To live in a very large country such as ours is to accept that you’re never going to see all of it. But the flip side is the feeling that an American adventure awaits in every direction. Even if all you’ve got is a couple of days and a tank of gas, there’s something to see that you haven’t yet seen.

Our Spacious Skies, the feature we’ve been running in the print magazine since October 2023, is dedicated to the twin propositions that America, in its infinite variety, is incredibly beautiful and wonderful and quirky, and that we ought to send our writers and editors out to see it, experience it, and come back to tell everyone about it, complete with smartphone snaps they took themselves. The series is especially meaningful as our nation nears its 250th anniversary.

Some of our writers have written about what’s just outside their front doors — for there is discovery in the familiar — while others have boarded planes for first visits to distant states.

To date, Our Spacious Skies has pulled up or touched down in states from coast to coast, taken to the skies above and plunged from precipitous heights, celebrated football and baseball and rodeos and Harleys and assorted oddities, and gone inside a federal field office for a U.S. citizenship ceremony.

In the current issue, in a perfect pairing of writer and subject, Jeff Blehar makes a pilgrimage to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where he revels in an SNL exhibition’s “blast of nostalgia.” (More cowbell? We always want more Blehar.) Coming up in the next issue: Andrew Stuttaford gets his kicks on Route 66, the asphalt byway of endless horizons, forlorn ghost towns, and neon-lit roadside motels.

The rest of our OSS schedule is shaping up to be grand: Guy Denton will fulfill his awesome and august role as a Buckley Fellow by attending . . . er, WWE’s Wrestlemania in Las Vegas; Jennifer Tiedemann will travel not south of the border but to South of the Border, a classic American roadside attraction in South Carolina; Vahaken Mouradian will visit lower Manhattan’s “unofficial” 9/11 museums; Sarah Schutte will take a gloriously long road trip from Ohio to Albuquerque; Judson Berger will explore the soon-to-open Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library on a butte in the North Dakota badlands (I’m told there will be a detour to a country-and-western musical revue, with live horses on stage); Kamden Mulder will order a BBQ sandwich and fill up the tank at Virginia’s first Buc-ee’s; and Charlie Cooke and Luther Ray Abel embark on another buddy-movie adventure road trip (I’m told there may be rollercoasters involved).

We’ve heard from people who say that Our Spacious Skies has become their favorite thing in the magazine. It’s our love letter to America — and to our readers. If you’re a devotee, then you already know. To everyone else, we think you’ll be delighted to discover our discoveries.

We’ll all be planning out a route We’re gonna take real soon We’re dusting off our keyboards We can’t wait for June

We’ll all be planning out a route We’re gonna take real soon We’re dusting off our keyboards We can’t wait for June

© National Review