almost everything I own. Not because I'm romanticizing minimalism, but because I need to be light. I need to be able to move.

Most of my books are going into boxes, some to storage, some to friends, some to donation. My furniture? Gone. Clothes? Anything that doesn't fit in a small suitcase, I'm selling or giving away. The few things I keep will be what I truly need, what I can't bear to part with. The rest is just weight.

I don't want to be tied down. I want to get in my car and go without looking back, without worrying about what I left behind. Because this trip isn't just about literature. It's about movement. I want to see what happens when I let go of everything that isn't essential and let myself follow the road wherever it leads.

So that's the plan. Strip it all down. Pack light. And go.

This time, I’m sharing in (almost) real time.

Tag along!

Cris