CrocodileYitzee

A group of religious female college students in Philadelphia. They said grace before our meal, and we went dumpster-diving afterwards.

It happened one night in the Rockies. I had made my way up into the forested mountains outside of town, and it was so warm out that I was intending to just sleep slumped against my backpack.

Then it started to rain.

I took shelter beneath a huge unidentified structure, which I later found out was this abandoned quarry: http://imgur.com/nEH5X5S

But it looks like this at night: http://imgur.com/GXJruC3

Because of the high roof, water was still blowing in from the open sides, so I wrapped myself in a bivy sack that a guy had given me back in Indiana. (I had no tent.)

After a while of lying there, completely entombed in that waterproof shell, in an abandoned quarry, in the forest, in the Rocky Mountains, in the rain ... I heard footsteps.

It was a steady stomping, of boots against gravel. Normally, if I were just in my sleeping bag, I'd sloooowly roll over and face the direction of the steps, to get some view of whoever's going past. But because I was in my bivy sack, I couldn't see anything without unzipping, and rustling my way out. I chose to avoid making any noise, and spent an extremely frightened few minutes listening to those steps. Because of my cocoon, I couldn't really tell where the sound of the footsteps were coming from, or if they were getting closer.

As far or further.

I've always been very interested in American mythology. The notion of the American pioneer has especially fascinated me, and I tried to capture its spirit using my three rules, which ensured that I usually had no idea where I was headed next, or where I would stay once I got there.

The final push to do it was when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in May this year. Within a week of reading its superb closing passage, I had booked my flight.

It really drove home a lot about the huge divide between the way America is conceived and the way America is executed. The dreams of Jefferson and Adams and Franklin, and the sacrifices of Hale and Rodney and Dickinson, seem a far cry from the real problems of the working classes today.

So hard to choose. There was a Chinese-American civil engineer in New Jersey. Really well-dressed guy with a very fancy car, the kind of guy you never would expect to pick you up. He ended up giving me a ride, shouting me coffee, and teaching me some really cool things about how large public works projects are executed; and how, after a decade or so of work, being an engineer becomes more about people than about structures.