In my car I had an old Rand-McNally book of state maps. I had bought it when I drove up to my new home. The Minnesota state map had a small insert for Minneapolis, and after the move I consulted it often. On the first page of the book (two pages really, across the fold) there was a map of the entire country.
Maybe you know this, but I didn’t at the time. The Federal Highway system uses even numbers for highways going east-west and odd numbers for highways going north-south. The largest east-west interstates have numbers that end in zero. I-90 is the northernmost of these highways.
I-90 passes about 100 miles south of Minneapolis, extending in almost a straight line to Yellowstone, then on to the Pacific Ocean. That line on the map called to me, even after the divorce and I left Minnesota and moved back to Washington DC. I-90 for me was The Road Not Taken.
Excerpted from A Transcendental Journey
