June 23rd, Barstow, California
My journey across this deeply troubled country got off to a glum start. I had set off just after lunch on my biannual trip back to the Hudson Valley from Stanford University, where I teach during the winter and spring. I was heading first to southern Utah, to visit a friend, so I decided to spend the night at a highway hotel in Barstow, California, which I had selected for two reasons: it was roughly a six hours’ drive from Palo Alto, and recent reviews have noted that it is particularly attentive to cleanliness.
I parked, put on a face mask and a pair of lime-green nitrile gloves from a stash of supplies that I had brought along, unhooked my dog, a two-year-old Whoodle named Linus, from his seat belt, and walked into the hotel. A clerk stood behind a Plexiglas window, which, for a minute, allayed my fears of venturing out into our *COVID*-19-infected nation. I gave her my name and she smiled. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You don’t have to wear that thing in here. It’s a bit much, don’t you think?” No, I said to myself. Have you looked at the surging numbers in Southern California? I am not even sure it’s enough. But she shrugged, handed me my key card, and chuckled at the sight of my brightly gloved hand.
There was a bottle of hand sanitizer on the counter next to a sign advising guests to cover their faces, yet I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only person in the lobby wearing a mask. I went to my room, which seemed neat and clean. Nonetheless, I took one of my three bottles of Clorox spray and wiped down every surface, changed my gloves, picked up the TV remote, and nearly drowned it in disinfectant. Then I took Linus for a walk.
The hotel was near a seemingly endless number of chain restaurants: McDonald’s, In-N-Out Burger, Del Taco, and Taco Bell. Directly across the parking lot there was a Chili’s. I was hungry, and I peered inside: the restaurant was full even on a Tuesday night, and the only people I saw wearing masks were the servers. I decided to dine in my room, on a PowerBar and beef jerky.
This is my third trip across America by car. I have lived much of my life working as a foreign correspondent, in Hong Kong, London, Moscow, and Rome. For decades, I have travelled extensively in Asia, Africa, and Europe, mostly covering issues of global public health. But I am also a bit of a stereotypical New Yorker; until last year, except for an occasional foray to Chicago or Atlanta, my experience of America had occurred mostly on the coasts. The first two journeys had been a revelation, in part because my itinerary required little planning other than to head toward the coast I wasn’t on. Each day, I would drive for six or seven hours, type the words “dog friendly hotel” into Google, check in somewhere, and find a dog park and a locally recommended place to eat. Then I would read or watch a baseball game (remember those?) and go to sleep. The trips were fun and random in a way that my life is not. I met fascinating and unexpected people at the dog parks, including, last December, on the way back to school, a former meth dealer just out of prison, whom I encountered in Amarillo with his adorable border collie. He steered me to a fantastic taco truck.
All that happened in another world. I don’t expect the same kind of serendipity on this trip. I have a sleeping bag, in case it comes to that, and enough hand sanitizer to disinfect the nation. But I have spent the past hundred days in nearly total seclusion in Santa Clara County, which was among the first regions to order people to shelter in place. COVID-19 turned Stanford into a ghost town nearly overnight. The spring quarter had not yet begun, but one day there were thousands of students bustling about on campus, and the next day they were gone. I taught a class with a hundred and thirty students and never met any of them, except on Zoom. The dorms were shut, the gyms were closed, and so were the laboratories. When I walked across the vast campus with Linus, I felt as if I were in a scene that somehow was cut out of “The Leftovers.”
To be honest, I’m excited to go home, but also a bit worried about leaving my safe place to get there. I have been sick a bunch in the past couple of years, but once again feel vigorous and healthy. I’ll do whatever I can to avoid this virus.
June 24th, Las Vegas
I just drove across the Mojave Desert, where, at noon, the temperature reached a hundred and ten. Unless you see the desert, I am not sure you can fully grasp how something so desolate can be so beautiful. I needed to charge the car and walk Linus, and I decided to stop on the strip, so that I could pass by Harrah’s, the Bellagio, and Caesars Palace. I counted a hundred and thirty-seven people during my thirty-minute stroll, and only seventeen wore masks. Not exactly a scientific poll, but not encouraging, either. It isn’t easy to interview people with a mask on your face and a leash in your hand, but I gave it a try. Those I spoke to offered a variety of answers to my single question: Why are you not wearing a mask? “The virus cannot infect you when it is hot,” a man told me. I didn’t want to get into a debate, but clearly no one had told that to the virus: the day before, Nevada recorded four hundred and eighty-three new cases, the highest number there since the epidemic began. The most remarkable answer came from a lanky woman in a yellow sundress who was headed to the Bellagio. She had come with her husband from Oregon to gamble a little, she said, and to regain a sense of community. “At some point, you just have to live your life,” she told me, “and we were not born with masks on.” I got back into my car, and headed for Utah. As I approached the state line, I heard Governor Andrew Cuomo announce that people coming to New York from states with high rates of new infections—and Utah is one—could be asked to isolate themselves for the first two weeks upon arrival.
