When I was sixteen a close family friend told me he had visited 45 states. At that point I had seen maybe ten, but was clued into Kerouac, and was already having wistful dreams of camping in the foothills of the Rockies, of mounting red hills in Arizona and straddling the desolate spine of a massive and enigmatic continent. I was a traveler in my soul, though not yet inspired by the mysteries of Asia, the enchantment of Africa, the history of Europe. I wanted to see every inch of this country and now, ten years later, I’m just shy of his number with 43 of my own.
One aspect of this game is how to count a Visited State. Is it enough for your feet to touch the ground? No, because then airport lay-overs might count. Is it enough to have a meal, to use the bathroom? To drive through briefly and then re-exit? The best metric I could come up with for this tally is this: in order for a state to count, you must have a memory from it. Something meaningful, with a very low bar for ‘meaningful,’ but something you can point to, something perhaps that would speak to a native from the state.
It seems I will be at the number 43 for a while, as I have no plans to visit South Dakota anytime soon. One day, certainly, I will reach 491, but this is far away. For now, here is one memory from each of the states I have (meaningfully) visited:
The List
1. Alabama— Not yet! Bad start.
2. Alaska— Hiking under the Mendenhaal Glacier with my family. We found a river which had carved a long cave. The walls and ceiling were a shade of blue I had never experienced, only comparable to blue Gatorade. It felt like the perfect alcove for an oracle to live and pronounce visions to indigenous Iñupiat.
3. Arizona— My cousin Andy and I standing in front of the Diamondback’s stadium, my favorite sports team. Baseball, I think.
4. Arkansas— My car being searched by cops outside Little Rock where I stopped to nap. They kept commenting on how clean my clothes were and I had to convince them I wasn’t homeless which, technically, I was at the time. Also, the scariest night I spent in the town of Alma and pissing into the Mississippi River at sunrise.
5. California— My home for three years. One memory: camping out in the Mojave desert where two boars charged my tent. Waking up to an inch of snow on my tent.
6. Colorado— I hid out in Aurora for two months during Covid with my then-girlfriend. We played basketball every day and baked bagels.
7. Connecticut— My home for sixteen years. One memory: building makeshift huts in the woods with my friends which we’d fill with artwork from Goodwill.
8. Delaware— I honestly don’t even know where Delaware is. One time I took a bus from NYC to Virginia the day after Trump’s election. I sat next to and held hands with a Russian girl, and she wrote something I still haven’t translated into my journal. She was probably a spy. A section of this trip would’ve been in Delaware.
9. Florida— My first memory, though I haven’t been since I was four. I remember seeing a lizard.
10. Georgia— Not yet! Would like to try one of them peaches, though.
11. Idaho— Couer D’Alene with an old friend. My grandfather had died the night before and I was rushing to Sea-Tac to fly home. I maniacally sang the entire album Sketches of Brunswick East pt. II, the lyrics and the other parts, too. Dipped in a lake.
12. Illinois— Went to a McDonald’s and was shocked by how attractive all the workers were.
13. Indiana— The Natural Gas station was down and I had to call a mechanic. He showed up with his son and fixed the machine while the boy stared at me through the window.
14. Iowa— Studying an odd factory in Fort Madison, the conductor of the Amtrak I was riding from Chicago to Los Angeles literally yelled, “All Aboard!”
15. Kansas— I’m shocked by the wealth and cleanliness and diversity in Kansas. I saw two Mountain Lions devour some road kill and felt a hundred-mile breeze in the awe-inspiring majesty of the Great Plains. God this is a country.
16. Kentucky— My favorite bookstore in America, in the incredible town of Frankfurt. It’s called Poor Richard’s, and is worth the pilgrimage.
17. Louisiana— Romping Dauphine St with a friend, I heard a trumpeteer belt out a phrase that lodged so deeply in my mind I will never forget the feeling, although the exact notes are lost to me. One day I will here it again and collapse.
18. Maine— Acadia with the boys. We drank a gallon of Burgundy in the back of a retro-fitted Suburban and hiked the BeeHive trail.
19. Maryland— Western Maryland surprised me with its Northern Appalachian views. I could only think of Josh Tillman growing up there.
20. Massachusetts— Home to a lot of family. Last winter I ice-skated with my cousin’s high school hockey team and got my ass handed to me. Also slept in my car next to the cemetery where Jack Kerouac is buried.
