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Christina Davidson needs a minute to figure out where she’s been and where she’s going.
“Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,” she mumbles, ticking off states on her fingers and drawing a mental map.
Sunday found her in Indiana, catching her breath in Fort Wayne while she looked for her next story.
Davidson, 35, a correspondent for The Atlantic and TheAtlantic.com, embarked June 11 on a “Recession Road Trip” – a journey to the 48 contiguous United States for an online journal.
A book editor by trade, her first post began with a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
By Indiana – the state where she grew up and, by her quick calculations, her 36th stop – she’s begun to understand what Hemingway meant. She intended her posts to be short and sweet, based on quick visits over four months to the county in each state with the worst unemployment.
“After doing that in about six states, I realized there was much more to be done,” she said. “No way can I boil down these people’s stories into something pithy.”
She plans to spend a day or two in northeastern Indiana, possibly focusing on Noble County, which had the state’s second-highest unemployment rate of 14.5 percent in September.
Her next stop likely will be Michigan.
Having met so many “Michigan refugees” in other states, Davidson said she’s fascinated and a little apprehensive about what she’ll find.
“I just wonder who’s left behind,” she said.
Davidson began her trip well-traveled outside the United States, but not so much in her home country. While parts of her trip have been heartbreaking, the fleeting glances she’s getting of each state have made her appreciate how people are adapting to the recession.
“I’ve been so impressed by people’s strength and determination,” she said. “Rather than try to replicate the life they had before, they’re using it as an opportunity for self-reflection.”
She’s challenged to choose the story that has touched her most, but she’s leaning toward the saga of a woman she met in Arkansas. Facing poverty in Arizona, the woman and her four children moved to Arkansas so that her parents could help with child care while she worked. She left her husband behind in Arizona, and while the marriage eventually ended, the woman remained determined to improve her children’s lives.
“She was just so driven,” she said.
Davidson’s learning about her own resilience as well. Her apartment in Washington has been subleased, but she isn’t making enough money to cover all the expenses of the trip.
She’s spent many nights sleeping in her rental car in Walmart parking lots, crashing on friends’ couches and even strangers’ through Web sites such as Craigslist and www.couchsurfing.com. A sofa is luxurious compared with the nights she spent sleeping outdoors with homeless people in Sacramento.
She’s working on a book about the road trip – not just because she wants to, but because she needs the money. “I’m not just writing about the recession,” she said. “I’m living it.”
