Viral by Emily Mitchell Page B

and liberals who believe in marijuana legalization with law-and-order conservatives who don’t like to see Vermont become the ground for lawless violence. Prayer vigils were held outside the torched buildings, and within a month enough money had been collected to rebuild the facility from public donations alone.
    Vermont has been reforested in the last century, and its trees are still skinny and young. They cling to the granite sides of its mountains as best they can, but life is hard in this cold northern clime. Their roots snoop around the tumble of gray rocks and the thin soil, looking for a way in. Sometimes they find one, but not very often, and when they do manage to puncture the hard shell that the land here habitually wears, they sometimes don’t like what they find underneath.
    The trees whisper messages among themselves, but they are not old enough yet to have anything more profound to say than human beings do, so it is not advisable to spend much time listening to them. The mountains by contrast are exceedingly old. But they don’t talk very often.
    NORTH DAKOTA
    North Dakota is not a place that most tourists would think to stop, but we recommend it for several reasons of which we give details below.
    When you leave Vermont, drive west. Go around those enormous lakes through Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Eventually, you will come to a place that is as flat and empty as an ocean. Stop at a restaurant by the side of the road and order something to eat. Ask the couple sitting in the booth next to you where you are. If they look first at each other and then back at you and then the man of the couple sighs deeply, like his heart might break from disappointment, you will be sure you are in North Dakota.
    People in this state are known for their absent-mindedness. They have a tendency to think of things they ought to have said or done after it is much too late to change them: Oh well, they are often heard to say. Next time. The official state gesture involves clapping the heel of the right hand to the forehead once, as though you are just remembering some task you were supposed to already have finished. The state police do this in unison at their swearing-in ceremonies and accompany it with an extended exhalation of breath in the form of a long “o” (as in “zoo” or “fool”). It is a sight to behold.
    No one in North Dakota is completely sure where the land underneath them came from, since it seems to be younger than the rest of the continental United States. There are two competing theories among scientists who study the subject. One holds that the land was an ancient asteroid shaped like a plate. Another proposes that the land in fact remained deep underground for many millennia before a seismic shift thrust it up in a single cataclysmic movement toward the light. The evidence is inconclusive. The fossil record shows animals from vastly different eras crammed together into a single stratum of rock, and this remains unexplained by either theory. Perhaps in North Dakota old forms of life find a final harbor before dying off at last to make room for what is new.
    The most beautiful thing in North Dakota is the blue lightning, which, because of the flatness of the terrain, can be seen from hundreds of miles in any direction. It sutures together the clouds and the ground, and in this way it reminds people of the compromises they make between the part of them that wants to stay but flies away, and the part of them that wants to fly away but crouches on the ground, blinking its eyes and licking the air.
    After you have seen enough of this marvelous spectacle, continue heading west until you reach Montana.
    MONTANA
    From space, Montana looks like a supine lion covered in its golden fur. In fact, if you put your hand on the earth in certain places in this state, the ground does omit warmth like the side of a cat flopped down in a square of sunlight. If you see the earth shuddering