And I felt, in the silence that followed, everything that had happened on the trip to bring me to this place.

I know,' I said, thinking about the trip my mother had wanted me to take, and the trip we'd ended up taking, and how much better ours had been.

We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along.
- Roger Sullivan

They leave the insistent monotony of the interstate for more reasonable roads. While the former slices its path through entire states, peppering them with exit signs and mile markers, these lesser cousins of the grand highways keep their manners intact, clinging gently to the hemlines of all but the most obstinate geological points of interest. Charming and sometimes a bit frightening, their paths are as unpredictable and winding as a little boy's route home from school.

To every house is a road, to every road is an address and to every address is a place.

I climb behind the steering wheel... I drive off immediately without once looking back; it's a long journey but it leads to freedom.