At the heart of the Ozark National Forest, near the Wolf Pen and Estep creeks, is a town called Oark, with a population of just more than three hundred. Oark’s general store, which opened in 1890, is situated where five county roads meet. You can buy a piece of buttermilk pie or a pack of cigarettes to smoke on the large front porch next to the ice machine; the cell service is unreliable, but guns are welcome, as long as they stay holstered. On a recent summer morning, the line cook stirred a skillet of flour gravy while Sam Correro tucked into a plate of eggs. “Have you seen any TransAmerica Trail riders come through here?” he asked the waitress, Bobbie Warren.

“Oh, yeah!” Warren said. “Every week.”

“That’s good,” Correro said, in a Mississippi drawl. “I’m the one that made the trail.”

For forty years, Correro has been riding a motorcycle through towns like Oark, stitching together a continuous pathway of dirt roads. Correro’s trail is not straightforward. Winding through America’s countryside, it largely avoids pavement, cities, and highways; instead of skipping flyover country, it goes through it as slowly as possible. No algorithm would advise you to take Correro’s route through the back of beyond. Nevertheless, he has sold thousands of self-made paper maps and road charts containing his idiosyncratic directions. Some people travel Correro’s trail for a weekend; others traverse all sixty-two hundred miles of boonies, from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Port Orford, Oregon, crossing fourteen states.

In the course of the summer—the best season for dirt roads—Correro estimates that there might be as many as six hundred riders on the TransAmerica Trail. There’s no way to know for sure. He does know that people ride it using motorcycles, bicycles, four-by-fours, Land Rovers, dirt buggies, pickup trucks, Pinzgauer military vehicles, and horses. One person did it in a Volkswagen Jetta for fun; another couple rode it coast to coast for their honeymoon, with the bride in a motorcycle sidecar. One cross-country rider was just eight years old. The oldest may be Correro, who is eighty. He likes to say that he has ridden every single inch of it, and that is true, but also an understatement, because he has ridden parts of it countless times. Though he has given up his motorcycle for a Chevy Tahoe, he still checks the trail to make sure that its roads are passable, that its bridges haven’t been condemned. He modifies his maps, charting new routes.

“Well, now,” Warren said. “How did that idea get into your head one day?”

“I don’t know,” Correro said. “It just kind of evolved.”