Revisiting acclaimed ‘Blue Highways’

In 1978, Heat-Moon went on a huge clockwise wander around the outskirts of the United States as he was taking stock of a life journey that had suffered some grave interruptions. His marriage was failing and he’d lost his teaching job at the University of Missouri. He left from Columbia, Mo., drove east to North Carolina and then stuck close to the boundaries of the nation and the back roads that connect small towns.

The resulting travelogue he published in 1982, “Blue Highways,” spent 34 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was hailed as a modern classic. It seemed to encapsulate a certain time and spirit in 1970s America: the road trip of rediscovery. The beleaguered nation trying to figure itself out.

Nearly 30 years after that initial publication, Heat-Moon will visit the Summit Grove Lodge near La Center on May 12 along with photographer Edward I. Ailor III, who has just published a companion volume called “Blue Highways Revisited.” The event begins at 5 p.m. with a book signing and silent auction to benefit the Clark County Historical Society; there’s also a

fully catered dinner. Tickets are $75 or $65 for historical society members. Visit http://cchmuseum.org or call 360-993-5679.

Ailor’s color hardcover book retraces Heat-Moon’s original trip, adding a lavish visual element a generation later — and answering many questions about the fates of those salt-of-the-earth people and out-of-the-way places Heat-Moon got to know along his way. These include everyone from a Trappist monk in Georgia to three hang-gliding dudes who developed their precarious science near the Central Washington town of Pitt.

The monk found post-publication fame a “pain in the ass” as people treated him like a guru; two of the three hang gliders quit, figuring they were “no longer bullet proof,” but one graduated to racing planes.

And then there’s Maryhill Stonehenge — which hasn’t changed at all.

“That is a pivotal point in the journey,” Heat-Moon, 72, said during a telephone interview last week. “It was the halfway point and it was there I began to put together what the trip was about. I think the book makes clear that when you get to the bottom of yourself, the heart of darkness — then it becomes time, if you want to move farther along, you’ve got to begin reaching out. It was there at Sam Hill’s Stonehenge that this started becoming clear to me.”

Good thing it was a “wonderful starry night,” Heat-Moon added with a laugh, otherwise “that awareness might have taken a lot longer.”

Sprawling America

Heat-Moon’s name gets a short, clarifying chapter in the book. His real name is William Trogdon and he is of English, Irish and Osage ancestry; his father was called Heat-Moon (that’s the seventh month) so he nicknamed his two children Little (William’s older brother) and Least Heat-Moon.

Photographer Ailor used to be Heat-Moon’s personal physician; they’d been acquaintances for years when Ailor, who retired to take up photography, revealed that he and his son had been retracing and photographing the original “Blue Highways” journey.

“I thought his photographs were strong enough for a worthy project, and I told him I’d help him complete it,” Heat-Moon said. In the end, his help consisted mostly of shaping and editing captions — while reveling in the photos of a rustic America he chronicled 30 years ago.

Is that America still there?

Some things are different now, Heat-Moon conceded — chiefly the sprawling growth of suburbia and the hollowing out of old-fashioned downtowns. “It’s gotten a lot harder to eat in what I call ‘Bert and Bettie’ cafes, where they cook homemade food instead of heating up stuff made in a factory in New Jersey,” he said.

“I had no distractions,” he said. “I was alone and I was in quest of something. I was paying attention.”

In addition to the new “Blue Highways Revisited,” Heat-Moon said, a 30th anniversary edition of his original book will come out late this year. Plus, he’s working on a new book called “Writing Blue Highways,” which is about how he translated his journey’s notes and fragments into a celebrated book.

“It’s been a continuing story over the last 30 years,” he said. “The story just continues.”