Against a backdrop of pastel mountain peaks and the setting sun, dirt chunks circle one another to form a shape. Their quick, coordinated movements form a spiral, a monument to an ancient symbol that can be found carved into millennia-old petroglyphs at nearby Grimes Point. Then, as quickly as they’ve come together, the rocky sentinels disperse, settling back into the stationary shapes that existed long before the artist Paul Johnson arrived to film them.
“Coiled” above, is the first stop-motion animation in a series of works created for Atlas Obscura as part of The Fellowship of the Loneliest Road. The fellowship, created in partnership with TravelNevada, sent a single artist on a five-day journey across Nevada’s Highway 50.
Stretching coast-to-coast in a line that neatly crosses 12 states and divides the country in two, Highway 50 was once a major thoroughfare that served America’s burgeoning car culture. But when the interstate system was established in the 1950s, many Americans chose multi-lane efficiency over the sights and romanticism of the older routes. In Nevada, Highway 50 fell out of use as drivers rerouted to nearby I-80.
By 1986, the sight of travelers had become rare on Highway 50. One exception was a photographer from Life Magazine, who snapped a picture of the road that year and captioned it “America’s Loneliest Road.” Sensing an opportunity, Nevada officials embraced the name. Since then, Highway 50 has evolved into a pilgrimage site for adventurers looking for quiet, solitude, and a feeling of traveling back in time.
“I’ve always enjoyed solo travel and the unique opportunities it presents for discovery, exploration, and creative output,” Johnson wrote in his application for the Fellowship of the Loneliest Road.
“I generally feel the most creatively inspired when I’m doing things solo.”In his submission, Johnson proposed to use the fellowship to expand an ongoing series of stop-motion animations he’d been developing,…
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