My global journey across the U.S.(In real life: first-person America)

IN MIDDLE AMERICA--On September 11, I was speeding through the desert toward Mecca. More accurately, it was September 11, 2002 and I was headed for Mecca, California, an isolated hamlet in the Coachella Valley populated by Latino migrant workers, barely a half hour from the oasis of Palm Springs, yet light years away. California's Mecca isn't a holy place, but this was a pilgrimage nonetheless.

To get to Mecca, I had to veer off Interstate 10 and rumble 20 miles along the rarely travelled Box Canyon Road, flanked by jagged rock walls. There were no other cars, not a suggestion of civilization. Ten miles in, I came upon a gravel turnoff and made an impulsive decision to pull over and inspect a sign. When I noticed the softness of the ground, and my 21-foot R.V. began to sink into the earth, I panicked and hit the accelerator hard, spinning my wheels deep.

Here I was, trapped in the desert, carrying a cell phone with no signal. I stood by the side of the road and waited for a miracle.

Survival had been the theme of my journey. Seven weeks earlier, I had set off in search of the fascinating and the profound. After 9/11, patriotism had swept America, but I suspected that many Americans had lost touch with much of their nation. Disregard for the country's "flyover" spaces is such a coastal and urban reflex that the nation has become a patchwork of stereotypes. Just look at how Hollywood portrays rural America: When Paris Hilton "roughs it" in Altus, Arkansas, a tiny community much like thousands of others that are home to a hefty percentage of our nation's population, it's like she's stranded oil a deserted island--"Survivor: The Ozarks."

America is less a melting pot than a dot painting masterpiece, defined not by the broad strokes of national media and metropolitan muscle, but by myriad small specks that come together to form the national map. So I decided to connect some of the dots. From Paris (Kentucky) and Prague (Nebraska) to Calcutta (West Virginia) and Congo (Ohio), I set a course for tiny communities with grand names, some of them dwindling so fast they may soon be historical footnotes.

My resulting book, while replete with zany encounters with nudists and hermits, hippies and Hare Krishnas, is ...