Heat-Moon, the first-person narrator of the book, is 38 when he undertakes the journey across and around America. He is recently unemployed and has been separated from his wife for nine months. As he begins his trip, Heat-Moon provides no explicit rationale for the project, but he drops in possible motivations as his narration unfolds. It is only at the end of the book that he confesses he is unsure what it he seeks.

Heat-Moon is a naturalist who wields a high intellect. His distinctive curiosity is a critical trait for the journey because it helps him engage all the people he meets along the way. He presents himself as a genuine person, and his authenticity seems verified by strangers’ intuitively trusting interactions with him. Heat-Moon is prone to emotional undulations throughout his travels, and, though some of this could be from road-weariness, the moodiness accords with his pensive and brooding nature. He is a marked thinker and highly reflective, reading into hidden meanings and seeing deeper significance in his environment no matter where he is. He similarly sees deeper meaning in the lives of those he encounters.

Heat-Moon’s reading selections for his travels say a lot about him. To develop his philosophical commentaries, he often quotes from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks.