ON THE ROAD WEST

Today the Jeep rolls out, leaving Long Island, loaded with the accumulated pieces of a life about to change. Heading 240° — southwest.

For weeks, my focus was locked on the practical details of moving — packing boxes, making decisions, and coordinating logistics. Fueled by adrenaline and relentless deadlines, I was in constant “production mode,” always thinking about what needed to happen next. But this morning, as I turned the key in the lock for the last time and left an empty house behind, something shifted.

A strange, heavy quietness settled over me as I merged onto the highway.  After weeks of constant motion, there was suddenly nothing left to organize. All I had to do was drive.

The road, however, was not feeling quite so “zen.” The first miles are anything but wilderness. The route threads through the dense suburban arteries of New York and New Jersey, where the relentless sprawl of the urban Northeast clings to the interstate. Traffic is heavy; strip malls and sound walls are constant. There is no dramatic sense of departure — just a slow, grueling crawl through a landscape that feels too familiar to offer any real sense of progress.

Then, a few hours into the drive, somewhere beyond the Susquehanna River, the tight grip of the urban East Coast finally begins to loosen. The highways narrow. The flat suburban horizon gives way to wooded ridgelines. Deep ravines cut through hardwood forests, and the road begins following contours that existed long before the interstate ever crossed these mountains.

By the time I roll into Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, the frantic energy of the move has started to drain away. I stop at the Hublersburg Inn, which dates back to 1827, back when travelers moved through these valleys by stagecoach at a distinctly human pace. Inside its thick stone walls and timbered rooms, the highway feels very far away. Resting over a great lunch, I can finally slow down. For the first time in weeks, I am thinking less about everything that had to be done and more about what lies ahead.

Back on the road, the Allegheny Plateau rises around me. The Jeep climbs through Elk and Cameron counties, surrounded by an expanse of forest that seems to have no end. It is easy to imagine that these mountains have always looked this way.

They haven’t. During the nineteenth-century timber boom, much of this country was clear-cut. The forests were stripped from the hillsides, leaving behind erosion and a landscape radically different from the one I see today. What stands here now is the result of decades of regrowth and conservation. The forest has returned so completely that its scars are easy to miss.

There is something fitting about encountering that landscape on the first day of a journey built around change.

By late afternoon, I pull into Benezette, the heart of Pennsylvania’s elk country. The elk have their own story of disappearance and return. Native eastern elk were hunted to extinction in Pennsylvania by the late nineteenth century. In 1913, fifty Rocky Mountain elk were transported here from Yellowstone by train in an attempt to establish a new herd.

The herd took hold.

As the sun dips low and the mountain air turns sharp, I get settled into a small cabin at Medix Run, and struggle a bit to get the campfire started. There’s been a lot of rain and the wood is wet and doesn’t want to take. Eventually I win and sit close to the fire’s warmth, looking up to see the stars beginning to appear overhead. Time for some reflection.

After a day spent driving away from everything familiar, I am sitting in a place that feels remarkably far from where I came from. But the distance isn’t really that great. The landscape simply makes it feel that way. Tonight, I sleep in the shadow of the Alleghenies, with the call of elk echoing across the ridges. Tomorrow the journey continues.