Chasing America and Identity: My Road Trip to Nebraska and South Dakota (Part 1)
How a layoff at Google led me to small-town Nebraska
This is part 1 of a six-part series. Scroll to the bottom for a link to part 2.
The GPS indicated more than four hours to go as I approached the border between South Dakota and Wyoming on my way back to Boulder. “More cattle than people,” they say about the Great Plains, through which I was road-tripping by myself after a visit to Nebraska and South Dakota. Scarcity applies to vehicles as well — trucks far outnumber sedans, but for long stretches of road, you get to keep the asphalt to yourself. Your car is but an isolated moving dot at the intersection of endless flat crops to the sides, and the infinite pale sky atop.
Returning home, I happened on one of those blissful solitary stretches. I was alone, completely alone, just me as far as the eye could see through that pristine spell of western American landscape. As soon as the road bent into a safe plot of rough terrain, I slowed the car to a halt and stepped out into the cold air and the pinnacle of my journey: a private, intimate moment with America.
By that time, I had traveled some 650 miles (which, truthfully, sounds more valiant in kilometers: more than 1,000) over four days spent observing rural United States in western Nebraska and South Dakota, talking to their people, and reflecting on how American identity manifests in this corner of the country. Underpinning it all was my personal reflection on my own identity, not just in terms of its place in the United States as a foreigner to this country. I was also, and especially, looking for introspection, meditation and precious alone driving time to think about my future after losing my cushy job of six and a half years at Google in the mass layoffs the company executed in January.
I left Boulder on a bright, temperate Friday morning at the end of March. At the helm of my boyfriend’s Subaru Crosstrek — which he had loaned me as a more appropriate road trip vehicle than my very Euro manual Mini Cooper — I navigated north on Interstate 25 toward the first pin on my map, Scotts Bluff National Monument, a stunning rock formation in Nebraska. I quickly realized that the vastness of the land surrounding me was, quite literally, well positioned to deliver the contemplative space I needed.
The irony is rich. Coastal America had given me a white-collar job, a big-city salary, and the opportunity to build a whole adult life away from my home country, Italy. But it was middle America that promised to pick me up with a chance to find direction, meaning, and purpose, after that same elite job was lost to corporate greed and cold free-market calculations.
And while sometimes space comes with a scary lack of structure, it occurred to me that this was not the case. Au contraire, the circumstances of my road trip — I had planned it purely for myself, with my adult financial means, because in driving solo across America I identified a form of self-care — instilled in me a profound sense of peace and control over the immense space of opportunity before my eyes, literal and figurative, as well as unbridled enthusiasm to embrace the journey. I felt grounded, alert, present, to a point of exhilaration.
Ostensibly, I chose Nebraska and South Dakota to cross two more states off the list as I attempt to visit all 50 by age 35, in 2024. Nebraska and South Dakota would be states 38 and 39 — a pretty neat accomplishment for a foreigner who has only lived here for a few years. My timeline is completely arbitrary, due for the most part to the roundness of a number ending in five. Still, setting arbitrary numerical goals for yourself carries the risk of caring too much about the outcome — checking another state box, as long as you set at least one foot in it — instead of engaging with the proverbial journey and destination.
That risk is real in my all-50-states endeavor. While fundamentally a woman of words, I have long relied on numbers for direction and meaning in life (birthdays, anniversaries and countless calendar milestones). Numbers had motivated my trip — so much so that I had considered extending the drive by at least four extra hours to dip into North Dakota and proudly call it 40 states visited. But with my post-layoff soul-searching as the backdrop, I was compelled to push the numbers aside, and harken back to what truly fulfills me after all: words, and writing. As I articulated in my reflections following the layoff, miraculously written only 48 hours after the events, while still at Google I had been coming around to the realization that teenage Enrica had seen her grown-up self as “someone more akin to a world-wandering writer constantly chasing the next intellectual pursuit. […] Writing, reporting on Italy in the United States and the United States in Italy, unpacking politics and society.”
The landscapes and the American people of Nebraska and South Dakota connected me with that original yearning of mine, bringing me closer to my identity, and my ultimate calling.
The city of Chadron, population five thousand, soars on a patch of less than four square miles amid the prairie grasslands on the northwestern corner of Nebraska, 20 miles south of South Dakota and 60 miles east of Wyoming. It’s the northernmost populated outpost in Dawes County, the only one within an 18-mile radius (excluding the village of Whitney, population 77), and the last chance at filling your tank before crossing state borders. As of 2021, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 85% of Chadron’s population is white and non-Hispanic. The median household income is just over $50,000, 27% lower than the national median.
Chadron is home to a namesake state university, a Division II institution practicing open admissions and granting both undergraduate and graduate degrees for an in-state tuition of about $8,000 per semester. Chadron State College students, nicknamed The Eagles, are widely employed by local businesses. Three of them, two young women and one young man whose names I unfortunately didn’t catch, alternated serving me at The Ridge, the local watering hole where I had dinner the first night of my road trip. I had no particular reason to spend the night in Chadron, other than lodging options are few and far between in the 200 miles separating my stops on the first day in Nebraska and the second day in South Dakota — and, of course, that its very small, very remote, very rural nature smacked of what I was searching for: America.
My check at The Ridge read an astonishing $18.49 for a burger with fries and three Coors Light. I don’t particularly like Coors, but I wanted to “immerse myself in the experience,” I reasoned with friends over text — where by experience I meant my own Hollywood-informed fantasy of drinking at a bar in small-town America. I tipped $10, happy, yet torn as to whether my subconscious had directed me to do so with genuine generosity or coastal condescension. The distinct feeling that I had landed on that bar stool in Nebraska from another world altogether had sparked self-scrutiny. But more than who I was, I was acutely aware of who I wasn’t with respect to the young servers and my fellow diners.
I sought, successfully, to establish a connection with the two female servers. I cheered for one of them as she replied “I am aware of what Jameson is” to a visibly intoxicated man who had ordered a shot and explained what the bottle looked like, as if she didn’t know. “I’ve learned how to handle them,” she smiled back at me. When I told her and the other young woman that I was road-tripping by myself, their eyes lit up. They later rolled in frustration as their male counterpart, an errant 23-year-old business administration major attending Chadron State on a football scholarship, came back irritated and empty-handed from bussing a table where a heavyset family of six had dined and left no tip. “They’re known for doing that,” one of the young women said.
Money was a recurring thought that night. I generally find the United States to be an outrageously expensive country, at least where I have lived and normally visit. The few hours I spent in Chadron illuminated a different side of the coin — Nebraska was so cheap, yet I saw few reasons to rejoice besides the negligible weight of this trip on my wallet. The low prices kept pointing to the existence of two distinct worlds within a single nation.
Zillow estimates the median home value in Chadron as $170,000, which is 87% and 1.2 million dollars lower than the city of San Francisco. “A buddy of mine was trying to buy a house,” a man in his early thirties named Mike told me as I sipped on my nightcap (a $3 “immersive experience” bottle of Budweiser) at Favorite Bar, a dive across the street from The Ridge. “But they’re asking for more than $200,000. More than $200,000! Can you believe that?” I’m not a homeowner in the United States, but in Boulder, where I live, the median home price appears to be close to one million dollars. I sure could believe Mike.
Continue to part 2: Manifesting divides at a motel in middle America
