The road has always been the great truth serum. Long stretches of asphalt, no place to hide, just miles and time conspiring to shake loose whatever you’ve been carrying around in your skull. When I think about the most memorable road trips of my life, my mind doesn’t land in one neat place—it swerves, hard, between eras.

Iron Mountain comes roaring in first, loud and feral. A modern pilgrimage up logging roads that looked like they were drawn by a drunk with a grudge. Dust in the lungs, gear rattling in the back, anticipation buzzing like bad wiring. That trip wasn’t about getting somewhere—it was about pushing into the dark, watching the sun burn itself out behind jagged peaks, staying awake all night with the stars and the occasional unhinged human encounter. No sleep. No safety net. Just the road, the mountain, and the understanding that you don’t feel truly alive until you’re a little uncomfortable and very far from home.

But then—without warning—the memory shifts gears.

I’m younger. Smaller. Riding shotgun while my dad drives south, Oregon bleeding slowly into California. Summer heat creeping through the windows. Long, endless highways that felt like they went on forever because, back then, forever still existed. We did that trip every year—ritualistic, sacred in a quiet, unspoken way. No grand speeches. Just miles, conversation drifting in and out, the hum of tires like a lullaby. He knew those roads. Drove them with confidence, like the world still made sense if you followed the lines.

Those drives weren’t about destination either. They were about proximity. Time spent side by side with nothing demanding attention except the road ahead. The kind of time you don’t realize is priceless until it’s gone and the highway only runs one direction now—backward, through memory.

Iron Mountain taught me how to chase chaos, how to seek meaning in exhaustion and silence and strange beauty. Those summer drives with my father taught me something quieter: how the road can hold a life together for a while, how being there—really there—matters more than where you’re headed.

Different trips. Same truth. The road always gives you what you need, even if it takes decades to understand why.