Why Leave a Place We Love?

Reader Poll Question

A trip changes the moment you leave home. Plan all you want, set an itinerary, a schedule, a to-do list. But nothing is set in stone. Tolkien wrote: “It’s a dangerous business, [Frodo,] going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

The unknown is the only constant.

Nevertheless, I create a wish list and hope to make it through to the end. Inevitably, though, circumstances change. Weather, health, the environment—they conspire to make the future hazy, at best.

This is what makes a road trip priceless: it is nothing less than an adventure.

Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi, Bilbo Baggins going off with Gandalf and the elves to the Lonely Mountain, and Dorothy Gale, tossed to Oz by a tornado. We are all these and more when we choose to or have to step out of our comfort zone and travel to the unknown.

A map is easy enough to read. You put an ‘x’ here, and another there, and it all seems simple enou…