June 24th-25th, Kanab, Utah
Kanab is a strange and beautiful place, one part emerging hipster paradise (coffee, antique and craft shops) and two parts deep-red town in a deep-red state (gun stores galore). Utah has not supported a Democratic Presidential nominee since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won forty-four of the states. I arrived late in the afternoon and threw a Frisbee with Linus for longer than I wanted to, but it’s hard to deny a dog that has been stuck in a car most of the day.
Kanab is a gateway to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, and sits about sixty-five miles from the northern rim of the Grand Canyon. Willow Canyon Outdoor, which sells books and the best hiking gear in town, also sells the best espresso. The shopkeepers were strict about limiting the number of people inside and refused to allow any maskless person to enter. It wasn’t the only place to take the pandemic seriously, but in the rest of the town the threat was mostly ignored.
I stopped off at the Kane County tourism office and spoke to an information officer behind the desk. She wore a mask dangling around her neck. I asked how tourism was. “At first, people were slowing down,” she told me. “But, lately, it has been a mad rush to get here.” I told her that I could hardly find anyone in town who wore a mask. “We are clean,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We are clean and safe here, and people are starting to realize that. It’s a true safety zone.” I mumbled some form of thank you and quickly shuffled out the door.
After that I had dinner with Victor, the friend I had come to Kanab to see. We met when I lived in Moscow, where he was a CBS News cameraman. Twenty years ago, he decided to chuck it all and move to a place where he can live mostly outdoors. He has been in Kanab ever since, and now runs one of the most popular restaurants in town, the Rocking V Café, a family-friendly spot that serves well-prepared, unfussy food in a historic old walkup. Victor spends most of his waking hours at the café; he wears a mask at all times and believes that social distancing is essential. “Nobody likes to say no to guests,” he told me when I asked how it had been. “But I am in the hospitality business, and I do not think it’s hospitable to encourage your guests to get sick or die.” People can eat outside, and most do; only a few at a time are allowed in the restaurant, where, if they have no mask, they will be encouraged to put one on.
Victor’s house has a spectacular view of the nearby hills. Many classic Westerns were filmed in Kanab, and we drove a few miles to Johnson Canyon, to see the old “Gunsmoke” set. (It was abandoned years ago, but it’s still easy to recognize if you ever watched the show.) Back at his house, Victor pointed to a giant rock face that towered over the others and said, “We are climbing that tomorrow at dawn.” I thought he was joking. By 9 A.M., when we were done, I wished he had been. I stumbled across loose rocks all the way up, gasping for air in the thin atmosphere, and slid half the way down on my ass, afraid of tripping and plunging to the ground below.
I went back to Victor’s house and read the local papers. Dr. Angela Dunn, the state epidemiologist, at the Utah Department of Health, was quoted in the St. George News as saying that recent growth in infection rates was ominous. “For three straight weeks now, our cases have been increasing at a rate that isn’t sustainable,” she said. “We are at risk for overwhelming our hospital capacity, which could result in Utahns not getting the medical care they need.”
In response, Victor Iverson, the Washington County commissioner and a candidate for lieutenant governor at the time, declared that he “will never wear a mask.” He had had it with the pandemic talk. “I think it’s time to get back to normal,” he said. “Our citizens want to be free. And we’re done.”
June 25th-26th, Green River, Utah
I headed up US-89, then I-70, toward Grand Junction, Colorado. Before I left, Victor had suggested that I stop for lunch at Ray’s Tavern, a famous old burger joint just off the highway in Green River, Utah. I found Ray’s easily enough—it is a pretty small speck of a town. The place looked like an old saloon, framed magically by surrounding mountains. It smelled good, so I parked and walked in. There was a group of about fifteen people sitting at a long table, and a few others at the bar. Not one of them wore a mask. When I entered, the entire room stared at me with a combination of pity and derision.
“Give it a rest,” a man who brought me a menu said. “We are all good here.” I asked if he could make me a meal to go and he nodded. So I ordered a cheeseburger, and went outside to take Linus for a walk. When I got back, I waved at the man through the window, and he held up a bag. I went in, paid quickly, and left. In the car, I repeated, with surgical precision, my obsessive routine: I put on new gloves before I lifted the food out of the bag, threw the bag and the gloves on the floor, and put on another pair to eat. As soon as I was done, I tossed the trash, sanitized again, and got back on the highway. The experience was far from a delight. But the burger was delicious.
