Celestial Mechanics: A Tale for a Mid-Winter Night (2017) is William Least Heat-Moon's debut novel. Just a different sort of research. Instead of taking to road or river, Trogdon traveled no further than his own bookshelves. Which, admittedly, are the product of a life’s work in motion — he says he has more than 3,000 books on American exploration and travel alone. Heat-Moon comes to an area northeast of Tougaloo, Mississippi, a place where "highway does not outrage landscape" & comments: I had a powerful sense of life going about the business of getting on with itself. Pointed phallic sprouts pressed up out of the ooze, green vegetable heads came up from the mire to sniff for vegetation of kin, rising up to the thrall of the oldest rhythms. Things were growing so fast, I could almost feel the heat from their generation: the slow friction of leaf against bud case, petal against petal. For some time, I stood among the high mysteries of being as they consumed the decay of old life.There is a randomness that rules Heat-Moon's peregrinations across the country--images, bits of conversations, ideas, all in search of some structure but with randomness the overarching rule. There are good cities and bad. There are good highways and bad. I would love to never have to drive in I-93 around Boston again. The sprawl and endless mini-malls and tourist traps of Cherokee, North Carolina? Horrible. But what about The Blue Ridge Parkway? That's a national highway, and it is utterly beautiful. 469 Miles of Awesome. Or Highway 1 along the California Coast: one of the most memorable and beautiful things I have ever seen. Just because something is remote and forgotten doesn't mean that it's inherently better than what is popular. Sometimes something is popular for a good reason--because it is good. The reason this is a problem is there is no other reason for Moon to be out where he is, having the conversations he's having other than for the purpose of the book.

May I ask, then, where were you religiously when you were writing? And how would you describe where you are today?” When you agreed to this interview, I told you I wanted to ask first and foremost about the portion in Blue Highways that resonated with anyone interested in Catholic religious life, and contemplative monasticism in particular: your encounter with Trappist monks in Conyers, Georgia. I count a few Trappists as good friends, and one of my mentors, M. Basil Pennington, was once the abbot of that community. But that was long after your visit. The mood remains meditative for the slow building, soulful ‘ What’s A Man To Do’ with its synthesised brass, soaring harmonies and hints of classic Atlantic soul as he spins a poignant story of a lonely man who find the possibility of romance when, at the circus, he’s approached by a woman he knows from the barHis pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." I grew up in Kansas City, and I had no idea how segregated it was. Every group I was a part of, I didn’t realize how white we all were,” he says. “During the ‘Blue Highways’ trip, I realized there are a lot of people out there who don’t look like me, who don’t think like me, but they still have things to say.” Still later, he meets a very interesting character who has been "claimed by Jesus, a fellow "hitching for Yahweh & enrolled by Christ" as a contemporary evangelist, someone en route to El Salvador to get married but in no hurry to arrive. Oddly enough, the people Heat-Moon randomly connects with seem to represent deeply moving voices. Trogdon’s research did not include traveling the route Trennant and Nicodemus take, but, he says, there is no place they visit that he has not.

In the world we currently live in, of social media, 24-hour news cycles, and constructed culture wars, there’s a lot of talk over how far we should go in forgiving people for past mistakes. We all have friends and family that we love and that we also know have made mistakes before. If we’re honest with ourselves we know we’ve made mistakes too. This song was in part meant to be a reminder of that, and that we all deserve a second chance, another shot at leaving it all out on the line. The Blue Highways’ new album Out On The Line is out now and the band will be playing live shows in April and beyond. For dates and more, head over to thebluehighwaysband.com I asked him: “Did your talk with Duffy and the other monks change your mind? Today, do you see Christianity, or Roman Catholicism specifically, with a similar critique? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” I like the freedom I have with fiction” he says, “although I’m finding the kind of fiction I write requires almost as much research as my nonfiction did. That’s particularly true of ‘O America.’” Ghost Dancing: The Blue Highways Van". Museum of Anthropology. Archived from the original on 2016-06-23 . Retrieved 2017-09-19. Still, he wasn’t able to come out with a clear answer to Heat-Moon’s question. And then, “I was moving away from things and myself, toward concerns bigger than me and my problems, but I didn’t really find a harmony until I came here.” I felt like I understood him perfectly.In recent years, Trogdon has turned to novel writing, also under the pen name Least Heat-Moon. But a traveler is a traveler, fiction or non. His second novel, “O America: Discovery in a New Land,” which came out this month, chronicles the journey of the fictional British Dr. William Trennant, who, in 1848, leaves England to see America’s new democracy in action and gauge its chance of success for himself. Yes. He wanted money for his role in the book. Of all the people I spoke with on the Blue Highways tour, this self-proclaimed Christian was the only person to do that.” Why was I bothering? Sometimes a book lives a life far outside the confines of its author. But I didn’t want to give up just yet.

Throughout the book, there is a sense of a fading past, of ways of life and modes of thought slowly vanishing from human ken. If one were to attempt a present day retracing of Least Heat Moon's journey, no doubt at least some of these towns would be gone completely, swallowed up either by time or encroaching suburbs. The author's love affair with English ensured that this book would become the voice of Americans in literary form. With his Ph.D. in English, and also serving as a professor, he had the knowledge, experience and curiosity to turn an ordinary travelogue into a travel masterpiece. To the Siouan peoples, the Moon of heat was the seventh month, a time also known as the Blood Moon. William Heat-Moon had seen thirty-eight Blood Moons during his lifetime. His age carried its own madness and futility. There’s a song by The Americans, a brilliant US Americana/Roots band, called The Right Stuff. It’s a phenomenal song in all aspects but I loved the actual sound of it – that earthy, raw, rough-hewn soundscape, conjured out of seemingly nowhere with little more than a
loosely played jangly guitar, and a thumping bass and drums. Just that bit free-wheeling, not chained down, not too tight.William Least Heat-Moon meets some interesting characters as he travels through the small towns of America. He seems to be a bit of a character himself. The entire time I'm reading this, I'm thinking "He sleeps in his van all across the US? Is that a seventies thing? Could someone do that now? What about bathing? Is that why sometimes people look at him askance? What would I think if I saw him today on this journey? Would I be a nice stranger or one of those that gave him a weird look?" Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” read in quarantine for the first time, warns us to reset our own priorities