A Steinbeckian Tale For The Tinder Age

Diary of a young-going-on-middle-aged, recently single guy looking for love – could be a little tedious to read. Diary of a young-going-on-middle-aged, recently single guy looking for love and traveling all across the country …that’s something more memorable. And so we have my most recently-read book, Leave Only Footprints, by Conor Knighton.

Knighton managed to blend two parts of latter-day Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and one part male Bridget Jones Diary with quite compelling results. A TV news correspondent called upon sporadically by his network, he found himself dumped by his fiancee. Heartbroken, bored and tired of seeing all the places they used to go to in Phoenix, he decided to take a year off and travel. His plan – visit everyone of the national parks in the country. There are over 50, from Atlantic to Pacific, Maine to California, plus ones above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, and out in the lonely ocean in Samoa and the Virgin Islands. Cleverly, he sold his network on the idea of having him do it as a regular segment for their morning or news shows, so as to get a bit of an expense account to cover the thousands of miles by road, air and sea.

He begins the year wanting to see the first sunrise of the year before anyone else, so he visits Acadia National Park, just off the Maine coast on a frigid New Year’s morning. 364 days later he finishes up watching the sun set into the Pacific at the Point Reyes National Seashore (technically not a national park) in California. Along the way he developed a profound and newfound love of his country and its nature, as well as the people who’ve worked to preserve it. He describes all the parks he went to, and adds a little history, but the book moves along swiftly, as he had to himself, not lingering too long on any one site or sight, and introducing us to a range of interesting personnel at the parks. In an unusual but effective writing twist, he avoids making it a chronological recounting of the year, and lumps parks together by “theme.” Crater Lake and Congaree were “mysteries” as I mentioned in the previous blog. Big Bend, on the Tex-mex boundary, and American Samoa, in the middle of the ocean were “borders.” Joshua Tree and Sequoia were among the ones he labeled “trees” for obvious reason. He comes to some great insights, like how many of the people who worked hardest to set up and protect the scenic national parks came from Kansas and other similarly geographically unremarkable places. “If Dorothy had grown up in New York City rather than on the Prairie, Oz may not have looked as spectacular,” he points out. The non-linear approach worked well, keeping us a little off-balance and wondering what would be his next category.

As for love, we never really know if he found it. He used the modern apps to find dates in many cities and described one promising relationship cooked up in the fogs of Washington’s Cascades, but it never seemed to entirely take off. Then there was the nice gal who helped him when his car skidded off the road in Wyoming; he sought her out only to find she was engaged. He does a lot of self-evaluation and personal growing through the year and his recollection of his failed engagement that led to the journey. In one or two places, this side-story became a little distracting and slowing, but all in all, it helped us see him as a human on the road to somewhere… just not somewhere he had mapped out quite yet.

All in all, an interesting and at times endearing look at the United States. I give it 3.5 Smokeys out of 5.