Watching my husband’s knuckles turn white as he steered our Toyota Prius through a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada, I questioned our decision to drive. With COVID-19 sweeping the country, we wanted to be with my elderly mother in New York but the virus made airports and planes a risky option. Our plan to hop in our car in Berkeley, California, and drive 3,000 miles, however, didn’t take into account zero visibility in deep snow.
Driving across the United States was a trip we had always talked about, but neither of us seemed able to set aside the minimum 40 hours required. However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and news of a JetBlue passenger testing positive for COVID-19 was incentive enough for us to pack up a spray bottle of bleach, a six-pack of toilet paper and enough bedding to make sleeping in a hatchback bearable. “It would seem pointless to avoid planes because of germs, but then to sleep in a hotel,” my husband had wisely observed. What we didn’t anticipate was how the trip would reveal a country awakening to a global health crisis reshaping everyday lives.
Once we were on the far side of Donner Pass, the snow cleared and we crossed into the Great Basin of Nevada. Night fell and soon, the black sky above us was littered with glittering stars and, for a moment, the world seemed to stop. With no radio, no cell phone service and no news reports to overwhelm us, the pandemic evaporated briefly in our minds. We decided to stop in the town of Wells, once a wagon-train watering hole, pulling into a small casino parking lot to spend the night.
I thought about the Donner party, 87 souls who mostly walked west along the route we were tracing East, about how relentless sunshine and heavy snow had cut their numbers in half. We live in a developed world, insulated from the rawness of nature that they struggled through, protected only by wool and canvas. But nature, was always bigger than our cars and our houses, our hospitals and schools. Out there was a silent, unseen killer moving stealthily across the land, and uncertainty as deep as that which haunted the people who moved by wagon now gripped us all.
After a fitful few hours of frigid sleep, we resumed driving in the dark, ragged and hungry. We picked up a fast food breakfast at a drive-thru restaurant before heading across the Utah border to the Bonneville Salt Flats, a straight shot east. We took a short detour down a causeway that ended like an exclamation point in the middle of a rock-salt sea. Dawn was breaking, reflected beautifully in pools that stretched east. We took a walk on the flats, our feet crunching on the granulated surface as we sipped our McCafé coffee and ate our Egg McMuffins. I felt so removed from the virus we may as well have been visiting the moon.
Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah
However, an hour later we drove through the empty streets of Salt Lake City. We were waved away from The Mormon Tabernacle, closed due to the virus. We used the restrooms at the Mormon book store across the street, also empty except for eerily serene young store clerks. The vacant feel of the usually bustling city unnerved me. Later that day, we crossed the Wyoming border and that evening stopped at a truck stop in Laramie, looking for something to keep us warm for the night. We found a red-white-and-blue fleece blanket emblazoned with the words If This Flag Offends You, I’ll Help You Pack.
“We’re going to sleep in the car,” my husband told the cashier.
“I know how that is,” the young ponytailed man replied. He rang up our purchase with hands encased in blue disposable gloves.
We slept better under the patriotic blanket at a rest stop in Cheyenne and set out the next morning in deep fog, passing by a sign reading Nebraska … the good life. Seemingly endless barren fields undulated on either side of us, as soothing as any sedative. We listened to a cheery radio announcer saying, “American Legion bingo night has been cancelled …”
A flag waving off Interstate 80 in Nebraska.
We finally pulled into a Git ‘N Split truck stop in Lincoln to pull back our seats and open our laptops. Using Zoom and mobile phone hot spots, we conducted meetings and replied to emails before resuming our trek. We reached Iowa City by nightfall and the streets, normally abuzz with university students, were completely deserted, the city now an eerie ghost town.
The next morning, near Joliet, Illinois, we stopped by a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru for their Fried Chicken and Donuts special. Signs reading “Hiring!” had been thrust into the grassy island beside the menu board. “It’s been dead here,” the cashier said, shaking her head as she handed us our food. “People are either afraid to go out or they’ve spent all their money stocking up on groceries.”
Chicken and donuts in Ilinois.
Torrential rain began falling outside South Bend, Indiana, and visibility was again poor except for temporary road signs warning, KEEP HANDS CLEAN, USE CREDIT CARDS. We didn’t speak much in the car. At a SHEETZ rest stop in Ohio, truck drivers lamented the closures of rest stop showers and dwindling access to hot food. They worried about what would happen if they got sick. I wondered who would get everything to everybody if they didn’t drive.
We pushed through the night on our final leg — crossing Pennsylvania, New Jersey and into New York – pulling into my hometown of Chappaqua at dawn. When we entered my mother’s house, we waved to her from across the living room, still wary of being asymptomatic carriers. There was a lot to get used to. But no matter the new protocol, no matter the social distancing, it was good to be back home.
I am a global education expert, advising universities, private companies and education organizations on internationalization and recruitment strategies. As Cofounder and
…I am a global education expert, advising universities, private companies and education organizations on internationalization and recruitment strategies. As Cofounder and Managing Director of research consultancy Education Rethink, I track education trends and produce market intelligence for schools and universities. Having worked for EF Education First, the British Council and UC Berkeley, I have recruited students from across the globe and presented research findings to government officials and education ministries.
Previously, I was a journalist for Reuters and Newsweek and wrote a novel, Meeting Luciano, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. I have worked in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Paris, and am currently based in both New York and Berkeley. For the past ten years, I’ve been a regular speaker at international education conferences, specializing in graduate employability and the future of the workforce. I hold degrees from Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.