At Speed: Traveling the Long Road between Two Points - Hardcover

Olsen, W. Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080323581X ISBN 13: 9780803235816

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2006

Synopsis

From the lowest highway in North America to the highest, W. Scott Olsen takes readers on a journey that is more about going than about getting there. These are stories of travel as it is lived, essays about motion and the desire to keep moving. In a companionable style that puts readers in the passenger seat, Olsen describes his travels through the United States, observing the world close-up as it rushes toward and then away from his old Jeep.

The Upper Peninsula in March, a one-day drive from Death Valley to Mount Evans, a harrowing trip from Fargo to Spokane in the dead of winter: these journeys and others offer opportunities for Olsen’s unconventional narrative to take flight in exploring the intricacies of America, its small towns, its people, its roads, its histories, and its landscapes in vistas long and short that might otherwise be overlooked. In Olsen’s hands, travels along the most American routes of the heartland become an addictive tale that will appeal to anyone who has ever wondered what lies over the next hill.

About this title

About the Author:

W. Scott Olsen is a professor of English at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. In addition to being editor in chief of Ascent, a literary magazine of fiction, essays, and poetry, he is the author of several books, including Gravity, The Allure of Distance: Essays on the Act of Travel, as well as the editor of several anthologies, including A Year in Place.

From Booklist:

The six road trips featured here include one to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; a one-day drive from Death Valley in California, the lowest spot in North America, to Mount Evans (14,264 feet high) outside Denver; and Moorhead, Minnesota, to Spokane, Washington, during the winter (the temperature was below zero). The others trips were from Belfield, North Dakota, to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in mid-July, during which the temperature was in the 90s; and a six-day journey from Key West to the northern Canadian Rockies. Olsen writes of the people and landscapes along the way: birches, oaks, maples, and evergreens growing on each side of a road; two men sitting outside a gas station, stretching their legs and resting; a rainbow hanging in the air; and corn nearly all brown, ready for harvest. To the author, kudzu-covered forests look like abstract sculptures, and the foot of snow on a blue sedan's roof looks like a wedding cake. It's not where he goes, but what he sees and how he glowingly describes the scenes that make this book a pleasure to read. George Cohen
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 080323581X
• ISBN 13: 9780803235816
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 188