The Trip – Summary

This was my sixth cross-country trip in recent history. There were at least four earlier in my life, before kids, with Abbey along, and one life-altering, ur-trip with my parents and grandmother when I was eleven. One of many and, I hope, not the last.

The risks involved – not only the varying levels of range anxiety, but the fact that this was, in fact, someone else’s car – seemed to reduce the long reveries about history and culture, and how geology shapes both of them, that characterized other trips. I did engage a lot with this kind of thing, but there was way too much glancing at the map and mileage readouts to really get lost in the country.

I did think a good deal about solitude. These trips serve as occasional retreats for me, vacations from the diverse, engaged, responsibility-laden and often stressful life I’ve chosen to lead. This was certainly the case this time, but the risks – again – added a sense of danger that was not something that I’d like to experience again in the future.

The last couple of days were through very familiar territory, with a snowy mantle. The cold, sunny, cloudless sky followed me to Oneonta, but on the last morning it turned distinctly more winter-like, a sloppy, featureless grey we would all recognize. Didn’t matter. I was heading in. I could smell the sea.

What a joy it was to pull up to Randall and Lily’s house, which I had seen only in Zillow pictures and Google maps. Lily had the door open before I reached the doorbell. And there she was: The Cutest Grandchild in All of Human History. I was home.