Neil Mathison is the author of the new book Airstream Country: A Geologic Journey Across the American West. He also has written the book Volcano, an A to Z. He is a former naval officer, nuclear engineer, and businessman.
Q: What inspired you to write Airstream Country?
A: Place inspires my writing. Airstream Country is about the American West. When my wife Susan retired, when we bought our Airstream Bambi, one of our goals was to reconnect with the West, from its coast to its mountains; from its ice-shaped north to the layer-cake geology of its Colorado Plateau and the basin and range of its four major deserts.
We wanted to understand the bones of the West: how one region connects to another, how the West’s geology and geography came to be. To achieve this, we needed to drive its highways. Highways are the West’s sinews. Airstream Country is the story of that quest.
Q: The writer Adrienne Ross Scanlan said of the book, “From the Pacific Coast to the Southwest, up the Rockies and across the Cascades, Airstream Country is a journey of married joy and American history, of geologic time and the serendipity of an unplanned day, of letting each exploration reveal where the next journey needs to take us.” What do you think of that description?
A: Adrienne’s words capture much of what we sought in our travels. We were traveling for nostalgia, serendipity, simplicity, and science.
Nostalgia because we grew up in the West and we wanted to visit places we’d visited before in addition to those we hadn’t.
Serendipity because we wanted to linger if we were inclined to linger or move on if we wished to move on without the schedules and obligations that had governed our pre-retirement travel.
Simplicity because simplicity makes travel lighter and therefore freer.
Science because we wanted to understand what we were seeing.
And, as Susan insists on pointing out, not always with “married joy,” but there was much joy, and companionship between two souls who love travel and who travel in the same manner.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: My working title was “Bambi Diaries” I wanted the book to have the day-to-day sense of a diary; “Bambi” because it was the name Airstream assigned to our model Airstream trailer.
The staff at the University of New Mexico Press suggested that perhaps my working title would elicit Walt Disney’s Bambi rather than an Airstream journey, and that it conveyed nothing about the geological science, which was such an important element of the book.
The UNM Press team was right. The title we chose conveys what the book is about. “Airstream” because Airstreams have become as iconic for 21st century highway travel as the VW Bus was iconic for 1970s highway travel. “Geologic Journey” because geology is such an important element in the book and what makes the West so unique.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: Airstream Country is a travel book, a natural history book, a cultural exploration, and a personal memoir. The book is organized into 12 chapters based on 12 different highway routes.
Each route can be a template for readers who plan to travel the West, or some part of the West. But each route is also an account of the West’s extraordinary geography, of the planet’s evolution revealed in the West’s geology.
The book answers questions of what I call Big-Picture Geology. Why is a mountain range here and not elsewhere? What do the layers in the Colorado Plateau tell us about the ancient history of the continent? Why is Yellowstone one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes?
Each chapter explores not only the route’s geology, but its ecology, national parks and forests, literary, cinematic, and historical aspects, as well as the sociology of Baby Boomers, ten-thousands of whom are retiring each day, and who are creating a recreational vehicle culture.
Because Susan and I are native Westerners the book also offers insights into the West’s past as well as its present. What has changed? What has remained the same? What still inspires us? What has been lost?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A collection of essays, many already published, about places that have been important to my life: Hawaii, the Grand Canyon. the San Juan Islands. the Salish Sea. I’m also working on a series of linked stories set in British Columbia’s Inside Passage, several of these already published.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We launched the book at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle on March 12, 2025. The book is shipping and may be ordered through most bookstores and online retailers. I will be attending AWP in Los Angeles in late March.
Readings are being scheduled and will be posted on my website, www.neilmathison.net , which also includes chapter excerpts from Airstream Country, as well as selections from my previous book, Volcano, an A to Z, and many of my published essays and short stories.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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