4.

According to our map, the route into Ohio would take us by Hoosier Hill, marked by a tiny red triangle as the highest point in Indiana. We had the time, and this entire trip was supposed to be about finding random side-quests, so we turned off the road we were on onto a secondary road. We followed that for a while, down into the white area where the land kind of fell between the cracks on the map and off the marked roads. The country all around seemed rather flat, broken only by tree lines and scattered farmhouses. Finally we saw a sign marked ‘Indiana High Point’ pointing us down another road. This road T-ed off and another sign directed us toward ‘Hoosier Hill’. We followed this next road up a slight rise past two or three farmhouses until it came to a lonely intersection. A sign here again indicated ‘Hoosier Hill’, pointing back the way we had come.

There certainly weren’t any hills in sight, so we back-tracked and stopped at a farmhouse to ask directions. When no one answered we got back into the car and continued until we thought we were at the top of the low rise the road crested. Here we pulled over and found a small sign by the side of the road indicating that there was a geological marker nearby that wasn’t to be moved. We stood looking, and sure enough out in the middle of a cornfield there was a small cement marker or some sort with another sign next to it.

“This is ridiculous,” Jon said. “This road is higher than that point.”

He was right, but we ran out into the field anyway, holding our cameras and loping over and through broken rows of cornstalks. It was windy and cold, and by the time we got to the marker we were gasping.

“It’s the high elevation,” I noted. “Thin air. Feel that wind. It’s usually cold this high up.”

The marker was probably an annoyance to whoever owned and plowed the field, because it looked like he had to plow right around it. Nothing actually came out and said that this was the highest point in Indiana, and without actually standing on top of the cement marker that held the copper geodetic marker it didn’t seem any higher than the rise of the road. But we stood on top of the marker anyway and took pictures of each other, and then and there we were probably the highest people in the state of Indiana.

“Flat,” I said, surveying it from my vantage point. “Flat and lonely. And windy.”

“Get a shovel and we could probably make a new high point.”

There was indeed something lonely to it, to the way the wind swept over the empty fields. It didn’t seem like it should be so cold in late March, but at least there was no sign of the snow the sky kept hinting at it. We ran back through the fields to the car, feeling like we were the only people in the entire state. Driving back the way we came, we almost immediately noticed a rise to our left that was certainly higher than where we had been before. I kept driving.

“The marker was back there, so that’s the highest point, and I don’t care what it looks like.”

We remembered the spot though, and it would be important later in the trip.

Somewhere on our way back to roads marked on the map, Jon caught on to how empty everything seemed. We hadn’t seen other people or passed a car since we turned off the main road that ran into Ohio.

“It’s like we’re borrowing this part of the country,” he said. “It’s like we’re renting it. For free.”