What Six Days, 3,000+ Miles, and a Stick-Shift Saturn Taught Me About Life

I can’t help smiling—broadly, wildly, madly–when I remember those days of pure, unabashed freedom on the open road.

Almost two years ago, I set out on a journey, one that took me from my home on the Jersey Shore through the heart of America to the caffeine-fueled metropolis of Seattle, Washington. And I went alone.  A friend was moving to the West Coast and would I drive her car out there for her? My heart answered so loudly it overwhelmed all reason. Yes! Yes! Yes!

In the beginning, there was nothing but anticipation. And expectation. And uncertainty. But isn’t that always the way it is with travel? The moment we go out across the threshold of the cozy shelter of home, all that we know–all that we’re sure of–disappears in the rearview mirror as we move toward the unfamiliar.

Driving over 3,000 miles alone in a small, silver sedan with nothing but the sound of my own voice and the asphalt beneath to keep me company became so much more than a physical journey, more than just the transference of metal and flesh from one place to the next. During those six days, the car shrunk to my body like a second skin as it moved me through the awe-inspiring majesty of a changeful, flickering landscape. But it wasn’t just the landscape that changed. The experience reshaped me, too, leaving an imprint on my life like a beautiful scar.  As the miles rolled past, the road shared its secrets with me, the gentle hum of revolving tires like a whispered chant.

There are places of unimaginable wonder and unspeakable beauty in the world. Seek them out.

• I saw with my own eyes the beautiful, verdant valleys of western Pennsylvania. The wide, airy farmlands of Minnesota. The rugged, golden beauty of South Dakota. The deep mountain lakes and snow-capped peaks of Montana.  The arid barrenness of the Cascades. I shudder to think about life without those heart-stirring landscapes etched into my memory. They continue to be a source of joy in dark days.

Limitations are made to be defied, especially those you place on yourself.

• A week before I started on my cross-country journey, I knew only the basics of driving a stick shift car and had minimal practice. In retrospect, I had absolutely no business getting behind the wheel but I wanted to prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I could do it. I would either learn to drive stick by the end of the trip or strand myself in the middle of the country trying. Failure was not an option.

Sometimes you can’t go back, so just keep moving forward.

• In central Wyoming, my meticulously planned route took me up a narrow, winding mountain road with no guardrails and fog so thick I could barely see beyond five feet ahead.  I couldn’t turn around and I couldn’t pull over. Only one choice was left to me: keep going. So I forged ahead, slowly and steadily. After what felt like the longest thirty minutes of my life, the road widened, the fog cleared, the sun broke through the clouds. It was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

You are not the center of the universe.

• There were stretches where there wasn’t another living soul for miles. And miles. And miles. Coming from one of the most populated of the United States, where you can’t go two feet without seeing someone else, I was struck dumb at times by the sheer vastness of existence. And strangely enough, it was during these periods of intense aloneness that I became most keenly aware of the billions of people with whom I share this planet. Their absence spoke much more loudly than their presence ever could.

Life is short. Live it large.

• Windows of opportunity come along in life; they open, and then they close. And more often than not, they never open again. If I’d refused my friend because of all of the things that could have gone wrong, she would have asked someone else and I might never have tasted so deeply from the cup of human experience.  Irrational fear should never be a valid reason to shut out an amazing opportunity.

Those six days and three thousand miles and that stick shift car saturated my life with a happiness and a freedom I hadn’t known before and will never know again. There will be other life-altering experiences, I’m sure, but that journey was too singular, too special to ever be duplicated. I’ll never forget it—or the lessons it taught me—as long as I live.