Human tributaries to the Big South American River

One of the things I learned on our long road trip to see the solar eclipse in 2017 is that way outside of towns that are themselves in the middle of the wilderness, there are Walmarts. And Targets and similar giant stores.

We learned to rely on them, because they encourage RVs to stay overnight in their parking lots, as long as the travelers do not cause problems for the shoppers. It seemed odd at first, a sort of camaraderie of the road, except not between two motorcyclists but between a motorhome and a gigantic warehouse packed with every material thing anyone could ever want, from stone fountains to emu jerky, from wardrobes to surgical trusses.

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And today I learned there's a caste of nomads that live off these stores much as a tribe might live off a herd of migratory buffalo.

It's in The Verge's article, ROAD-TRIPPING WITH THE AMAZON NOMADS.

They drive from town to town - or from middle of nowhere to middle of other nowhere - hitting the Walmarts for clearance items that they sell to Amazon. They are the "fulfilled by Amazon" people, who fill the Amazon warehouses with...things...that have lodged in the wrong cranny to ever be dislodged by local forces. Only the travelers, armed with apps that tell them what's hot and what's not, can ever pry them out of their Walmarts and shift them back into interstate commerce.

There's something almost transcendentally American about this existence. America has lots of stories that burst with romance and tragedy, for example champion hot dog eating competitions, or tiny tot beauty pageants.  Circus geeks. Chautauquas. Or traveling hellfire preachers. This peculiarly modern variant on the road lifestyle, living in an RV and servicing Amazon - which may as well be God, being as it is all-encompassing and not located in any given point in space, but rather in our hearts and psyches - cries out for more coverage. Perhaps a novel.