© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Nate Hegyi, rural reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, is embarking on a 900-mile cycling trip crisscrossing the continental divide in August and September, interviewing and listening to Americans ahead of the 2020 election.

Day 3: A Fever Of Light In The Land Of Opportunity

Warren Scott Anderson talks about life on the road.
Nate Hegyi
/
Mountain West News Bureau
Warren Scott Anderson talks about life on the road.

Nate Hegyi, rural reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, is embarking on  a 900-mile cycling trip crisscrossing the continental divide in August and September, interviewing and listening to Americans ahead of the 2020 election. You can follow Nate on social media, an online blog and this “Where Is He Now?” map.

August 29: Sula, Montana to Salmon, Idaho, 56 miles

An important note here: These are my first glance takeaways. Think of this as a reporter’s notebook. A mosaic of voices over the next few weeks, cycling 900 miles across four states and dozens of small towns.

The morning starts off well enough. I’m cycling through a tall canyon surrounded by pine trees and the air is crisp with a hint of autumn. On the side of the road, I meet Warren Scott Anderson, his buddy, Tony, and their two dogs.

They’re street musicians looking to hitchhike “somewhere south of here.” They both wear cowboy hats and Anderson is sipping a PBR. He’s 34 years old and has been on the road ever since struggling with a gambling problem in Reno, Nevada four years ago.

“I like the legacy of the highway,” he says, referring to America’s long-time fascination with the open road. Think Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac or John Steinbeck. Anderson says he enjoys the uncertainty of hitchhiking – sometimes, he’s had to wait a week for a ride. Other days it happens after a couple of minutes.

“I guess I’m still a gambler,” he says laughing.

"They would love you to think it's a big scary world. But the truth is, people are good."
Warren Scott Anderson


Anderson is shot through with a nomad’s mentality and his freewheeling lifestyle gives him unique insight into this country. Sure, he sees a politically divided America. But he also says people are kind here.

“America is a beautiful country even though there’s all this polarization and confusion from technology,” he says, referring to what he calls our fetish with social media. “They would love you to think it’s a big scary world. But the truth is, people are good.”

Anderson says he is rarely taken advantage of when hitchhiking and that truckers are some of the best folks he’s met, though one once asked him why he was wasting his life always being on the road.

“He was doing the same thing!” Anderson says shaking his head.

Later, he pulls out his ukulele and plays a rendition of country singer Townes Van Zandt’s song, “White Freightliner Blues.”

I’m going out on a highway

Listen to them big trucks whine

White Freightliner won’t you steal away my mind

Anderson provides me a much-needed reminder that the American identity is immeasurably complicated. We rarely fit into the boxes cable news, social media or politicians might hope we do.

After just a few days on the road, Nate added an American flag to the back of his bike rig.
Nate Hegyi / Mountain West News Bureau
After just a few days on the road, Nate added an American flag to the back of his bike rig.

As I say goodbye and continue on, climbing Lost Trail Pass, a lyric from a different song gets lodged in my head. It’s from “America,” by Sufjan Stevens. It was released earlier this year and it’s been a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve since I first heard it.

I am broken, I am beat

But I will find my way like a Judas in heat

I am fortune, I am free

Like a fever of light in the Land of Opportunity

Don’t do to me what you did to America

Don’t do to me what you did to yourself

It’s the “fever of light” line that strikes me as I’m sweating up the pass. The sun is beating down and semi trucks rumble by. I think about the fever of light that is this country, a swirling mess of opinions, hope, love and rage that’s spilling everywhere in 2020. It’s both frightening and exhilarating – the same feeling I have as I’m dizzy and heat-exhausted reaching the top of Lost Trail Pass and entering Idaho. It’s 44 miles of downhill from there and I hope our country reaches a downhill soon, when things are easier and life returns to normal – or maybe a new normal. I don’t think that will happen soon and I fear there will be more pain before we reach the top of this mountain.

There’s also pain – for me, personally – on the way down this physical mountain. Turns out riding 60 miles with a pass in between is a terrible idea. The cool pine forest gives way to Idaho’s high desert sage country. The sun is cooking the pavement in the afternoon and by the time I ride into Salmon, Idaho I feel like I’m surrounded by enemies. The sun is my enemy. My lack of water is an enemy. The confederate flag standing like a middle finger in someone’s front yard is an enemy. I collapse at a hotel in town and chug water from the sink. I can’t muster the energy to speak with anyone so I decide to take a rest day in Salmon tomorrow.

Copyright 2020 Boise State Public Radio News. To see more, visit Boise State Public Radio.

Nate Hegyi
Nate Hegyi is a reporter with the Mountain West News Bureau based at Yellowstone Public Radio. He earned an M.A. in Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism in 2016 and interned at NPR’s Morning Edition in 2014. In a prior life, he toured around the country in a band, lived in Texas for a spell, and once tried unsuccessfully to fly fish. You can reach Nate at nate@ypradio.org.
Related Content
  • My first night on the road, in Hamilton, I can’t sleep well. There’s the ding-dinging of a Taco Bell drive thru and a motorcycle cruising around town. Soon the first light of morning is washing the Bitterroot Mountains in a warm glow and the sound of morning commuter traffic fills my ears.
  • The first thing I notice beginning my 900-mile cycling journey from Missoula, Montana to Greeley, Colorado is the smell: yellow grass drying in the late summer heat mixed with wildfire smoke from California and Idaho.
  • Nate Hegyi, rural reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, is embarking on a 900-mile cycling trip crisscrossing the continental divide in August and September, interviewing and listening to Americans ahead of the 2020 election.