Six days in a 25‑foot RV will rearrange your perspective — of the people you’re with and the country we live in.
We’re back in New York now, rolling along familiar highways. A few more hours and we’ll be at our mountain cabin. We’re all ready to get out of this RV, but I’m not ready to quit being an adventurer. I’m not ready to stop being curious about what’s around the next bend.
Not ready to stop noticing things like the mile‑long field lined with American flags on every fourth fencepost. Or the hand‑painted signs for picnics and community outings. Or the welcoming smiles of the farm owners who greeted us each night as if we were old friends.
We spent six days and five nights without a television, newspaper, or talk radio station — yet somehow it feels like we know more about what’s happening than if we had all of them. No politicians. No pundits. No headlines designed to raise blood pressure. Just the real‑time events unfolding through the windshield: good people, living their lives, caring for one another, doing their best.
At every stop, our hosts brought us to a large wall map of North America and asked us to place pins where we live and where we’re headed. Then came the questions — genuine curiosity about what those places are like, who lives there, what life feels like. They weren’t making small talk. They were expanding their world.
And yesterday, on the Ohio stretch of I‑90, we pulled into rest stops with RV services, EV chargers (all in use), and bustling food courts filled with travelers of every background. Just like the towns we passed through, these places reflected the interests and hopes of regular people — the ones who rarely make the news but always make the country work.
It might not be a bad idea for the folks in Washington — from every side — to take a drive like this. To ignite their curiosity. To listen to the simple, proud voices of the people they represent. No speeches. No ads. No certainty masquerading as wisdom. Just listening. Letting democracy ring the way it does on the open road.
Last night we stayed just south of Buffalo. Another warm host. Another group of fellow travelers who were both interesting and interested. Again.
The specifics matter less than the sum of the experience: six days on the back roads and highways of America, arriving not just at a physical destination, but at a new way of seeing things.
In the end, what stays with me isn’t the mileage or the map pins or even the landscapes that unfolded mile after mile. It’s the reminder that perspective doesn’t shift in grand moments — it shifts in the small, human ones. A conversation at a farm gate. A shared laugh in a rest stop. A host pointing to a map with genuine curiosity about who we are and where we come from.
Six days on the road didn’t change the country. But they changed the way I see it. They reminded me that beneath the noise, people are still generous, still hopeful, still eager to understand one another. They reminded me that curiosity is not a luxury; it’s a responsibility.
And as we settle back into our routines, I hope I carry that forward — the willingness to look a little longer, listen a little deeper, and stay open to the possibility that the next bend in the road might show me something I didn’t know I needed to see today.
Henry Miller (1891 – 1980): American novelist, short story writer and essayist.
Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller
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