Two friends recently texted me from different locations, asking where I was. When I replied that I was in Western Nebraska, their responses were identical: “So you’re in the middle of nowhere.”
I paused. I had just flown into Denver and taken a nine-seater plane to Alliance—a tiny town with a tiny airport. Yet, moments before their texts arrived, I was studying an Atlas Obscura map, identifying eight fascinating destinations within a ninety-minute drive. I wasn’t in a void; I was in a hub of hidden curiosity.
I texted them back: “No, I’m in the middle of somewhere.”
Redefining the Map
A week later, I stood in Florence, Alabama, sharing this story with my colleagues during our company offsite. Most of the team had never visited Alabama. We had deliberately designed our trip around a corner of the state often overlooked by mainstream tourism maps.
Our itinerary included:
* Ivy Green in Tuscumbia: The birthplace of Helen Keller.
* FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals: Where Aretha Franklin recorded “I Never Loved a Man” in a single day in 1967.
* The Rattlesnake Saloon: A spot for lunch under a literal rock overhang.
* Dismals Canyon: A cave system where bioluminescent larvae, known as Dismalites, create a green-starred sky effect.
Almost every stop was already documented on the Atlas Obscura map. But the itinerary was just the framework. The real story was what happened around the places.
The Power of Shared Wonder
At Ivy Green, our guide, Keller Johnson-Thompson (Helen Keller’s great-grand-niece), spoke for thirty uninterrupted minutes about her ancestor. Afterwards, colleague Alecia Dalessio admitted she could have listened for another thirty. The connection was tangible. Dan Sobo bought bookmarks featuring a Helen Keller quote: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” He quoted it back to us the next morning on a long bus ride, completely unselfconscious and deeply moved.
The magic wasn’t just in the history; it was in the shared experience. At Dismals Canyon, guide Kevin Cheek led us through total darkness into a narrow rock slot, squeezing through one by one, holding hands. Above us, the glowworms hung like a green galaxy. Before we entered, Kevin asked the “fairies” for permission. I’m not sure if he was joking. It didn’t matter. The ritual deepened the sense of place.
Jacquelyn Blackwell, a local from Florence who had visited these sites hundreds of times, saw her own town through fourteen pairs of new eyes. She discovered experiences she had never tried before. Holyn Thigpen called her parents from the airport to recount the trip; they are now planning the same itinerary. Sam O’Brien began formulating her own travel quests. Daniel McDermon left feeling “almost giddy.”
Sara Ewell noted that the conversations we had on the buses and over slow lunches—conversations that evolved from standing next to each other in a glowworm cave to sharing personal family stories—could never have happened on Zoom.
The Companion to Wonder
In her 1965 book The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson argued that children meet the world with a freshness that adults often train themselves out of. She suggested that the way to recover this sense is to find a companion—not a teacher, but someone who hasn’t lost the habit of asking, “What’s that?” The companion’s only job is to keep asking.
This is exactly what we do at Atlas Obscura. This is what Kevin did for us at Dismals Canyon. This is what Keller did at Ivy Green. This is what Jacquelyn did for us in her hometown.
It was this infectious passion for wonder that turned a bus ride into a space for connection. Two friends told me I was in the middle of nowhere because they were operating on an “ordinary map.” We reject that map. There is no middle of nowhere—there is only the middle of somewhere. If you think otherwise, you just need to put on your “wonder lens.”
The 50-state quest is, at its heart, an argument for using that lens. So is the Atlas Obscura map. So was Florence, Alabama, last week, with fourteen people who had never been there.
Forty-six states down. Four to go: Idaho, Iowa, Washington, and Alaska.
The takeaway: Wonder is not a rare commodity found only in famous landmarks; it is a perspective. By seeking out the overlooked and sharing the experience with others, we transform “nowhere” into “somewhere.”
