Thanks to Nita I had visited most of the lower 48 states by accompanying her to conferences.  Those were great trips; however, sleeping in a hotel is not the same as sleeping on the ground.  For years I tent camped in nearby states in a Sears tent and then a Wal-Mart tent.  Close to the time I retired I bought a yellow and taupe two-man REI tent.  I have put it down on the soil of 47 of these United States and in Ontario, Canada.

To me that feels profound.  My head has been on the dirt of all of lower 48 states except Rhode Island.  I have hiked around, listened to the sounds, talked to people, and observed the flora and fauna of all those states.  Name a state.  Give me a few seconds.  There, now, I have a bundle of sensory experiences that comes to mind.  When I read or listen to the news and hear a story about California or Montana, or Maine, I go to where I tented.  My connection is as solid and firm as was the dirt I slept on.

I have two composition books filled with journal notes on my tent camping.  Using it, I was able to go back and add state names to some of the images I took and have stored in iPhoto.  Using search in iPhoto, I can find at least one image from every state and track down other associated images by checking the date in the information feature. At dmforrest.smugmug.com I can also go back to many of the places I camped.  Somewhere along my travels I started photographing my REI tent.  I like those unspectacular photos best in a way because they take me specifically to the dirt I occupied.

I fell into collecting states in 2012 by deciding to tent my way out west to see Elle in Colorado.  At first I stopped off for the first long day driving I-40 in Arkansas just past Memphis, Tennessee.  I got interested in the notion of camping in all of the states.  Interstates 80, 70, 40, 20, and 10 all head west.  I went straight up to Michigan once to trace the Canadian border and bend down through the Dakotas to Colorado.  I have traced the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border to get there, too. My list of camped in states grew and I was hooked on filling them all in.

My reading of history has led me to Civil War camp; that is to go to locations like Harper’s Ferry, Antietam,  Corinth, and Vicksburg.  I once traveled to Dayton, Ohio, based on my reading of David McCullough’s book about the Wright Brothers; I circled back through Kitty Hawk on that trip.  Camping near Springfield, Illinois, came from reading about Lincoln.  I like connecting reading and camping.

I sometimes take a notion to intensely camp through an area like every campground along the Blue Ridge Parkway or all the front country camping grounds in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.   I have made annual camping trips to camp at Stephen C. Foster State Park in the Okeefeenokee Swamp, one of the quietest, darkest places on the East Coast.

My current big tent-camping idea is to trace America’s volcanos, an idea that came from a book I read and from pitching my tent in Craters of the Moon National Monument in southern Idaho last year.  The coarse black volcanic sand there will wear your shoes out.  Ruts from wagon train wheels still trace the pioneers route.  Likely I would follow the wagon train route to enter California to turn up to and maybe into Canada to see volcanoes.  Mount Saint Helens interests me in particular.  Being where continents split and magma shot out of the Earth to form what we now call a country somehow centers me. even more than standing by a free-flowing river.  I would like to travel with some roadside geology books and learn to see where I am in a new way.

Of course, I am always striving to fill in my ambition to visit all of our National Parks.  Stringing together a series of cities and towns I would like to walk around in is another vague idea I have in mind.  My thought is to always try to be just two weeks on the road, moving at a fast pace to get back to Nita.  I so wish she were able to travel with me.