I Was Heading To Nebraska.

We Are So Used To The Notion Of Our Own Inevitability As Life's Dominant Species That It Is Hard To Grasp That We Are Here Only Because Of Timely Extraterrestrial Bangs And Other Random Flukes. The One Thing We Have In Common With All Other Living Things Is That For Nearly Four Billions Years Our Ancestors Have Managed To Slip Through A Series Of Closing Doors Every Time We Needed Them To.

I Had To Drive To Minneapolis Once, And Went On A Back Road Just To See The Country. But There Was Nothing To See. It's Just Flat And Hot, And Full Of Corn And Soybeans And Hogs. Every Once In A While You Come Across A Farm Or Some Dead Little Town Where The Liveliest Thing Is The Flies.

Look At A Globe And What You Are Seeing Really Is A Snapshot Of The Continents As They Have Been For Just One-tenth Of 1 Per Cent Of The Earths History.

I Can't Imagine There Has Ever Been A More Gratifying Time Or Place To Be Alive Than America In The 1950s. No Country Had Ever Known Such Prosperity.

Perhaps It's My Natural Pessimism, But It Seems That An Awfully Large Part Of Travel These Days Is To See Things While You Still Can.