Seeing America slowly was, in a way, like eating slow food-I wasn’t covering much ground in a single day, but I was digesting a lot more.

This became our creed, almost a religious faith. Nobody knows and we would have to figure everything out ourselves.

In modern life we move from one insulated igloo to another... serially abstracting ourselves from nature and its impacts.

The cops of America are poster-boys of low self-esteem. Their uniforms, silly hats, and sparkling patent leather girdles freighted down with shiny handcuffs, walkie-talkies, and spray canisters of Mace apparently do not make them feel secure enough, so they always add the hostile interrogation to make sure that the accosted citizens know who is in charge.

The Americans today who like to whine all the time because they say that taxes are too high and that government costs too much should leave their television sets behind for a while and go out and see the country they live in.

The endurance required should have been too much for us, but across these Nebraska plains endurance just begat more endurance.

And why did I think that the notorious and often fatal obstacles that the pioneers faced – mountain passes strewn with lava rock, hellacious winds and dust storms, rattlesnakes, and descents so steep that the wagons could only be lowered by ropes – would miraculously vanish from the trail for me?

Historians have long been squeamish about acknowledging that General Washington, like many of the American founders, was a voracious land speculator. Few academics and high school history teachers want to risk their careers by suggesting to their students that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump.

I do not believe in organized religion, herbal remedies, yoga, Reiki, kabbalah, deep massage, slow food, or chicken soup for the soul. The nostrums of Deepak Chopra and Barbara De Angelis cannot rescue people like me. I believe in crazyass passion.

All I am saying is that sometimes you’re doing quite a lot by not doing anything. You’re not quitting. You just keep going. That’s the pioneer spirit.