N 41° 50.168 W 089° 28.839

from Local Treasures

N 41° 50.168 W 089° 28.839

In June, 2004, my sister and I headed to Dixon, Illinois, to a virtual cache at Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home. On the way, Gina spotted “ Lost Nation Road” on our map, proposed we find it. We had plenty of time; we’d left early in the morning because we thought mourners might visit Reagan’s old home and we didn’t want to interrupt their grief with a game. Sure enough, people soon arrived to pay their respects. We left to find coffee and Lost Nation Road.

In a bookstore café downtown, we found coffee and a display of books on politics that revealed how deeply divided America has become, our national spectrum reduced to just two hues, red and blue. I half-listened as Gina told the owner about our road trip. When she mentioned that we’d started it in Kansas, he urged her to read Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? It was sold out, so he summarized Frank’s arguments about why Kansas, once politically progressive, had become a “red state.”

Leaving Dixon, we located Lost Nation Road; nothing about the long straight stretch suggested how it had acquired its quixotic name. Once back en route, Gina and I fell to talking about what the bookstore owner had said, about how different her neighbors reputedly are from mine. Indeed, we spent the long drive comparing ideas espoused in Cambridge with those expressed in Kansas. But as we exchanged and explained the opinions attributed to the people with whom we live and work, our hearts sank—for the gaps between red and blue grew and grew. We searched for common ground, considered love, family, ice cream—all the usual verities. When I suggested geocaching, Gina chuckled. Think about it, I mused aloud; anyone can play—and anyone does. Red and blue, young and old, male and female, the devout and full of doubt all participate. Do you think a game could be the great unifying force of the new millennium? Gina eyed me sideways; I could tell she was trying to gauge whether I was being silly or ironic or deeply sincere. Wisely, she merely nodded, and we rode in silence awhile.

But we could not shake the sense of having glimpsed something grim. Instead of the enigmatic cache we’d intended to visit, we’ve espied a cleft at the country’s heart, and understood better than we wanted to how nations become lost.