Hitting 30--by Way of All 50

Shivering on a desolate patch of blue ice that, at any moment, could crack and plunge us 1,000 feet deep into a sharp, slippery crevasse was exactly where I wanted to be. So there I stood, with my husband, Tom, on my 30th birthday, in ice-soaked sneakers on top of the Herbert Glacier, in the wind of southeastern Alaska, where bears reign and evergreens perfume the air.

Although I wore sunglasses, the creamy frosting of bright, white snow made me squint so hard, I felt certain my face would permanently freeze into the beady-eyed expression.

Not that I would have cared.

Alaska was my 50th state. It was my last base to tag before winning a game I had created at age 9, when I vowed to visit every state by age 30. Were we not standing on ice, I would have hopped, skipped and twirled my way through an impromptu victory dance.

“Going to all 50 states is a great American travel goal,” said Cathy Keefe, a spokeswoman for the D.C.-based Travel Industry Assn. of America. “It speaks to the nation’s frontier spirit.”

Many people go to a state just to add it to their lists, said Keefe, who confessed to once visiting out-of-town friends “with the dual purpose of seeing them and chalking off a state. It’s fun to keep track of how many states you’ve been to, and most people can name that number.”

Keefe, for instance, counts 24 states. The average American travels to 16 states in their lifetimes, according to a 1996 survey by the group. Only 2% make it to all 50.

Even U.S. presidents struggle to visit all 50 states. At last count, President Bush has bagged 35 states since he took office. Bill Clinton didn’t manage to get to Nebraska until the end of his second term. During the 1960 presidential race, Richard Nixon pledged to campaign in all 50 states and spent the last weekend before the election rushing to Alaska, his 50th state, a move that historians speculate might ultimately have cost him the election.

My quirky quest began in a green Pontiac somewhere in Texas. It was a few days after Christmas, and I was moving from Florida back home to California. Three months earlier, my parents, my dog and I had left Los Angeles for a new life in Orlando. But it didn’t work out. My parents decided to divorce and I would have to move, switch schools and make new friends. Again.

I would have to adjust to my broken family.

Instinctively, at 9, I realized that part of my life had suddenly died. Curled up with my stuffed blue raccoon in the passenger’s seat, I decided I needed a goal, a game of sorts, something to look forward to. I glanced out of the car window at the prickly terrain and, out of nowhere, decided I would visit all 50 states.

In my head I started making a list. Driving between California and Florida twice, taking two different routes, I could claim Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Ten down. Forty more to go.

Back then, I chose age 30 as the deadline because it sounded so old, as if I had several lifetimes to accomplish my goal. My 9-year-old self fantasized about walking to the other 40 states, and I mentally packed my pink backpack with essentials such as Oreo cookies, cherry lip gloss, a “Betsy and Tacy” book and, in deference to my mom, clean underwear.

After my teens, my life became a cliche of never having enough time. I also began feeling pressure about turning 30. It was my deadline, it seemed, for everything. I wanted to own a home by then. Publish a book. Run a 10K. Speak Spanish. Finish my scrapbooks. Bake an edible apple pie from scratch. Go abroad for the first time. But who had the time?

I began to feel like a wilting flower.

In a blur, I went from college graduate to journalist to wife. I went from closing down a bar with my friends on a Wednesday night to falling asleep on a Friday at 10 p.m. I went from wearing no makeup and getting compliments to wearing no makeup and, while on assignment at a local high school, getting asked by a teacher if I was the mother of a teenager (not once but twice in a haggard week).

Even my childhood buzzed by. After I claimed 10 states before age 10, I took an immediate sabbatical from my state-acquisition goal to grow up.

It wasn’t until I graduated from high school and tagged Hawaii on a vacation that summer that I became eager to resume my mission. A month later, my family drove me to college in Syracuse, N.Y., and, as a bonus, I knocked off 11 more states.

During that road trip, I devised rules--hotly debated among family and friends--for officially bagging a state. For instance, I believe if a person passes through a state by foot, car or train, it counts. My theory is that if you can drop dead in a state, it’s yours. Ditto for those globe-trotters who count down countries or continents. If you could get caught in a volcanic eruption in Oceania, it’s yours.

Others, such as the travel association’s Keefe, argue that you have to be in a place for a while to get a feel for it. “People have their own rules,” she acknowledged. “But I believe you have to do more than have a meal at a McDonald’s.”

I respectfully disagree. I nabbed North Dakota during a detour to the state for no other reason than I wanted to add it to my list. On a road trip to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, I suggested to a friend that we stop for lunch at McDonald’s. In North Dakota. My treat, of course. So we drove for hours in the rain across flat plains to eat fries and, afterward, with a crowd of diners, marveled at what appeared to be a rodent’s tail dangling from a crack in a wall.

True, I did not play North Dakota tourist all day. But had I dropped dead in McDonald’s, perhaps from a fatal rodent bite, my obituary would document that I passed away in North Dakota. Therefore, it’s my state to claim. Besides, with the dining experience and dreary scenery, I got enough of a “feel” for North Dakota to know that it is my least favorite state.

Another debatable point is whether it counts flying above a state. No. And I stand firm on this. Because if you’re tens of thousands of feet above land, even if you can see the state below, you’re in a different place. Now if the plane crashes down and you’re rescued in the unclaimed state, then it counts. If you die midair, out of luck.

For years, friends and family debated the validity of my claiming Michigan. Flying from New York to Minnesota during a college break, I had a two-hour layover in Detroit. I never went outside of the airport to set my foot on state soil (or concrete).

But again, had I died of terminal boredom at the airport, my death certificate would note Motor City as my doomed place.

Fortunately, the asterisk was removed last September when good friends married in Michigan. I spent three days crisscrossing the Detroit suburbs, reveling in wedding festivities. No one could argue that Michigan wasn’t mine.

State poaching in college proved lucrative. All I had to do was buy classmates a six-pack. I convinced friends to drive me all over the United States (I had no driver’s license until age 21, another story).

With Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones and AC-DC blaring from the car radio, I collected states in sweeps: New England, the Atlantic seaboard, the Southeast and the Plains.

With its covered bridges, general stores, fall foliage and historical homes, New England became my favorite region of the country.

Every autumn in college, I went home with my roommate, Chrissy, who lived on a farm with pigs, cows and a 15-foot-deep manure pit in western Massachusetts.

She taught me how to make homemade applesauce, dress in layers and care for a calf. I accompanied her father on a bizarre but delightful truck ride to a slaughterhouse near Boston.

The fun memories and the beauty make Massachusetts my favorite state.

By the time I graduated from college, only a handful of states remained. An interview at the Spokane, Wash., newspaper for a job in an Idaho bureau chalked off not one, but three, states.

The night before I was to meet with editors in Coeur d’Alene, I drove my rental car to Montana with no destination in mind.

Late that night, I found myself eating doughnuts in a mini-mart with bearded, big-belly locals who lovingly talked about guns.

At age 29, all that was left was Alaska--and a dire determination to honor my childhood goal.

Which is how I ended up on top of the Herbert Glacier, where I teetered at the edge of a crevasse, a plunging narrow canyon of shimmering aquamarine ice. Then I jumped to the other side.

I drank from clear glacier streams that gave me an ice-cream headache. Not that I minded. The purity of the water tasted like a brisk, invigorating elixir that promised immortality.

Exactly the promise I needed on the first day of my 30th year.