21. Michigan— Detroit is the home of one of my first and best friends. I was there with a buddy a few years ago and we broke into his house to cook stir fry, accidentally breaking a plate and covering the ground in glass, barefoot. His girlfriend showed up and tried cleaning it up. We couldn’t figure why she thought that was necessary.
22. Minnesota— The worst sleep paralysis I’ve ever had, I woke up to the sensation of not being able to breath and screamed out as I rolled off the couch I was sleeping on. Missed my flight.
23. Mississippi— Road trip with two friends. I remember a field, and I remember seeing how fast we could spell the state’s name.
24. Missouri— A phone call while at a gas station parking lot. Car filled with everything I own. I did jumping jacks in the pitch-black night before finding a motel.
25. Montana— The poker bar was called Cat’s Paw. Almost got in a fight on shrooms and wrote the best poem of my life in my underwear on the streets of Bozeman.
26. Nebraska— Yet to be experienced. Decent movie though.
27. Nevada— What happens in Vegas… Anyways, I lost my retainer in Reno.
28. New Hampshire— Summers as a child we’d go to Twin Lakes and get 25 cent fudgciciles. I sound like an old man. We would hide Big Y coins in trees on islands and try to find them the following year. I visited recently and the ‘lakes’ were more ‘ponds.’
29. New Jersey— The final leg of a seventy-four hour bus ride from LA to NYC. Michael Norman (6’7”) and I sat next to each other for fifteen states. In Newark I said we should get off and take the PATH into the city, he said let’s stay on the bus. It took two hours to get through the tunnel into Manhattan. Michael Norman and I still email. He is the closest thing I have to a war buddy.
30. New Mexico— No food for an hour in any direction, I ate Manwich with David and his husband ________. They kept asking me to move in with them. Saw the fiercest storm of my life in the desert and hid at a gas station where I talked for two hours with a priest and a trucker about America.
31. New York— Home for four years. Memory: listening to Philip Glass’ Low symphony while staring at the Niagara Falls, wishing they weren’t artificially lit.
32. North Carolina— Summer vacation with a high school girlfriend. I surfed, and got up for all of three seconds and immediately understood the urge to commit ones life to the art-form.
33. North Dakota— Sneaking a friend’s dog into a diner.
34. Ohio— Playing Cribbage with an O.G. on the banks of the Cuyahoga.
35. Oklahoma— Stealing windshield wipers from a gas station.
36. Oregon— Saddened and awed by endless stacks of felled trees. I spent a week in Eugene one night.
37. Pennsylvania— A smoker-friendly goth-karaoke bar in Polish Hill with two great friends.
38. Rhode Island— I barely know where this is even though its less than two hours from my hometown. I drove through here while looking for a place to live, and probably considered it for less than thirty seconds.
39. South Carolina— Nada
40. South Dakota— Have not visited
41. Tennessee— Road tripping through the Great Smokies with friends, we were hit with one of the strongest rain storms I’d ever seen. Fog literally rising off the River, Timmy playing the keyboard in the backseat. Crossed the entire state in one day, slept in a car in Memphis in the one-hundred-degree heat.
42. Texas— Wild horses as I swam in the Rio Grande. Breaking up a fight between guys from Terelingua and San Antonio at a Marfa pool bar.
43. Utah— Hell of a night in Pocatello. Decent meatball sub, too.
44. Vermont— Lived in a cabin and tended to ‘ol Glenn Mack’s horses for a month. Saw Triangle of Sadness at an empty theater in Montpelier.
45. Virginia— Attended the International Optimist’s annual conference in Arlington. Saddest group of people I ever met.
46. Washington— Thrift shop in Vancouver. Bought a disposable at a Walgreens on the edge of the Willamette.
47. West Virginia— Current home. One memory: I was out in the sticks for work, responding to an alleged bear attack. Some of the greatest star-coverage I had ever seen. After two hours the Fire Department found him, completely fine, and he admitted that he called in a bear attack because he needed a ride home. He was arrested.
48. Wisconsin— Have not visited, though I’ve been within twenty miles on three different occasions.
49. Wyoming— A great nap in the hilly terrain on the Idaho border. I couldn’t figure out how to re-start my rental car in the middle of an abandoned ranch.
Hawai’i is not a valid state, you bunch of colonizers.
That’s why they call the flavor glacier freeze