When every inch of land has been conquered, when every place has been mapped, what is left to explore? This issue of Granta goes into the American wild, metaphorical and real. 'I found in my absence that I had missed two visitors: one left me nothing I could know them by; the other must have been a woman, judging by the gift of wood-shavings and pale grasses she had picked and twisted into a bouquet that lingered on my table.' - Andrew Motion, 'A Meeting of Minds with Henry David Thoreau' And Martin Amis, Thomas McGuane, Melinda Moustakis, Adam Nicolson, Mona Simpson, Claire Vaye Watkins, Callan Wink and others.