Visiting the only library that sits atop an international border. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House sits directly on the U.S.-Canada border in northern Vermont.
Last summer I set out from my home in upstate NY to search for an America readjusting to life as the COVID wildfire slowed down. Just as I was about to depart on a celebratory, wandering road trip through seven states the Delta variant began sweeping our country. I went anyway. Below is the first chapter of a four-part series on my sojourn. Like many of my road trips across America, it was a fun excursion— but the worsening news about COVID was an overhang on my mood, haunting me each mile along the way.
The dark 12 months that for me started in an Albany class of nervous students moved toward a hopeful finale with the passing of a horse-drawn cart on a remote Upstate New York road. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves echoes loudly off nearby trees in the otherwise desolate, soundless scene. It was finally time to take stock—to reflect on my physically draining, gut wrenching journey that began at the University at Albany March 11, 2020. In the days, weeks, and months since then millions died. Hundreds of millions more were infected…
Most people consider bridges as structures built for convenience and safety. They are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted, scooting over them in cars, trucks, and trains without much thought. The only time we pay attention to them is when one of them fails spectacularly, like the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis 13 years ago. Fourteen people were killed and 145 injured in that catastrophe. In a similar disaster, a major bridge in Genoa, Italy, crumbled to the ground in 2018, killing 43. The public reaction to bridge tragedies is similar…
The notion of solo walks and road trips as a cure for the pandemic blues occurred to me as I saw an uptick recently in readers visiting my blog here. Most navigated to posts on some of my personal travel exploits, especially New York City walks across the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and a hike from Penn Station to the Guggenheim Museum on the upper East Side. Many visitors pointed their browser to the post on the book I wrote about my long, itinerary-less drive down U.S. Route 1 from Northern Maine to Key West during the summer…