In Search of Roads Less Traveled

When we reconnected after more than a year without contact, I asked him what prompted him to reach out.

“I was driving across [the] bridge, and I thought of you,” he said.

Roads have a way of doing that—leading your mind down winding paths, dredging up memories both pleasant and painful of the people and places you left behind.  It’s not that other things don’t spark nostalgia; a scent, a dish, a groove slightly transformed can all transport you back to another time. But there is something about roads—whose very purpose is to connect things which are apart—that makes the distant seem within reach.

When you live your entire adulthood in the same metropolitan area, it can start to feel like each twist and turn of every road holds a story from the past. Over the last several days, I’ve  driven past a building that was once my college dorm, streets that were the scenes of my best and worst dates, and highway exits for my first apartment and my last.

Sometimes I marvel at how the streets of the DMV have changed. Other times, I can’t decide if I’m comforted or annoyed by the ways they have not. A few years ago, I had an appointment at a building I once worked in. Despite new tenants, the walls were adorned with the exact same  posters from a decade prior. As I smiled at the memory of my coworker creating those designs, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was running in place.

In the time since I arrived in D.C.  as a college freshman, I have accomplished a number of things in my career, writing, and personal life. I’ve studied and worked, worshipped and written, socialized and shopped, lived and loved in each of the three areas that make up the letters DMV. Yet even with the region’s numerous people and places, the streets and stories have become familiar. Memories, even the boring ones, have been chasing me. And as much as I try to outrun them, it often feels like I’m jogging in place.

Had another city made a compelling case, I probably would have moved by now. But since no particular place is calling me and D.C. hasn’t loosed its hold on me, I found myself looking for creative ways to travel roads with destinations unknown to me, to put some space between me and the memories.

My solution? Consider aspects of my life that haven’t gone to plan and lean into their benefits. As an unmarried woman, I answer to no one. As a childfree woman, I am responsible for no one. And as a remote employee, I don’t report to an office. I am free to move about the country.

I fully embraced this freedom at the end of 2024, packing up my place and moving in with family to cut expenses. Once a month, I’m venturing to a different city rather than waiting for new memories to come to me.

When I tell people about this ‘free’ season of my life, they have questions. What am I hoping to find? What do I want to accomplish? How long will I keep this up?

These are things I have also asked myself—along with questions of whether this lifestyle feels indulgent and risky with so many people struggling and the nation in an existential crisis.

But who knows how long I’ll be free to move about the country? Who’s going to prioritize my liberation, peace, and happiness but me? Who says I have to be looking for anything more than a road less traveled—one that leads to new encounters with people and God—to create new memories, inspire new stories, and reclaim my purpose?

I won’t make declarations or assumptions about when this journey will end. Maybe a different city’s roads will call out to me long-term. Or maybe they’ll just add variety to my memories, until in time, fresh faces and places make the DMV new once more.

I’m sharing my travel musings on Instagram as #WordsandWater. Those two things—words and water—always catch my eye when I’m traveling and are ways that God speaks to me. You can follow along at @sheryleighwrites.