Although I love road trips, this will be my first since 2019. I’d originally planned this upcoming one for summer of 2020 but, of course, the pandemic changed everything. Beginning in March 2020, nobody traveled anywhere. We not only didn’t travel, we were afraid to leave home.

History is marked by events that change both the courses and perspectives of those who live through them. Plagues, major wars, natural catastrophes–it’s impossible to collectively experience these traumas and emerge the same as we were before they happened. Wherever we spent the pandemic years, however we absorbed the impact, we all have some form of PTSD. It touches each of us in a different way, but we have all changed.

As I re-visit this particular trip, I’m aware of how different I really am. In the past, planning a trip was exciting. This time, I’m tentative to the point of indecision. It’s hard to commit to a reservation without my mind ticking through every possible thing that could go wrong. I probably won’t believe I’m taking this trip at all until I pull out of my driveway and make it through several states unscathed. I’ve dealt with blips on past trips–car trouble, unfortunate route surprises, days where I wasn’t operating at 100%–but this is different. I feel like a target for disaster, like if something can go wrong, it will. I’m more vulnerable, less in control (with no relief to be found in the current world situation).

This makes the trip even more necessary. There may be a few more safety nets this time (looking at you, trip insurance), but I need to prove to myself that I’m still capable of doing this thing I love. I need more than ever to escape the limitations of time, to challenge the undercurrent of fear that has insidiously ingratiated itself into my mindset.

There’s no going back to who we were before. The best I can do is engage my babbling mind in the drive so that I can get in touch with who I am now and regain clarity about what really matters.

My daughters and I are on the fourth day of what will become our first cross-country road trip. Armed with maps and Triptiks, we’re traveling from Baltimore to San Francisco, down the California coast, and back through the southwest part of the country. In an era before GPS technology, whoever rides shotgun knows they’re responsible for emergency navigation help should the driver (me) need it. I’m not, however, a road-trip novice. My father’s love for road tripping (combined with his natural curiosity about cultures and history) means that my childhood was filled with them.

We’re only about an hour and fifteen minutes out of Omaha, our stop for the night. So, following the now-ubiquitous road signs, we veer onto IA-173 N in search of the Danish Windmill.

Part of Dad’s job with AAA involved mapping out Triptik routes for AAA members who’d ordered them. With no computers to reference, Dad used road maps and memory to carefully mark each route in yellow highlighter. We used to joke that if there was a gas station at some remote intersection in Wyoming, Dad knew about it and used it as a landmark. All of this means I have full faith in a map’s ability to get us to and from any place we want to go.

The Danish Windmill feels a lot farther than the signs promised (“Just off I-80!”). It probably doesn’t take even fifteen minutes, but not knowing where you are tends to elongate time. The signs, however, seem even more excited (YOU’RE SO CLOSE!).

Finally, as promised, the Danish Windmill appears on our left.

It’s exactly what it says it is: a Danish Windmill. It’s the only working Danish windmill in the U.S.–a fact that doesn’t surprise me, because how many Danish windmills can there be in the U.S? But, of course, there’s more to the story. We learn that Elk Horn, Iowa is home to the largest Danish population in the U.S. (who knew?). We also learn how the windmill ended up in Iowa.

Back in 1975, one of Elk Horn’s residents visited Denmark. He already had a passion for windmills, and it concerned him to discover that the old windmills there were falling into disrepair. Hoping to save one for posterity (and benefit his home community as well), he spearheaded a project to dismantle an 1848 windmill in Denmark, ship it to the U.S., and reassemble it in Elk Horn. (You can read about it here.) The reconstructed windmill now anchors a museum complex that provides education about and preservation of Danish culture.

The windmill isn’t working on the day we visit, but it does its job: we leave knowing more than we did when we arrived.

The drive back to I-80 feels quicker than the trip to the windmill did. We’ve traveled this patch of road before, so we know what to expect. Still, I value the disorientation I felt when we first pulled off the highway. Seemingly endless cornfields, an unfamiliar roll to the land, signs for different foods, brands, businesses … aspects of Iowa are as different from back east as Denmark is.

I confess to occasionally rolling my eyes when Dad showed us how to follow our daily road-trip route on a Triptik or made me stop reading in the back seat to look at an interesting landmark or beautiful scenery. If we were driving to Quebec, he told us the history of French Canada. If we were passing through Lancaster County, we learned about the Amish. Sometimes, I was mostly thinking about what I’d order for dinner when we stopped for the night. I didn’t yet appreciate the shift of perspective that travel can ignite.

But I know, now. It’s illuminating to feel “other” now and then, to explore a place where you have more questions than answers. A map can get you there, but the rest is up to you.

Thanks, Dad.

I can imagine myself here. In my mind, I’m bringing back apple-cider donuts from the garden center on a Sunday morning, settling on the deck to enjoy them with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. I’m exploring stores and restaurants I’ve never visited before or catching the commuter train to spend a few hours in the city. The possibilities within each day rejuvenate me beyond anything I experience at home.

The silly part is that I can do all this same stuff at my house, too. I live within walking distance of bakeries. There are grocery stores nearby for last-minute whims. I can easily walk my purchases home to enjoy on my very own deck overlooking my own herbs and yard. I have a city, too, with a train convenient enough to ride into it. So…why does one place make me feel so much more alive than the other?

I’ve always been prone to wanderlust. As much as I like my home, as grateful as I am for everything in my life, there is always a part of me that longs to experience “elsewhere.” Of course, an impulse to travel is easy to explain. For most of us, leaving home means leaving behind never-ending chores that inevitably show up in chain-reaction formation. The thought of adding our footsteps to iconic sites that have witnessed histories we can only read about is a lot more appealing than taking yet another lap along the same neighborhood route for the umpteenth time. Learning about different cultures and people feeds both the mind and the heart. But while all of this is compelling, it isn’t necessarily what fuels my need to wander.

For me, being elsewhere lets me see myself through a different lens. It helps me understand not only who I am, but who I might be if undefined by the familiar. (This means I can get hyped simply by walking through a grocery store in new territory or figuring out the transit system in a city I don’t know.) Who would I become in a place that has no expectations of me? Which aspects of myself would I strengthen? Which habits would I jettison as no longer relevant? Re-creating myself triggers my imagination into overdrive. What would life be like if I lived somewhere else?

Most dictionaries define the word “wanderlust” as a strong desire to travel, a need to keep moving. Some studies even say that for approximately 20% of us, it’s a genetic remnant of our ancestors’ nomadic hunting and gathering days. But it’s interesting to note that where wanderlust is concerned, you never actually arrive anywhere. The “lust” is for the wandering itself.

Over the past fifteen months or so, it’s been harder to bloom where I’m planted without the influx of energy that comes from free-falling through a different setting. I’ve learned, however, that reverberations picked up through past wanderings never quite leave us. We can tap into them via memory and imagination. Granted, doing this isn’t nearly as invigorating as hands-on exploring, but perhaps “being there” isn’t the entire point. Ultimately, the benefits of travel reach their full potential only if we let them broaden our understanding of the world and how we can pour our best into it. Even I have to admit that we can do this while grounded.

Maybe that innate call to wander is what allows us to make the most of staying put.