As I crossed into Colorado, and passed Buffalo Mountain, which was still capped with snow, I listened to a briefing from the White House coronavirus task force. It was the first time the group had convened publicly in nearly two months. Anthony Fauci described the growing danger to the nation, and the increasing spread in the South and the West. He spoke about our collective responsibility to others in confronting the pandemic. It struck me that, for some reason, beyond the natural inclination toward personal freedom in all things that has always marked the American West, most of the people I had met out here didn’t seem much interested in listening to people in D.C. That seems true even as the numbers keep getting worse, and hospital capacity is strained. “It all depends what your philosophy is,” a clerk at a local-food shop just outside Grand Junction told me, when I stopped for water. She doesn’t own a mask. “If I am going to get it, I am going to get it,” she said.
June 27th, Ogallala, Nebraska
I rolled into town only to find that the Front Street Cowboy Museum had closed for the day. I hate to sound hypocritical, in wishing that I could go into a very public space, but I confess that I had wanted to see the spur and lasso collections. I had passed through here a year ago without stopping, and I promised myself I would not make the same mistake again.
Ogallala has long been a crossroads: the Union Pacific Railroad and the Pony Express passed through it, as did many of the great cattle drives, before the animals were loaded onto railroad cars at the terminus. Today, instead, there is an enormous truck stop. I went to the Dairy Queen with Linus and got a chicken sandwich and a soft-serve ice cream. Then I checked into a hotel and pulled open the drapes in my room. It looked out onto a field filled with giant bales of hay. Past them, trucks and cars were whizzing by on I-80, the highway that brought me to town and would carry me out in the morning. I turned on the television, and there seemed to be a Jason Bourne movie on every channel. But that was fine with me. I was sick of thinking.
June 29th, South Bend, Indiana
It has felt like I am racing a tornado across America. It seems like every state I pass through has just had its worst day. The growth of the virus in the Midwest and South and West is terrifying. But, as I drove east, rules, in general, are stricter and compliance seemingly better. Quite a few people—store clerks, hotel employees—pull their masks up when somebody walks by, and yank them down again once I was past them.
This happened a few times in South Bend. It’s a complicated college town, with a racially mixed population. Again, there was nothing scientific about my survey, but most people I saw on the streets wore masks—and nobody laughed at mine. I walked past the county courthouse, where an African-American woman, wearing a mask, was pacing out front. She told me that it was her fifty-first birthday, and that she had been waiting for her son. He’s a good kid, she said, and a fine student, but a lousy driver; apparently, there was a string of traffic tickets.
The woman has lived in South Bend all her life. Until recently, she drove a car for a nursing home, but because of risky contacts there she had to quarantine for two weeks and was summarily fired. She didn’t seem bitter, though. She had just got a real-estate license, and said that unemployment insurance would fill the gap until she started making money again. I asked her about COVID-19, and she said that it was one more curse for the poor to contend with. “It’s a virus. It doesn’t choose who to infect.” She said all her friends wore masks and that, having just emerged from the courthouse, she was happy to see everyone there did, too.
“I don’t know how well they work,” she said. “But they can’t hurt, and I think just the image of everyone trying to do it is powerful.” Those words practically made me cry—I guess out of gratitude and relief.
June 30th, Salamanca, New York
I drove across Ohio, stopping briefly in Cleveland to walk Linus. There were few people on the streets, and most were wearing masks. There were some lines outside stores, which meant that they adhered to social-distancing rules. But I was in a hurry. Salamanca is a tiny town that sits in the Allegany Indian Territories, which is governed by the Seneca Nation. I took a long walk down the main street. There were fireworks for sale, and families playing. I was exhausted, so I bought a really good hot dog at a stand where everyone, except for the children, wore masks. A sign read “Families can be as close as they like. Everyone else keep your distance.”
I did as it advised, checked into a Holiday Inn, and quickly fell asleep.
July 1st, Hudson, New York
On reaching home, I immediately drove through the center of town and rejoiced at two remarkable sights: most stores were open, and everyone wore a mask. I am going to stock up on provisions and stay in till I feel certain that I have dodged this current plague. I am a science writer, and I believe in data, so it would be disingenuous of me to draw conclusions about America from the few dozen people I encountered in the past week. I don’t know what I expected from this trip, but I was surprised at how little attention people seemed to pay to the virus. I once wrote a book called “Denialism,” but I could never have imagined that so many people could be so committed to ignoring reality. The pain inflicted by COVID-19 is becoming obvious everywhere, particularly in the very states—Arizona, Florida, Texas—where leaders have acted as if the whole thing were just a nuisance. Infection rates are staggering. If Florida were a country it would have the fourth-worst infection totals in the world. It is pretty clear that our national problem with authority has run smack into a pandemic that is going to last much longer, and cause far more damage, than we have been willing to acknowledge. I suspect this is my last cross-country road trip for quite some time.
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Driving Cross-Country: A Coronavirus Diary - The New Yorker
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