Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end.…
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea.…
And when long years and seasons
wheeling brought around that point of time
ordained for him to make his passage homeward,
trials and dangers, even so, attended him.
—Homer, The Odyssey (circa 700 BCE), translated by Robert Fitzgerald
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling.
—Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694), translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast…I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
Then it struck me: even though I am a Puritan bitch who can’t justify having fun unless I assign myself some homework to go along with it, I was allowed to take a road trip without writing about it. And so I spent the next three and a half years taking road trips whenever I had time off work. Over those years of traveling I thought about why I wanted so badly to drive a car across America.
—Blythe Roberson, America the Beautiful: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled (2023)
I hardly need to write a Publisher’s Note this quarter, since there are so many ancient and modern writers who have discovered, explored, and written about road trips. It’s almost the spine of every novel. The protagonist launches on an adventure, outcome unknown…and ends up wiser, older, more experienced, exposed to a wider world of people alien to their hometown…so it goes.
This Publisher’s Note appears in Issue 32 of Alta Journal.
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This issue is dedicated to all those travelers, wanderers, poets, and mad ones who reach out beyond the familiar to discover new worlds.
Surely the Western epic is no exception. The journey almost always leans to the West. But can you ever really depart? As they say, wherever you go, there you are. Perhaps you will indulge a few more wise words: Begin with the end in mind, from Stephen R. Covey.
Safe journey,
Will
P.S. Have a favorite road trip? I’d love to hear about it. Write to letters@altaonline.com •
Will Hearst is the editor and publisher of Alta Journal, which he founded in 2017. He is the board chair of Hearst, one of the nation’s largest diversified media and information companies. Hearst is a grandson of company founder William Randolph Hearst.
